TCHR5009 THEORY TO PRACTICE: EDUCATION
AND CARE FOR INFANTS AND TODDLERS
Title Assessment Task 2: Portfolio of Planning Cycle
Type Portfolio
Due Date Saturday 9th December 11:59pm AEDT (Week 6)
Length 2000 words
Task Description
This assessment is comprised of two tasks. You must submit your assessment as one document using the
template provided. Demonstrate how you have engaged in the planning cycle during your professional
experience.
Task 1: Record of Observation
Submit one recorded observation of a child or children aged birth-2 years old. You can submit any observation
method type for example, anecdotal record, running record, learning story, jotting. However, your observation
must include the following information:
• Child’s first name
• Child’s age
• Record of your observation of the child’s learning/development/play/routine/behaviour
• Analysis/interpretation of the observation (with links to the set text, theory, the NQS and the EYLF to support
the analysis)
• Ideas for future planning
Task 2: Learning Experience Plan
Submit one learning experience that you planned to extend on the observation and analysis you submitted for task one. Use the learning experience template provided in the Assessment 2 Folder on the Blackboard site.
Your learning experience should show evidence that you have considered the Caregiving, Responsive Relationships and Play framework used by Sims & Hutchins (2020, pp.125-146). Make direct links to the set text, EYLF, NQS, theory and other relevant early childhood resources in your reflection and evaluation
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TCHR5009 Theory to Practice: Education and Care of Infants and Toddlers
Assessment Task 2
Task 1: Record of observation and analysis
Task 2: Learning Experience Plan and Reflection
Child’s name/s
Anabelle Brown Age/s
2 years old Date and Time: Student/observer name
Aim/objective
Learning Experience name: Learning in the playground.
The main goal of this learning experience is to provide a holistic approach to the development process of children, focusing on language development, social interaction, and environment exploration. This learning experience is meant to show how much a child can learn not just in the classroom but also in the playground. By exposing her to other children, various objects in the playground, and an opportunity to showcase her language skills, this experience aims to foster Anabelle’s sense of identity, instil confidence in herself and how she relates to other children, cultivate the aspect of sharing, encourage effective communication, and even increase her curiosity about the world.
Through this experience, Anabelle will also learn how to move from parallel play to interactive play where she can play together with other kids, share their toys, and even learn how to take turns (Lee et al., 2022). Through the experience, Anabelle will also show development in her cognitive skills by actively exploring the environment and identifying various objects.
Various ELYF outcomes and indicators will be achieved through this experience including outcome 1: identity, where Anabelle will develop a strong sense of identity by learning to express her desires and needs in the playground.
Outcome 5: communication. The indicator that Anabelle has achieved this outcome will be the use of language to communicate both verbally and non-verbally (AGDE, 2022).
Outcome 2: This learning experience also aims at helping Anabelle develop a sense of community by learning her place in the social context of the playground and even learning how to engage with other children when playing.
Outcome 4: Learning. This learning experience will help show Anabelle’s eagerness to understand her environment by exploring various play objects in the playground.
Rationale
I planned this learning experience for Anabelle to help assess her strengths and her interests in learning, which would help create a unique curriculum for her. I made regular observations of Anabelle while she was in the playground, wanting to understand how she not only interacts with others but also how to improve her learning experience. It is during these regular observations that I noticed Anabelle using short sentences and gestures to communicate. I also noticed that while she did love being in the playground with other children, she did not yet understand how to engage with them.
Watching Anabelle in the playground not only helped me to understand her strengths and areas that needed more attention, but it also helped me to set clear learning goals that were to help Anabelle to achieve holistic development by concentrating on language development, social interaction, and exploration.
Once clear goals are set to improve her communication skills, foster social skills, and feed her curiosity, regular observations will be carried out for one month to see how well she progresses. During this period, I will work with her, providing guidance and support, and changing the goals to make this learning experience fun yet realistic.
I will continue to document Anabelle’s progress which will help us to understand her success, and areas that need further development, and also serve as an indicator of how effective the learning experience is.
Setting and timing
Timing Procedure- how you will implement this Plan Considerations- space, time, supervision, routines, caregiving, responsive relationships, play elements Environment:
Resources/materials required
Teaching strategies
9:30-11:30 am
This learning experience will be incorporated into the children’s schedule. It will be done twice a week, On Tuesdays and Thursdays.
However, regular observations will be done even outside of this schedule to ensure flexibility and accommodate the evolving needs of the children (Sims & Hutchins, 2020).
At the end of the month, a review will be done and changes made to accommodate the new goals.
The learning experience will take place in the outdoor and indoor playground areas. The playground area will provide a wide and diverse space where Anabelle will feel free to play, interact with others, and explore. This experience will require a diverse set of playthings, from simple puzzles, building blocks, soft balls, sensory bins, coloured objects and cards, and musical objects. I will also introduce games such as imaginary plays, peek-a-boo, and music. Such games will help Anabelle to not only play alongside other children but also play with them.
(Lee et al., 2022).
(b) Reflection and evaluation of practice
1. Briefly record what happened when you implemented the above experience:
The above learning experience was quite eye-opening. I learned that young children learn more through games than actual books (Parker et al., 2022). When I implemented the above experience, I realized that Anabelle and other children were more and more curious. They could not wait for the scheduled timetable since they knew that they would encounter new games and new objects to play with. I kept interchanging their games, which helped to not only fuel their curiosity but also learn how they reacted to various games. I realized that Anabelle was more energetic and curious whenever we took nature walks or tried to make music, more than she was playing with building blocks. Musical games also opened her up to interacting with other children since she loved it when they sang or danced together, while building blocks and colouring games found her going back to parallel playing (Ruokonen et al., 2021).
When children were forced to share their toys, they became more communicative (Parker et al., 2022). Anabelle began using new vocabularies that we were learning during the reading sessions whenever she wanted a turn with a particular toy, or when she wanted to share her toy with another child. More than using language to ask for a toy, Anabelle started using short sentences to communicate with the other children and even at times, invite them to just share a toy! However, there were moments of disagreement when Anabelle or another child could not find the words to describe what they wanted or did not want. However, monitoring them closely helped to solve these conflicts as soon as they arose.
As a result, Anabelle became more communicative and social, and continued to learn more about her immediate environment.
2. Evaluate and analyse what the children learned:
Children learned how to communicate with each other. It was on the playground that these children got a chance to practice the words we read during other sessions.
It is through the games that the children learned how to interact with each other. Anabelle is not the only child who was doing parallel play before this learning experience. However, by making the play time as fun and as interactive as possible, the children learned how to not only engage with each other but also rely on one another. For instance, Anabelle learned that she liked playing drums and whenever we played a musical game, other children would call her to play drums while others took up other instruments. Music proved to positively contribute to her holistic development process (Ruokonen et al., 2021).
The children also learned how to connect words to images. Reading about particular objects only to encounter them in the playground helped them to improve their cognitive abilities, which made both reading and playing sessions much more interactive (ACECQA, 2018).
The children learned how to express their curiosity by touching various objects and toys in the playground and even asking what they were (Sims & Hutchins, 2020. Before the elephant became Anabelle’s favourite toy, she was quite curious about its shape and she kept coming to me asking what it was. When she grasped what an elephant is, she was even more excited about it, and this was the case for various objects and children as well.
3. Reflect on your delivery of the effectiveness of resources, teaching strategies, transitions and questioning. What are the skills and strategies that were effective, what do you need to focus on improving?
The resources used in this learning experience were quite age-appropriate and effective. I tried to make the puzzles as simple as possible to ensure that these toddlers would not get tired of them. Whenever a game or a toy proved to be ineffective, we would remove it and exchange it with something else that was effective for learning.
I also tried as much as possible to get reading materials that matched what the children used in the playground. Such materials were quite effective since they helped spark the interest of children when they finally encountered these objects on the playground. I learned that I had to use various teaching styles for different children to ensure that nobody felt left out (Rodd, 2013). For instance, some children would only be interested in reading if I imitated the sounds of various objects and animals while reading stories to them. Such children interacted with these objects, not based on their names but based on the sounds that they made.
Transitions from one activity to another were well-managed and I had to ensure that they did not interfere with the lesson of the day. For instance, if we read a book on animals, I would ensure that animal toys were the first activity in the playground, followed by a musical game regarding the same. This helped the children to understand what we were learning. It also made the children more excited when they encountered the toys read in class in the playground.
More than just observing Anabelle and the rest of the children, I would often walk around and ask the children questions as they played. I made my questions clear and simple to ensure that they did not struggle to answer them, something that would help me understand if any changes needed to be made to promote their development.
I realized that communicating clearly with the children was more effective and it made the children understand whatever they learned (Yang et al., 2021). However, it is the interactive games that took the prize as they helped these children to engage with each other, communicate, and even explore their curiosity. I made sure that every child participated in the interactive games, which not only improved their social skills but also helped me rate their progress.
However, I learned that I needed to improve on the questioning techniques, making them more age-appropriate. I realized that children would often respond to questions regarding activities that they enjoyed, not providing me with a clear picture of the areas that needed improvement.
I also learned that in this digital era, we cannot ignore the role that technology plays in the lives of young children, which means that there is a need to incorporate technology into the learning experience (Paul et al., 2023).
4. Suggest two follow up ideas:
Based on the above reflection, it is crucial to make technology part of the learning experience. Introducing online resources such as laptops, videos, musical sessions, story-time, and other interactive tools is more likely to add to the holistic development of these young children, exposing them to the positive side of technology from a tender age (Paul et al., 2023).
Collaborating with other educators would also help improve the questioning techniques since educators can help share deep insights and even practices that have worked for them (Liu et al., 2023).
References
ACECQA. (2018). Guide to the National Quality Framework. https://www.acecqa.gov.au/sites/default/files/2018-11/Guide-to-the-NQF_0.pdf
AGDE. (2022). Belonging, Being & Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia. Australian Government Department of Education for the Ministerial Council . https://www.acecqa.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-01/EYLF-2022-V2.0.pdf
Lee, S., Hong, I., & Park, H. Y. (2022). Development of a social play evaluation tool for preschool children. Healthcare, 10(1), 102. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare10010102
Liu, M., Hedges, H., & Cooper, M. (2023). Effective collaborative learning for early childhood teachers: Structural, motivational and sustainable features. Professional Development in Education, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2023.2235578
Parker, R., Thomsen, B. S., & Berry, A. (2022). Learning through play at school – A framework for policy and practice. Frontiers in Education, 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2022.751801
Paul, C. D., Hansen, S. G., Marelle, C., & Wright, M. (2023). Incorporating technology into instruction in early childhood classrooms: A systematic review. Advances in Neurodevelopmental Disorders, 7(3), 380-391. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41252-023-00316-7
Rodd, J. (2013). Leadership in early childhood: Pathway to professionalism (4th ed.). Taylor & Francis (Australia).
Ruokonen, I., Tervaniemi, M., & Reunamo, J. (2021). The significance of music in early childhood education and care of toddlers in Finland: An extensive observational study. Music Education Research, 23(5), 634-646. https://doi.org/10.1080/14613808.2021.1965564
Sims, M., & Hutchins, T. (2020). Program planning for infants and toddlers. Pademelon Press.
NSW. ISBN: 9781876138578.
Yang, N., Shi, J., Lu, J., & Huang, Y. (2021). Language development in early childhood: Quality of teacher-child interaction and children’s receptive vocabulary competency. Frontiers in Psychology, 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.649680
