Childhood Exploration

By the way, I am taking up the program on Early Childhood Education and this course is about Curriculum Content. I attached my notes about this. You can look at it to see some examples.

1. Describe the observation and assessment techniques that are most appropriate for each uses or purposes of observation and assessment.

2. Children with special needs provide challenges in designing a developmentally appropriate classroom. What are the challenges and how can you overcome those challenges.

3. Given the three themes in early childhood classroom: transportation, dinosaurs, community helpers. For each one suggest an appropriate transition and identify the purpose of the transition you selected.

Childhood Exploration
Observation and assessment
Techniques of child assessments can be informal such as conducting natural observations, data collection, and children work for portfolios, application of educator and teacher rating among other. On the formal side, they may be the use of assessment tools such as standardized testing and questionnaires. The techniques are effective and help all the stakeholders like educators and parents in determining the children progress. Observations are conducted without or with minimal intrusion into the activities of the children. Some of the aspects observed in the facets of development are linguistic, social-emotional, intellectual, and physical development. All these are to be regularly conducted.
Children with special needs
The children with special needs provide challenges in designing a developmentally appropriate classroom. Some of the challenges they pose are programming for the students with a diversity of needs. It is to be noted that the students with special needs do not fall into one category. The problems may range from developmental delays, oppositional (defiant disorder), and dyslexia. Therefore, in such cases, the students are of different categories and a strategic plan on how to cover each category must be developed. One of the strategic plans to follow is dividing the children into small groups so that they become effectively manageable. Another challenge is handling children with behavioral and severe reading problems. The behavior may range from making noise, beating other, and being unsettled throughout the class session. In such cases, it is significant to employ a reading specialist to handle the case. The reading specialist may then give further guidance on how to get along with the children of such kind. One of the strategies to be implemented is to divide the children into small groups so that they can be effectively managed. Handling children with behavioral and severe reading issues is another challenge. Making noise, beating others, and being unsettled throughout the class session are all examples of inappropriate behavior. It is critical in such cases to hire a reading specialist to handle the case. The reading specialist may then provide additional guidance on how to interact with such children.
Other general solution that would help in deliberating for children special needs includes building children motivation, visual cues, and strategies of achieving the expectations of learning. Motivation acts like and engine that drives children engagement in learning. Also, provide a variety of choices that gives the children a sense of feeling control and autonomy in the classroom. The use of visual cues makes the learning activities clear. Through strategies, learnings are handled in the language that the children would understand best.
Themes and transition
Community helpers: Offer opportunities for children for the support of emotional competencies and social skills and encouraging pupils to work together. The community help theme involves working for one another and supporting them. Therefore, initiating such kind of transitions the children will grasp the theme of their study to be community helpers and relate the activities with what they are supposed to learn.
Dinosaurs: In this theme, one of the best transitions is reminding the children when it is time to begin and to complete the activities. The themes of the dinosaurs are an interesting topic and students like it very much. It is a fact that much is not known about the creatures and the children like to hear information about this type of creature to make them more imaginative. Therefore, to ensure that the story is not extended into other activities due to interesting concept the teacher should have some means to make the demarcation of time, for example, utilizing a blinking overhead light.
Transport: In the transport theme, one of the transition activities is the assumption that one child is the engine of the train. The child chosen can then begin chunking around the room, and in the process, the remaining children will participate in putting their shoulders around the shoulder of the child head of them. In this way, the children will know that they are transiting to transport theme.

Works Cited
Jackman, Hilda, Nancy Beaver, and Susan Wyatt. Early education curriculum: A child’s connection to the world. Cengage Learning, 2014.
Decker, Celia Anita, and John R. Decker. Planning and administering early childhood programs. Prentice Hall, 2005.