Keyword: Teachers
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Talking to Your Child’s Teacher
Do you wonder how to build a good relationship with your child’s teacher? Here are some words to help you connect.
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FREE Professional Development Online for Early Childhood Educators
We have curated a list of free professional development opportunities that you can attend from your home
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Lots of Dandelions
Nature play presents opportunities for teachers to introduce scientific concepts. In this video, we see a teacher join Fawn and Edwin, both age 4, as they blow the seeds from dandelions growing on the playground.
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Inclusive Early Childhood Programs: How One School District Creates a Place for All Young Children
This podcast contains an interview with Ms. Crystal Vowels about inclusive early childhood programs. Ms. Vowels is the principal of the Urbana Early Childhood School in Urbana, IL. In this interview, Ms. Vowels and IEL staff member Dr. Rebecca Swartz discuss key aspects of inclusive early childhood programs including collaboration, curricular adaptations, and interdisciplinary teaming.…
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Father/Male Involvement in Early Childhood
This list contains a variety of resources associated with father/male involvement in early childhood. While this resource list specifically addresses fathers and males, IEL supports all types of families.
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Over Here
This interaction shows young children working together to build a block tower and the teacher providing them with support, both in completing the task and to minimize frustration or conflicts.
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Children in Refugee Families Need Extra Care, Attention
Many refugees are settling in the United States as a result of wars in the Middle East, Africa, Central America, and Asia, and many arrive in Illinois as part of our nation’s formal refugee resettlement program.
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Continuity of Contact
One of the many insights being shared with us from recent research is that different kinds of “stimulation” in the early years contribute to important brain development that has long-term implications.
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Insight as Part of Teaching Young Children
Many of a teacher’s decisions are based on routines and the normal schedule of activities that require little if any analysis or reflection.
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Connecting with Parents: “But He Doesn’t Do That at Home!”
Here are some suggestions that may help when parents say, “He doesn’t do that at home!”
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The “Bottom-up” Perspective on the Quality of an Early Childhood Program
The quality of early childhood programs can be assessed in many ways. An important way to assess the quality of a program is to take what we might call a bottom-up perspective—attempting to determine how the program is experienced by the children who participate in it.
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Creating a Sense of Belonging in Preschool
Families and teachers want their children to feel welcome at preschool, to be accepted by their friends, and to feel secure in their daily routines.
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What Puppets Can Mean to Children
Part of the appeal of puppets is that they can “behave” like people while not exactly being people.
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Keep the Conversation Going With Young Dual Language Learners
Teachers and caregivers of young DLLs can engage children in meaningful conversations that teach new words and explain their meaning.
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Visual Schedules and Checklists
Grown-ups often use a daily calendar or checklists to remind them of their meetings and tasks. Children also benefit from simple schedules or checklists.
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Giving a Project a Narrative Title
When working with teachers who include project work in their early childhood classrooms, we have noticed that they often struggle with questions about what might be good project topics.
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Talking Straight to Children
It worries me that so few teacher-child contacts are continuous interactions. Recent evidence suggests that such meaningful continuous contingent interactions from very early in life throughout the first five or six years stimulate very important neurological development that must be accomplished by roughly about the age of 6.
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Math Lesson Addressing Benchmark 8.A.ECa
The children in Mrs. Silva’s class are working on a project about community helpers, guided by the question, “Who are the community helpers in our neighborhood?” During this project, the children are investigating the local post office. With guidance from Mrs. Silva, the children recognized that a mail carrier delivered mail to the school office…
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The Project Approach and the CLASS Observation Tool
So, perhaps when we try to identify what it is about the Project Approach that leads to beneficial outcomes for children, we can point to the types of teacher/child and child/child interactions that project work supports.
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The Feed-Forward Problem
Those of us who are raising and teaching children may sometimes have to say to them something like, “I know this doesn’t seem to be useful right now. But, trust me! There will be a time when you will be glad you learned it.”
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Supporting a Large Staff in Implementing the Project Approach
In our PFA program, teachers organize classroom experiences around a schedule of predetermined themes taken from the BLL literacy curriculum to reinforce concepts that they introduce using Big Books. They work with small and large groups through direct instruction, directed inquiry, and theme-related learning centers.
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Two Approaches to Implementation of the Project Approach
In my view, there is no “right” or “wrong” way to implement projects, but I do think it is important for teachers to be thoughtful about choosing the way that is likely to be most beneficial for their particular group of students.
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Successful Long-Term Implementation of Projects
I was initially exposed to the Project Approach as a center director in the early 1990s. It made so much sense to me, and I was determined to learn more, to study further, and to create a passion for project work among teachers, families, university students, and university professors. After reflecting on my experience, I’ve…
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Organize High-Quality Professional Development on the Project Approach in Your Own Backyard
On a recent Saturday morning, a group of teachers, administrators, students, and faculty members met to form the Quad Cities Project Group.
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Props, Teachers, and Projects: Engaging Learners in Representational Play
Some teachers find that projects fizzle out following field trips. However, three strategies can support children’s continued interest in the project.
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Thoughts on Leadership
These experiences reminded me of some of the fundamental aspects of effective leadership practices in such complex environments.
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Journey into the Project Approach
Sometimes administrators’ days fill up with one thing after another, and the importance of time escapes us. Remember that the power of learning through collaboration, support, and recognition goes a long way.
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Projects that Strengthen Children’s Sense of their Communities
Extensive work with teachers implementing the Project Approach indicates clearly that the quality of the children’s experiences and the quality of what is accomplished are strongly related to the topic under investigation.
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Materials for Representation in Project Work
As children acquire new knowledge and understanding through project work, they typically represent their understanding in their work/play in the art, writing, dramatic play, and block areas.
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Tips for Supporting Teachers’ Implementation of Project Work
Each project is unique, depending on the teacher, the particular or unique group of children involved, and the children’s backgrounds, interests, and experiences.
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How Many Projects per Year?
Some teachers have project work continuing throughout the school year. Others plan their curriculum so that it will include two or maybe three during the year.
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Informing Parents about the Project Approach
Teachers who are beginning their first projects often wonder how to inform the parents of their students about this new way of teaching and learning. Parent support for project work can provide many benefits, so it is important to make sure that they understand what a project is.
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Field Trips and Fieldwork
Teachers often get confused about the difference between field trips and fieldwork.
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Helping Children Take the Lead
As teachers, we often hope that working in projects will provide opportunities for every child in our class to feel ownership and take initiative in a class project. However, we sometimes lack confidence about how to get these kinds of things to happen. Following are some suggestions for possible ways to help children take initiative…
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Evaluating Projects
Below are some questions you and your assistants could ask yourselves as a beginning approach to evaluating your project work.
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The Horse Project (blog)
The Horse Project included in the “Projects” section of this site is avivid example of how teacherscan pick up on the spontaneous interests of preschool-age children and involve them in finding answers to their questions about something in their own environment worth learning about.