Observing and Interacting with Professionals and Children in the Early Childhood Setting
Name: Lisa Miller
Date: Observations date 2-04-2013
Name of the Program:
Who I spoke with:
The classroom teacher and two paraprofessionals (I will refer to the classroom teacher as classroom teacher and the two paraprofessionals and paraprofessional 1 and paraprofessional 2)
Whom you observed and interacted with in your setting during these two weeks:
I observed and interacted with the children, teachers, and the paraprofessionals in the classroom. The interactions were in the classroom setting during morning activities. This is a blended preschool program which means there are children in there that are delayed, Special Ed, ESL, or low income.
What I learned about…
I learned that the children began with their morning circle time where they talked about the weather, the color blue, and their goal for the week (the seasons ). The teacher then proceeded to talk about the weather and the seasons. I also noticed that there is a bilingual paraprofessional within the classroom, and the children were encouraged to dictate in English but could also in their home language.
The special learning experiences that I saw were…
The classroom does centers and I noticed that their centers are based mainly on Reading and Writing. The children are split into groups of four and complete three stations. There is an adult (either the teacher or one of the paraprofessionals at each station) at the first station the children made a book about weather. The students read through the weather book and colored the pictures. At station two the children did rolling pin paint to make snow pictures. At station three the students did cloud art. The students read Little Cloud and made a painting of clouds using cotton balls.
Questions asked while observing and interacting with professionals:
Teacher interview questions:
I asked the teacher: Is it difficult to work with not only children ages 3-5 years old but also with some of them have IEPs or disabilities?
The teacher responded by saying this is true. I have a blended classroom so I not only have students ages 3-5 but I also have some students with IEPs and disabilities including down syndrome, autism, and speech/language. This is extremely difficult because adaptations need to be made not only based on age, but also ability and language. The teacher said my student with autism has a break area, etc. my student with down syndrome has an aide with him the majority of the morning to help him transition and usually receives hand of hand assistance for his work.
Conclusion:
At the end of my observation I thanked the teachers, children, and paraprofessionals for allowing me observe. I definitely feel that all of these children have the early literacy support and much more needed to get their foot in the door for kindergarten and beyond.
From my own experiences I know it can be very challenging to work with mix age group and I have also experienced having a child in the classroom with Autism. In my mix I also had low income and a variety of children with challenging behavior. I understand what this teacher is feeling. In regards to literacy development it seems this classroom is on target because it participates in a variety of literacy activities? What I wonder is how does she incorporate literacy into other subjects in the classroom or does she mostly work on literacy development? Literacy development but I believe it is important to use a integrated curriculum. For example when talking about numbers does she write down the number or read the numbers and show children the direction in which they should begin to read?
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