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I have learned a lot over this semester. I have really enjoyed this class and I am glad I was able to take it with Misty and the students I did as well. There were some areas of content that stood out to me throughout the semester and I would like to share those with you!
One key learning moment that I remember when was we were reading for class about Communities of Practice. I was not sure how these were so beneficial for teachers and even us students. Now, finishing the class I am not sure I would have succeeded the way that I did without my own community of practice in the classroom with my group. I was able to go to my group if I had questions about the readings or videos and they were able to explain them to me through their own perspective.
Also, with the literacy project, there were some sections that I was unsure of,  or that I wanted feedback on my activity or questions planned. It was so helpful to have them there, on the same page as me, and willing to help since they were all going through the same thing. I realized in this class, through the variety of readings we had about communities of practice but also having them implemented in our classroom, how helpful and beneficial they are and how necessary they will be for me in my future as an educator.
The next key learning moment that I would like to talk about is the importance of formative assessment through anecdotal records. I have never paid too close attention to my teachers note taking in the past, but now that I am going to be the teacher and I am looking back, trying to remember what they did, I am able to see the notes they were keeping and also why they were doing this. This was really a full circle moment for me since I am unsure then what they were really doing and why they were doing it, but know I know what they were doing and also why they chose to do that.
This really came full circle when I was watching the videos about portfolios and anecdotal records. I have seen all of these being done in my old classrooms when I was younger. I specifically remembered right before open house at the end of the school year, my teacher would pull out large folders from a cabinet in the back of the room. These folders had art work, worksheets, writing documents, and even tests that we have completed over the school year. I never knew why my teachers was keeping all of this "junk" on even students. I use to take them home and sometimes throw them away before even showing my parents. At that time, I did not know what they were for or what they were trying to show, our progress!
My teachers also use to ask me questions  whenever I was playing as well. They would ask me why I was doing what I was doing, where I had learned it from, and where I saw my "scene" going to and why. At the time, I just found it bothersome answering all these questions while I was just trying to play, but looking back, the teacher was just trying to see my interests and where they were stemming from.
In the end, one last thing that I would like to mention has to do with the anti-bias education content we learned this semester. I have never really thought about how important it is to introduce topics like this at young ages, due to the fact that they learn these thoughts at young ages and then build upon them.
I realized how important that it was whenever we had the guest speaker come in and talk about her experience with teaching anti-bias education in her classroom. I did not know the amount of books that there were, which I was able to see more of during the literacy project, that incorporated these subtle anti-bias meanings and concepts. I can admit that I never really looked too much into them before but now that it has been brought to my attention, I have found myself looking at the books in the classrooms at my daycare when I went home for break and also looking through my own children's books on my old bookshelf in my basement. I think that this is a very important topic and I did not know about the true impact that it had on kids till this class, with the guest speaker and also all the videos and readings we completed on it.
We have covered a lot of things in this class that I would like to incorporate into my own classroom. All of the things I have mentioned, documentation, communities of practice, and anti-bias education are all things I plan on having in my own classroom. I would like to have my students desks in smaller groups. I always use to like this whenever I was younger because I always had someone there to help instead of going straight to the teacher. I think that the students will like this because I know whenever I was younger, I use to like to go to my other peers before running to the teacher for help. Most of the time, they were able to help me solve my problem.
Another thing that I will have in my class is portfolios for documentation. I have seen this in my classrooms whenever I was younger, and like I mentioned, did not know what they were for until now. I think that when I have these in my classroom, I would like to tell the students what they are and what I will be using them for. I would have liked to have this inside scoop when I was younger and maybe I would not have thrown all of the work away if I knew the meaning...
Lastly, I would like to have a wide variety of books and posters in the classroom that showcases diversity and inclusion. I want all of my students to feel represented in the classroom by seeing these, I think they will. I also want to make a point to still have these even if I do not have a diverse class, like I did not have in the younger grades. I think that it is important for all students to get this anti-bias education.
Overall, I have really enjoyed this class and I am happy I was able to take it at the time I did. I will be taking away a lot of the topics and content from this class and applying it to my student teaching and also in my own classroom, hopefully!

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I thought watching the video Play and Learning at School this week was very interesting. It was nice to see how skills we have learned about in preschool settings can be seen throughout elementary school children as well as they build upon them.
One thing that I saw repeated throughout the video was how the children were working with one another to problem solve and work through their conflicts together, without instantly running to the teacher. We have learned throughout this semester how important it is to teach children to work through their conflicts and help them find effective ways to communicate their emotions with one another. By helping the children build these skills when they are young, with the teachers guidance, they are able to retain the skills and put them into play whenever they are older, like these 5 year olds are doing whenever they are having a disagreement. One instance that stood out to me was when a group of boys started a game which needed 3 good guys and 3 bad guys. They we unable to decide which people were on which side so one boy, Max, decided to split them up by having A's and S's in their names. This would eliminate them fighting over who was bad and who was good and they did not get to "show favorites" by choosing boys on their teams. This was a good way to handle the conflict and showed how they could problem solve without involving a teacher right away to help them come to a conclusion.
Something else that I saw in the video was a wide variety of materials for the children to play with. For instance, there was a drawing table in the corner of the room with scissors, markers, and paper for the children to play with. There was 2 or 3 girls making craft. This was allowing them to use their fine motor skills and helping them build on those. As we saw in last weeks video, Physical Development and Growth, drawing and crafts are the most common way for children to develop these fine motor skills and for them to practice them as well. Children as young as 4 months old can draw scribbles and by the age of 4 evolve them into a drawing. We saw these girls drawing things and explaining to the class and her teacher what they were and also talking with one another and communicating their ideas.
In the video, a lot of the children were participating in imaginative play and pretend play. By having the children engage in this play, they are building upon their communication and language skills. They are also learning how to communicate their thoughts/ideas and their emotions to one another. By doing this, the children are able to learn things like other perspectives and empathy. They learn these with experience at a young age and develop them as they get older, learning how to accept other children's emotions and their thoughts whenever they differ from their own. In the video from last week, Shining Star Dance Class, we saw all the young girls and their dance teacher engaged in an imaginative warm-up. They were pretending that they were trees in the forest and then started running around in circles. They were getting gross motor skill development and also were pretending! The girls seemed to get very involved in this and did not want to stop whenever it was time to more to bare. The teacher was able to use this play and songs to help teach the ballerinas new skills, such as pointing their toes and listening to music. In the last video from last week, Music and Movement, they talked all about how children are born to move and how it is their nature. I thought that it was great to see how they were able to incorporate music and movement into the classroom. They said that you could use recycled materials like old water jugs and rice to make shakers! I thought that this was such a cool idea. We saw the children in this weeks video constantly moving and I think they would have loved being involved with music since they always seemed on the move!
I think that finding ways to incorporate these topics into the classroom and not just outside is crucial. The teacher needs to give then enough time and space to explore and pretend play with their own ideas. They learn so much from this play like I have mentioned and with guidance from the teacher, these are skills that they will retain and use in their later run-ins with other students. They will also build upon these skills when they grow up, so it is important to introduce them and show them the importance of them at a young age, such as preschool so they can be grown by elementary school.

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I loved seeing what the outdoor classroom at Fiddleheads Forest School was like! I thought that it was so interesting to see the differences of the classrooms I have attended and the ones I have taught in before. I think that having an outdoor classroom is great for children because they love playing and just being outdoors. In the video, they said that by having the children building a relationship with the outdoors, they will care more about the environment whenever they get older. I think that this is great! I think that the children need to be taught to love and care for our environment and nature and be thankful for all that it gives to us.
Something that caught my eye was the first teacher that was shown. She talked very calm to the children and was using words that they would easily understand. I liked whenever she talked about showing the slug kindness by having them place him back where he came from. I thought that this was very great. She is able to teach the students these skills and help them develop in the same ways students that are in traditional classrooms as.
I also liked how the teacher talked about how they do plan to have lessons but those lessons may change due to the children's interest in something else. She talked about being prepared to teach a lesson about plants one day but maybe an owl came through the forest and then changing their learning for the day about owls. She was very supportive and also listened to what the children wanted to do. I think that this is great for a teacher to do whenever they are in a class that uses emergent curriculum.
Overall I really liked this video. I know it was only 6 minutes long but I would have loved to see more of what a typical day in their class looks like. I think their approach to learning outside in nature is great and I would love to experience this for myself one day!

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Journal 8: Nurturing the Love of Learning

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Journal 8: Nurturing the Love of Learning

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I really enjoyed watching the video, Nurturing the Love of Learning. I have never gotten the opportunity to be in a Montessori classroom but I think that they are very helpful for children and they allow them to develop lots of different life skills. Something that I liked was the children are learning at their own individual pace, they are not rushed with their learning or compared to their peers. This also teaches them to be very independent. I believe this is very different from other schools because children are usually moving through their learning topics as a group and one child possibly may not understand the material as well as another child but the whole class will still move on to the next topic. I think that is why I like the Montessori style because it really does follow the No Child Left Behind thought in my mind.
It was nice to see that the children were learning in a more sensory way then a typical classroom I have been in before. They had a lot of hands on lessons and toys open for them to use. The video stated that they were able to better retain the knowledge and the concepts through this hands on approach to learning and I could not agree more. I am a visual learner. I like to see things while I am trying to understand them. I know that this is different for all people, but I can relate to the children in this classroom through learning better and being able to retain this information through sensory materials.
One last thing that I would like to mention is the use of practical life, sensorial, language, math, and culture in their classroom. I think that they cover topics that are very helpful for the children to learn in a way that is best for them. I also liked the one girl who said that she liked to learn like she was an actual person and not just a 3 year old. I think that this is important for all teachers to keep in mind that children need to learn things that will help them down the road as well and that they should be treated like an actual person, and not just a child. I also liked how they taught the children the sounds each letter makes instead of the alphabet first. I think this would be very helpful for students and I would love to teach my students in the ways that will help them understand faster and be able to build upon that knowledge.

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Allow children to explore their curiosity and build as high as they want to test their solutions- not just to the shoulder or head

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Journal 8: Thinking Big Extending Emergent Curriculum Projects

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Journal 8: Thinking Big Extending Emergent Curriculum Projects

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After watching the video, Thinking Big Extending Emergent Curriculum Projects, I think that I have a better understanding of how to take what students are interested in and to tailor the learning to accommodate these interests. In the beginning of the video, the teachers shared that they were scared at first to allow the children long time periods to play. They were worried about them getting bored or how they would not have time for the standard curriculums. I think that this is a common worry for teachers that are trying to incorporate play into learning. They have to keep in mind that children are curious and they are learn better when they are presented with things that they are interested in. For example, the teachers talked about how they were stacking blocks and measuring how high they were building these structures. This is connected to them learning numeracy. They are measuring things and also counting. This is how math standards can be incorporated. The children are getting a better grasp of these concepts because they want to learn them in order to continue on and explore their play.
Something else that caught my attention in the video is when the teachers were talking about the students building structures that were no higher than their shoulders. This is what they were taught. I found this interesting because being a worker at a daycare in the summer, this is also what I have been told. I have been told that it is not safe for the students to build above their shoulder level and that it could hurt them if it fell. Thinking about it now, it relates back to allowing children to take risks. Parents and educators are so wrapped up in protecting their children that they do not allow them to take enough risks and explore things on their own. Like I have mentioned in previous journals, if a child puts a hand full of grass in their mouth because they are curious of the taste, they will be quick to spit it out once they try it and will likely not put it back in another time. We need to allow children to explore these curiosities such as how high they can stack bins or blocks till they fall over, and not worry about their safety as much as we do right now. We do not always need to protect them from risks, we are harming their learning this way.
One last thing I want to mention that I saw in the video was when the teachers were trying to see where the project was going to go next. They introduced branches and play birds and nests to the area to see if this is what the children were interested in. The children did not care for these items and cared about the height. The teachers them removed them and allowed the children to lead the project by what they showed they were more interested in. I think that this is important while teaching an emergent curriculum, that not everything the teacher suggests is going to be a way the children want to go and they you just need to try again with something new. It is okay if your first idea does not work, maybe even the second, but you need to keep trying to understand what the children are more interested in with observation and research.

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In the video Practical Strategies for Teaching Social Emotional Skills, the focused on some ways to introduce skills into your classrooms. Some examples of these skills could be taking turns, helping each other, sharing, organizing their play situations, and sharing feelings. When trying to help the students develop these skills, teachers need to have them practicing them constantly, all day long and remind them of it whenever they do not see them working on the skills.
A way that a teacher is able to focus on these skills and have the children trust them to help them learn and work on these skills is building a positive relationship with them. Another aspect of this is creating a supportive environment in the classroom so the children feel welcomed and that they will be able to share openly and not be turned away or judged for their actions.
I would like to talk a little bit about the 3 skills that we were shown in the video. In the first clip, we saw a teacher teaching her students to help and share with one another. She followed the 3 phase approach of introducing the skill, practicing it, and then recognizing when they do it on their own. She does this with showing how the ants help one another, has them practice helping when putting all of the wooden blocks away, and then sits down with them and says how they all helped each other like the ants did all day long. The teacher also got emotional when talking about teacher her students these skills. She said how happy she was at the end of the year when they walk away from her class with these skills that they can apply to other situations in live and she helped them learn those. I want to be a teacher like this in the future. That is the whole reason why I want to become a teacher. I want to help children build these skills, academic or life skills, that they can use in the future and they look back and remember how and who taught them those. I just want to help children for their futures ahead of them. In the following clips the teachers were having their kids learn about dealing and anger and problem solving. I liked how the 2nd teacher used the story with Tucker the turtle to show the kids to stop and take a step back and think about the situation they are in and why they are angry before acting upon those feelings. The last teacher had a chart with pictures hanging on her wall to help her students see what the steps were to problem solving. I really liked this as well because if the teacher is busy with something in a moment where there is a problem, the children can go over to the chart and work through the problem with the chart's guidance!

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Journal 8: Social and Emotional Development

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Journal 8: Social and Emotional Development

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In the Preschool Series video, Social and Emotional Development, they talked about how children at preschool ages are developing skills and why those skills are important to them for the future. In the beginning of the video, one thing that stood out to me was during the years 3-5, children love to say "I can do it myself!" I have seen this happen with a lot of the children I am with during the summer at daycare. When it comes to opening their juice boxes or zipping up their jackets, they only want to do it for themselves. It is important to foster this behavior from the students as it is described in the video as initiative. This is them taking risks and trying to accomplish things for themselves. I know that it can be easy as the teacher to just want to help the student with what they are doing because you do not have the time to wait, but it is important to think about what they are trying to do and to allow them to at least try. I do admit that whenever I have been running on a tight schedule I will just rush in and help them do whatever they want to do quickly. Now I will be more mindful of how this can be helpful for their development and no matter the time, allow the students to try these things, as it is just them attempting to be independent.
Something else in the video that I would like to point out is when the teacher said that she did not want to remove all the things outside that could hurt the children, this is how they learn. I thought that this was very nice to hear because today a lot of families and teachers are so worried about the safety of their children, they do not let them explore and take risk to learn things for themselves. For example, I think of whenever I was younger and playing outside without my parents hovering over me, of course I wanted to try the grass or the mud! After I tried it and realized that it did not taste good, I did not try that again! Parents need to allow their children to take risks and to explore things for themselves and not turn them away from these experiences because of safety concerns.
One last thing that I want to talk about was near the end of the video whenever they talked about including students with special needs into the classroom and involve them into interactions with the other students. I think that this is very important and these children that need help should be prioritized. Typically these students are behind in their develop of social and emotional skills, teachers push them to the side and do not want to put in the time and effort into integrating them into the play in their classroom. I liked how the teachers in the video were making sure they were included but also showing their other students that the student with a disability is not that different from them and that they all should be included in play.
There was a lot more in this video that I learned such as the different steps (unoccupied, onlooker, parallel, and associative play) children take whenever getting to cooperative play. Also learning about the importance of improving a child's self-concept.

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In the HighScope video Conflict Resolution, I learned a lot about how to facilitate conflicts between students. One thing that I saw being mentioned in a lot of the conflicts was encouraging the children to talk about the conflict together and come up with possible solutions. I really like this approach because it teaches the students to come up with their own problem solving skills and how to talk about their problems with one another. As a teacher, you should be there to facilitate these conversations though. When you are facilitating, it is important to gather all the information about the problem. Some teachers make assumptions due to past behavior when approaching a conflict between students. Go in with an open mind and listen to what all students have to say. Teachers should also acknowledge all the students feelings and have them state those feelings and why they are feeling that way. This is good for them to understand what one another is feeling and what caused them to feel this way. This is also good when helping them come to a possible solution.
Whenever you are approaching the situation it is helpful to talk in a calm voice and give the children gentle touches, only if they are comfortable with it though. It is important not to assume that a child that is upset wants to be hugged, they may want their own space because they are upset. The teacher should also be on the students level whenever they are intervening. The teacher should hold the object, if there is an object, that is in question during the conflict until the conflict is resolved.
This video had a lot of good tips for teachers about how to help resolve conflicts between their students and what they should help them do to come to a solution.

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I enjoyed watching the videos assigned for this week. In the first video about anecdotal records, I learned more about ways that teachers use these records and simple, easy ways to record them. For example, writing them on sticky notes or on strips of small paper. I think that these are very beneficial for the students and also for the teachers to assess the learning and teaching.
In the second video, I thought that it was very helpful to hear about ways to find and navigate the PA Learning Standards. Something that I found interesting was there is individuals sets of standards for ages and also the continuum set of standards which they referred to as a "bridge" between age standards.
In the HighScope video, I saw a lot of ways that mathematics can be incorporated in the classroom. In preschool, students are developing a lot of new math skills and concepts. For example, some of these concepts are number sense like counting forward or backwards, representation through symbols and pictures, measurements, estimations, and also patterns. These concepts are skills preschools develop in schools and build upon with their years of schooling to come. There were a few activities that were highlighted in the HighScope video that I enjoyed and also I have seen in classrooms I have been in. One of the activities that I saw was the teacher and the students playing with blocks. They were talking about the size of them, their shapes, and their lengths. Towards the end of the clip, the student was telling the teacher how he combined blocked and shifted them in order to make them the same size as another block. I thought that this was a good activity because the students were using measuring to short the blocks, they were also shorting the blocks by size and sometimes color, and lastly they were using quantitative words such as less, more, bigger, or smaller. I thought that this was a good activity for the students and that there were a lot of different ways they were benefiting according to the math standards. Another activity that I observed was teachers allowing the students to build with things such as PlayDo or foam blocks. The students were counting the blocks and assembling them together so that they would not fall. I thought that this was a good activity as well.
The activities shown in the video allowed the students to cover multiple PA Learning Standards. For example, I looked up the standards and some of the ones I have seen demonstrated in the video are, 2.1 PK.A 2 and 3 where the students were counting to tell the number of objects and comparing numbers. This was specifically shown with the teacher who was asking her students about the tallies in different groups and which had more and which had less and she asked the students to compare them.
Lastly, when looking at concept development, it is important for the students to come up with their own questions and for them to be pointed in the right direction for them to find their own answer. The teacher should provide them with materials that allow them to test different possibilities in order to draw conclusions. They should also teach them to keep trying different strategies until they find out one that works the best for them.

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Journal 6: Anti-Racism and Racism Podcast 

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Journal 6: Anti-Racism and Racism Podcast 

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There were a lot of different aspects to anti-racism that were talked about in the podcast that I would like to discuss further. One thing that was said was that you need to continue to change yourself in order to help change society. I agree with this statement. One of the big take aways that I had from this podcast was that people need to do more self-reflection when it comes to what they say, their actions, and how they pass this down onto other generations. I think that self-reflection is good in every aspect of life, not just on the topic of anti-racism. People need to be aware of what they say, how it can affect others, and how their actions may cause a domino effect. Something else that was mentioned in the video that this change needs to come with sustained effort. I believe the examples they gave were going to the gym every day. If you want to see an important in something, there needs to be sufficient work to grow to that point. I think that is very true in terms of anti-racism. Some people may do one thing one day but then not continue on, still hoping that it will make an impact. That is just not how life works. There needs to be sustained efforts. There was something that I am not sure about how I felt when it was discussed in the podcast. The man said that, "if you are not being anti-racist, you are being racist." I am not sure how I feel about this statement. I do believe that people are aware whenever they are falling under each category but as we have learned in other videos and talked about in other seminars, some people, especially children are still learning. Adults are still learning too. Some adults may have been brought up a certain way, but now that they are adults, they are changing how they believe in topics such as racism. I do not think that it is fair to say that all people either fall in one category or the other. I believe that there should be an in between for the people who are still learning the aspects of anti-racism.
The last thing that I would like to talk about is discussing these topics in my own classroom. I believe that whenever I become a teacher, I want to talk about these topics. There are some teachers in our school systems today that do not address them and fall under "thinking they are too harsh for these young children." I do not want to be one of those teachers. After everything I have learned, I believe it is the best to address these topics and show the children not to be scared to ask questions and how to recognize everyone has differences and that is what makes them who they are. In my own classroom I hope to have my shelf full of different books that go against these common stereotypes and I am able to find a way to incorporate all of my students in to the class to make them feel comfortable.

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Journal 6: Reflecting on Anti-Bias Education Video

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Journal 6: Reflecting on Anti-Bias Education Video

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The next video I would like to talk about is Reflecting on Anti-Bias Education. In this video, I really enjoyed hearing for a variety of different teachers that have an anti-bias classroom. One of the main topics that they talked about throughout the video was that the students need to be able to recognize themselves and love themselves to grow to recognize their peers differences and love them as well. This went along with their first step of identity. An example that they showed in the video that I enjoyed and I would love to use in my classroom is the example of the posters on the wall of different students and how their families day "good morning." I thought that this was a great way to have the students being represented in the classroom and also to have the other students learn more about their peer and their families cultures. The one teacher said that bringing the families in is not enough. I agree with this. Teachers can have students' parents come into the classroom and share talking about holidays or their traditions but they will not truly feel involved into the classroom if there are not more steps taken. Something else that I liked in the video was when the teacher was sitting down to have lunch with her students and discussing what languages each students' families speak at home. This showed that the teacher had a deep connection with the families of the students and that she know more than surface level with them. She talked through each child at the table and asked them what languages were spoken in their homes and sometimes when they were unable to answer, she would answer and talk about it with the students at the table. This is a great way for the students to learn more about each other and connect on a different level. Something that we have talked a lot about in class also came up in the video. The one teacher stated that one of her students asked her "why are you black?" and she was unable to give then an answer. She pointed out that it is important to come back to those questions and give the children satisfaction and not to make them feel like you, the teacher, are brushing their curiosity off. We have talked a lot about this in class and I think that it is very important to keep in mind when coming into these situations. The easy way out would be to tell the student that you were to address it later, then walk away and not think about an appropriate answer. Finally the last thing that I would like to touch upon that was in the video was the use of books to deliver these ideas to the children. In class, we have been learning about the important of literature to address real life problems. Some of the students do not see themselves represented in these book selections and that needs to be changed. The topics that some books have are going along with the common stereotypes we see in our communities, and that needs to be changed as well. I think that books are the best way to discuss these topics with the students and give them real experiences about this unfairness that is happening to people and show them what they can do to change that.

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I would like to start by addressing some things in the Anti-Bias Curriculum video. Something that tended to keep coming up throughout the video was that children are able to notices the differences in race by the age of 2. It is important as a teacher to notice that they are able to see these differences and to give them a space that they feel comfortable to explain their curiosity and explore these differences. These differences they see need to be talked about and discussed. By "shushing" them away or telling them "that is not nice to point out" we are just setting them up to attach negatives to their differences when they should be celebrated. Everyone is different in some way and that is what makes them unique. These conversations take time though. They need time for the children to grow their knowledge and to develop these skills such as their identity and recognizing fairness in our communities. As the pointed out in the video, that is okay! You just need to keep working on it though. As a teacher, it is important to keep in mind that your students know and experience more than we may think. We may think that they have not seen these situations in their everyday life but in reality they have. It is important to connect with these topics, it could be differences in skin color, hair textures, or simply bullying other students. As teachers, we just need to keep in the back of our minds that our students know more than we think they do, and they experience things outside the classroom we may not be aware of.  Teachers need to bring things into the classroom that some of the students may not see in their class. For example, one of the teachers brought in an African American doll, because they did not have any African American students in their class. The teacher wanted them to know about the stereotypes that may show up and she taught them how to recognize that is being unfair and what they could do about it. I thought that this was a really good example of bringing these topics/materials into the class and discussing them. We have learned in other seminars that some teachers may have a book on their shelf talking about differences such as skin color, ethnicity, or family structure. None of the students will grow their knowledge on these topics if the teachers do not discuss them with their students.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RbI1V5rQWw  Here is a link to a teacher reading the book!

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The book that I selected for the Literacy Project is Who's in a Family? by Robert Skutch. In this book, there are a lot of different family dynamics represented. For example, some are inter-racial families, two mom families, two dad families, step families, and fur baby families! I think that it is important to introduce these differences in families to the students. You will never know the family dynamics of the students whenever you start the school year. I think that while reading this book to the "students" for this project, I will pose questions like, "who is in your family?" "do these pictures look like your families at home?" "what do we see in this family (asking specifics)?" to go off that, "do you know anyone whose family looks like this?" Overall I think that this is a good topic to discuss with the children because it is something that is not really talked about much due to people feeling judged or like they may say the wrong things.

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Quote from Gracie Lin- speaker in The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child's Booksheld

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Journal 5: The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child's Bookshelf and High Scope Language, Literacy, and Communication Videos

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Journal 5: The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child's Bookshelf and High Scope Language, Literacy, and Communication Videos

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In the videos for this week we continued learning about reading books with children and how to engage them with the books. In the first video I watched this week, The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child's Bookshelf, I learned a lot. The speaker talked about how whenever she was younger, she never saw herself, being Asian, represented in story books. I think that this is a problem that we are still struggling with today. There are a lot of students that do not have books either in the classroom or at home that show themselves. The speaker talked about how sometimes she would "forget" that she was Asian because she would act like the other students in her class and see herself as the young girls in the books that she read. Something that really stood out to me in this video was the situation she described regarding her getting the role of Dorothy. Whenever she shared what the other little girl said to her, "you can not be Dorothy, you are Chinese," struck me. Young children are not showed these differences in gender or ethnicities and base their opinions off of what they see in books. We have learned in earlier weeks that pictures in the books show children a lot about the world. The speaker shared in the beginning of her talk about how a book shows you the world but also shows you a reflection of yourself. Children need to be exposed to more books that show different genders and also ethnicities in these "traditional" roles that we usually see dominated by whites and following stereotypical gender roles. Without giving children this much needed exposure, they form biases and may say things like that little girl did to the speaker that will hurt their feelings.
In the next video, High Scopes Language, Literacy, and Communication, I learned more about how to read with the children and not just read to the children. Throughout the video there were many examples of teachers and adults reading with children. I will only point out the things that seemed the most important to me. One thing that I liked seeing was the teachers/adults asking the children what they think will happen next in the story. This allows children to show their imagination. It also gets them more involved with what is happening in the story. Another thing that I liked was that the adults were letting the children control the discussion about the story. They were letting them flip the pages so that they could control the pace and be able to talk about everything they wanted to. They also were letting the children talk about what they were seeing in the pictures on the pages. It is important as a teacher to allow the students to take their time with what they are trying to communicate to you and to make sure you do not make them feel rushed. The adults were also repeating what the children were saying to them about the story and also about experiences that they related to the story. One example of this was the little girl telling the teacher about her brother who was blowing out candles for his birthday and he thought they were fake. The teacher was repeating what the girl was telling her and also elaborating on it by asking her more questions about the experience. One last thing that I would like to mention that I saw in the video was that by repeating books in the classroom, the children will soon catch on to the story. This will allow them to share the story with their families and also with their friends in the class. There was a girl reading a book to two of her friends in the video and they were all talking about what was happening. This can also help with literacy skills. If the children know what the pages are suppose to say, they will be able to attach the words to their meaning and help develop their reading skills.
In the end, I liked what these videos had to share. I thought it was great to hear from the speaker in the TED Talk video and hear her experiences first hand about not being represented in books. I also liked to see all of the interactions the teachers and adults had with children when it came to reading books and communicating their ideas with each other.

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Journal 5: Megan Lambert Videos and Linda Duerr Reading Journey

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Journal 5: Megan Lambert Videos and Linda Duerr Reading Journey

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This weeks videos were all about reading to children. In the first video that we watched, the Interview with Megan Lambert we learned about what is called the Co Constructive Approach. I found what I have seen in the classrooms I have been in to be very much like this approach. This approach is all about involving the children in the story that you are reading to them. The teacher is asking questions about what is happening in the pictures and waiting for the children to share their input. I also think that it is important for the teacher to share what they think as well. Something that Megan Lambert said in the interview stood out to me. She said "make it less like a performance and more like a discussion." I believe that this is very important to the co constructive approach because it is all about child involvement and meaning taken away from the story. The teacher should not just sit and read to the students, they need to take the children's thoughts about the book into consideration and use it a teachable moments.
In the next two videos, we saw examples of the co constructive approach with Megan Lambert reading Be Boy Buzz and Linda Duerr reading Journey. In both of these videos, the reader of the story was excited about reading and I believe that also helps get the children engaged. If the teacher sounds excited about something, chances are the children will get excited about it as well. In both videos, the teacher was asking the students questions throughout the whole book, asking their thoughts and if they had any particular opinions about the pictures. In the reading with Be Boy Buzz, Megan Lambert would pose a question to the group and wait for the children to gather their thoughts, then she would share what she thought about the questions, then the students would share. I think that this is important to note because some teachers expect the students to be comfortable sharing right off the bat. Megan allowed the children time to think first and then she cleared the air by saying her own thoughts first, hopefully make the children more comfortable with sharing theirs. Another thing that I liked in the Be Boy Buzz reading was how Megan pointed out that the boys brown skin was beautiful. Whenever she said this, a boy in the group pointed out that he had brown skill. This was really a full circle moment of how the students should feel like they are included in the materials of the classroom. A lot of students do not see themselves represented in literature and to have this young boy see someone who was just like him was nice. Something that I liked from Linda's reading of Journey was that their was no words in the book! I thought that this allowed her and also the class she was reading to create their own story through the pictures. She also used the pictures from the book to talk about things that learned, such as talking about lines.
Overall I really enjoyed seeing these two women read books demonstrating the co constructive approach. It showed me how I want to do story time in my future classroom and it showed me some ways I can ask the students questions to gather their thoughts and opinions in a non-formal way. I can also use stories like these as teachable moments and an opportunity to talk about topics that may not come up often.

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The first video that I watched was Starting at Square One featuring Bev. I thought that Bev had a lot of interesting ideas about teaching and how she looks at teaching in the classroom. One main topic that she focused on throughout the whole video was teaching the students to formulate a sense of self. She said without a sense of self, the children will fail. They will learn how to do things but not know how they relate and compare to themselves in their own lives. I thought that this was very important. This goes along with the reading that we read this week as well. They all talked about focusing on the student as an individual and ways that they can have better experience in the classroom to help them whenever they move on from the class. Another thing that she talked about that I enjoyed was giving the students more freedom. Not all students learn in the same. Some need to be up and moving rather than sitting at a desk listening. With limiting the restrictions on the children, it allows them to focus on their discovery and their reflections. These are also major things that she talked about. One thing that Bev pointed out that took me back is whenever she talked about praising the children. She stated how she does not walk around the classroom telling the students that she thinks their artwork "is beautiful." She asks them if they like it and does not give them her opinions. I have not thought about this until she said it. In my daycare back home, whenever children are working on art projects or completing a task, I have always told them that it "looked nice" or that what there were doing was good. I did not think about how this may affect the child into thinking that I say this to everyone and also possibly make them feel bad if I do not say it every time I notice their work. One final thing that I want to mention about Bev was how she incorporated song into the classroom. By not having taped or videos playing and by the teacher starting them and then having the students join in with them. I have seen this work and get the children more engaged in previous classrooms. For example, in my toddler room back home, we start out the morning with songs sitting together at the carpet. One that she children like is the Farmer Song but adding in their own animals. We go around the circle and ask each student what animals the farmer has and their answers range. Some will say usual farm animals such as cows or pigs but some tend to put a spin on it and say zebras or lizards. They love doing this and adding their own touches to the morning songs.
The next video that I watched was The Tricycle Solution involving Effie. I really enjoyed hearing her solutions to problems and seeing how she handles conflict in the classroom. In the beginning, she had all of the students and their parents in the building and talked about what their goals were and things that she does with the kids. I thought that this was a good way to include the families in things that their children will be working towards and how the classroom is run from day to day. I think that this strengthen the bond between the families and the class teachers. Something that I liked in the video, what it was all based around, was how to resolve conflicts between the students. For example whenever the 3 boys were fighting over who would ride the Low Ride bikes. Effie intervened and removed the object that was the cause of the argument. She asked the boys to work their conflict out and then come to her whenever they had a resolution. I think that this is a very good idea. As a teacher, you want your students to be able to grow without you holding their hand all the time. They need to develop by themselves and problem solving and resolving conflicts on their own with their peers is a great start. One thing that Effie did that confused me was introducing the concept of "specialing" the students. I know that it is important to keep in mind that children and these young ages may not know some respect and behaviors associated with social play, some may hit when they are angry. I do not know if removing them from the interaction is the best option though. I think that it is good for the teacher to point out things that need to be changed. After hearing Effie's reasoning and how she is taking control of the situation and showing the child to learn control I thought that it was a good idea to incorporate in my future classroom. One last thing that I would like to talk about in the video with Effie is whenever she said that things need to be addresses whenever they happen. I saw this in many different situations, like the boy yelling at his mom because he did not like her name tag or whenever the girl said she wanted her skin to be a lighter shade of brown. I think that addressing these topics allow the children to follow them through and grow from them. They need to have attention brought to them and also be aware of the meaning why. Having children talk about their feelings and what they know and see is a good way for them to develop.
The last video that I watched was with Dani and her work at then Bennett center. Something that she said made me think back to the readings that we had for this week. She talked a lot about observing the children and by observing them it allows the teacher to get a better grasp on their interests. This reminded me of the reading we had that talked about Communities of Practice. Dani said that the teachers at the Bennett center come together and share their observations about certain children and what they all have individually noticed. This is a Community of Practice. They are sharing what they know and learning from this conversation with new ways to approach. Something else that I liked was hearing about the Emergent Curriculum and how it is based around that the children are interested in and what they are curious about learning. I believe that all schools should teach this way. Sure, there are some topics that need to be covered in certain classrooms but it would be better if teachers incorporate their students interests within the curriculum to get them more engaged. One more thing that I enjoyed hearing about was how they do not celebrate any holidays in their classes. They have parents with different cultures come in and talk to the classes about their cultures and their holidays. I think this is beneficial to the students because they are not only limited to their families culture, and exposed to their peers cultures as well.

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Journal 3: High Scope Videos and Harvest Resources Slides

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Journal 3: High Scope Videos and Harvest Resources Slides

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After watching this weeks videos and looking through the slides, I have come up with a lot of things that I would like to incorporate into my future classroom.
To begin, I would like to have a comfortable space for the children to feel safe, secure, and like they belong. There was a lot of suggestions and pictures in the Harvest Resources slides. One that I liked was the set up of what looked like a living room in a house. Some of the students may feel a tie to this space and connect it with their own living rooms at home. I feel in this space they will be more comfortable and open to ideas. They also mentioned having pictures of the children with their families incorporated into these spaces. I think that this builds upon the idea that this space is a feeling of home. I have experienced this in one of the classrooms we have at my daycare back home. In a corner of the classroom, hung on the wall, there is a picture of every child and people in their life they are close with. Some of the children are with their parents, some with siblings, and some with other relatives. The children love this corner of the room and they tell all of the other students about their families. I would love to have this in my classroom.
Another thing that I found from the High Scope video, Preschoolers (Overview), that I would like to have in my classroom is an area for the children to preform dramatic play. In the video they stated that dramatic play is helpful in the cognitive development of the children, allowing them to think from another person's point of view. I have been in many classrooms where there is a "dressing room" in the corner with hooks full of costumes and bins full of props. This can be seen just a fun game for the children but it is actually helping them develop. I think that this can be a fun feature to have in a classroom and can allow the children to strengthen their development without them even realizing it sometimes!
One last thing that I would like to mention is the use of open-ended materials in the classroom. Examples of this can be seen in the Harvest Resources slides and also in the first High Scope video, Preschool Materials. In the video, the teachers were sitting back and assisting the children with their play, not dominating it, which is important. Having materials that can be used for a variety of things is helpful because children all have their own imaginations. In the video they also mentioned to use the materials in the same way that the children are using them. I believe that this is important because it shows the children that the teacher is going along with their interests and engaged in their play, not correcting them. I would like to have a variety of materials available in my classroom for the students to use. In the slides there were shelves in the classroom with bins full of different materials, giving the students their own creative freedom on how they wanted to use them. This is something I really hope to have in my classroom as well.
In my past, I have always liked non-traditional classrooms. I did not like sitting at a desk, facing the board, with the teacher standing in the front speaking at us. I liked to have flexibility, freedom, and able to make choices for myself. Even in my daycare back home, the children like to stay in the corners of the classroom that are designed for play, like I mentioned before with the "dressing room." I feel like these non-traditional classrooms are more focused on the students and their own interests rather than focusing more on academic success which a lot of classrooms base their styles around. Overall, I really enjoyed watching the videos of different situations and interactions in these preschool classrooms. I liked to see the differences in the videos and comparing them to what I have seen in classrooms before as well. I also liked seeing the pictures and descriptions in the Harvest Resources slides. I gave me visual representations of what we have learned and talked about in the last couple weeks of class.

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When I think about being a teacher, I think about ways that I will be able to form a connection with my students. I do not want my students to just see me as their instructor but also as one of them. I think that this video showed a lot of different situations where the teachers were involved with their students and it showed what kinds of relationships that they were able to form with them. All of the students seemed to be comfortable with their teachers and wanted them to play with them.
One important thing that the video mentioned that I will be taking away into my future classroom is getting down on the same level as the students while playing. I think that this is important because then the students will see you as an equal. They will not see you as having a power over them, they see you as one of them. Going along with this, I think that following the students interests and ideas while they are playing is very important. In the video the example they gave was the teacher playing with a young boy about "tasting snakes." Engaging with the students by playing with what they want to play is something that I want to do in my classroom.
I have worked in a daycare for 2 years now and I have had to play many interesting things with the children there. I always walk into my shift not knowing what the day will hold. You can never tell with the children where their minds and imagination will take them. I always try to scaffold their play with each other by asking them questions such as "does mom and dad have that at home" or "where have you seen this before" or other questions that make them open up and tell me a little about what they are thinking.
I really enjoyed this video and I was able to take a lot of notes on how I want to act in my classroom and how to build a relationship with my students off of these examples.

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This is my little cousin Stella who is 5! This is a picture I took of her "showing me what face a person would make if they were sad." Love her endlessly

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I really enjoyed watching the Brain Matters Documentary for this week. I thought that it had a lot of good information regarding how the brain develops in the younger years of a child's life and how parents or caretakers can have an impact on them. One of the main thing that I really liked in the video was the "Serve and Return" experiment they did. I think that it is very beneficial for children to have positive reactions at such young ages. This is how they learn emotions. Facial expressions are what they understand and that is how they develop.
I have a personal connection to this experiment as well. I have 2 cousins who are 5 and 2 years old. Whenever they were younger, I use to babysit them throughout the summertime while their parents we to work. Whenever we would review some things such as emotions or feelings I would ask them "what does someone who is sad look like?" and they would make a pouting face. I would ask them to show me what it would look like whenever someone was happy and they would smile and laugh. They were around 1 and 3 at the time and they did not have much outside interactions since they had been at home with me instead of in a daycare. They would only learn from their parents and our other relatives. This is where they learned their foundational knowledge from, which was also mentioned in the video.
Something else that I enjoyed about this video was how language can affect the children. Whenever children are younger, like I have mentioned, they learn to understand emotions through facial expressions. Whenever children are babies, their parents or their caregivers talk to them, or should talk to them like they talk to other people. By doing this, the video mentioned, it will affect how many words the child will be able to say by the age of 2. I thought this was very important.
I have stated before that I work at a daycare back home and I have seen this first hand with some of the parents and their children. Some of the parents ask me how come there are other kids in their child's class that are already speaking before them. I usually tell them just to keep working and talking to their child like they were talking to me, telling them colors, shapes, animals, or just about anything. The children develop off of their interactions even though they are very young. The parents usually find this as a shock and tell me they will try that out.
Overall I thought that this video was very beneficial and has taught me a lot of things that I did not know, or showed me more details about things that I did already know.

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Journal 1: Project Zero Color Investigation

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Journal 1: Project Zero Color Investigation

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In the video that we watched for this week I believe that there are key takeaway points that I can apply to myself as a student studying to become a teacher but also that I will be able to apply in my future classroom whenever I become a teacher. One key point that I liked was that the teacher allowed the students to have choices. Whenever they took pictures and put those pictures into groups by color, the teacher had them pick what color and photo interested them to most individually. I really appreciated this. It allowed the students to show what they were interested in and allowed them to have some freedom in the classroom. I would like to see this in our class for the semester. I tend to engage more in conversations that I am interested in, not forced to participate in. I think that trying to find a connection within the material and taking my own ideas into the conversation will be helpful to succeed in this course. With the use of this journal, I believe that it related to whenever the teacher recorded her and a small group of girls that were working on mixing paint. After they were done, she went back and watched the video, noticing things she did not see the first time. This was a good way for her to see what needed to be improved with her students and gave her an idea of how they can work at those goals. I believe that this journal will be able to work in the same way. It will be a good way for me to take what I first learned from the material and then have to think deeper about the material. It allows me to express how I feel and how I think I could use the material for myself. I think that this journal will be a great form of documentation about all the things I will be learning in this class and will be helpful to look back on in the future, so I can remember all that I have learned. Some questions that I will keep in mind throughout the semester while watching weekly videos will be, How can I learn to recognize things in the classroom that need improvement?, How can I be a resource for the students in the classroom? , How can I effectively document students for their own personal benefits? and lastly How can I focus on the interests and areas the students need to improve on the most? I think that keeping these questions in mind will help me take in more of the information as I will be building towards some answers throughout the whole semester.

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This picture was taken at a local farm around my house!

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Hi! My name is Chelsea Boyd. I am a sophomore majoring in Early Childhood and Elementary Education with a minor in Special Education. I live about thirty minutes North of Pittsburgh PA in a small town called Mars but, Go Steelers! Back at home, I work in a daycare during the summer months and also during breaks where I am back home from school, primarily in preschool and kindergarten rooms. At home I have also babysat for numerous family friends and families in our neighborhood. I love being able to work with the main teachers of the classes at my daycare and sit in with them during their planing periods and being able to sit in and observe some of their classes during my breaks. I feel like this has given me extra exposure with these things. I have worked there for over 2 years now and I love it! Something that I would like to learn from this course is how to set up and make the classroom purposeful. I want to be able to know the best ways to form the classroom around the students. I want to be able to learn how to observe them and take what I have observed and incorporate it into the future plans for the class to improve it for the students. Overall, I just want to learn more about how to structure the classroom in order for it to be beneficial for my future students.