Environmental Analysis Section I.

I have chosen to focus on a young Korean girl named Samantha* (pseudonym) who is a student in my current practicum at the University Primary School in Champaign, Illinois. She is five years old. I chose Samantha for this project because she is a bright and sweet young girl with many interests and abilities. Anyone who visits the classroom is quickly greeted with a hello from Samantha, and I rarely leave the classroom without a hug or an I love you from Samantha. From what I have heard about Samanthas past, she has made large strides since coming to America. Samantha was adopted from an orphanage in Korea about a year ago. She is currently at risk for developmental delay, especially in regard to her speech. The teacher team is not sure if Samanthas delays are mostly related to language development or if the delay involves other factors. Samanthas first language is Korean, and she is currently learning and using English on a daily basis. She does not currently receive any special services. I believe some of the behaviors that she exhibits show a lack of resilience to transitioning to a new activity and issues related to language barriers in both comprehension and production. Samantha has also had a tendency to get physical when she gets really frustrated by hitting both students and other teachers. I have found that, many times, Samantha needs her space and time to be alone and calm down and will talk about what happened when she has had this time and is ready. Samantha also has her own personal, small visual schedule that resembles the larger class schedule in the group meeting room. Her schedule includes the name of each activity in both English and Korean and a picture to go along with the activity. We have seen benefits of the creation of this schedule in that Samantha tends to transition from one activity to the next with more ease than before.

Section II. I believe the environmental assessment is important in terms of Samanthas progress in the classroom. The team of teachers is working to help Samantha be both comfortable and safe in the classroom. Samantha does well with certain times of the day, but other times seem to trigger challenging behaviors. She seems to be doing well expressing herself in both languages, but Samantha has shown clear frustration when she tried to say something in English and we do not understand. Many times, she has told us that she does not want to speak in Korean, so we are working on making her feel comfortable speaking both languages. Samantha tends to gravitate to teachers at activity times and outside times, so we are working on encouraging her to play with her peers, which has been most successful when a teacher is a part of these interactions. We would like to see these situations become more independent for Samantha. She is getting much better at transitioning from one activity to the next, and I believe much of this has to do with the integration of her personal visual schedule. Lastly, we have been emphasizing to Samantha that in order to stay safe, she must tell us when she would like to go to another classroom or leave the room for any reason. We tell her how much we love her and want her to stay safe. We think that many of these interactions stem from her life in the orphanage and are doing our best to keep that in mind and make her feel comfortable, safe, and loved in our classroom. I chose the ECERS, which is the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale, to analyze my classroom environment. I chose this because we discussed the importance of such a tool in class discussion, and I also have seen that the tool is highly regarded in my practicum site. One day this semester, we had an expert in our classroom who filled out the whole rating scale in depth. I am interested to see if she would be able to sit down with me. I would love to be able to

compare my observations to someone who has had years of experiences analyzing and assessing classrooms. Section III. Part A. The ECERS instrument is an in depth analysis of the environment. It is composed of forty-three sections of the environment with many questions for each section. The rating scale, including a preparatory statement, explanations for each section, and the actual questions is in a seventy-three page packet. This whole rating scale would obviously take a generous amount of time in order for it to be adequately filled out, carefully considering each section and question. Some examples of areas to be analyzed are: indoor space, furniture, space for gross motor, feeding times, safety practices, fine motor, and many center areas that exist in most preschools. While I read over the whole rating scale before I analyzed the environment, I did not conduct the whole analysis. I started at the beginning of the packet and saw how far I could get in the tool within thirty minutes. In this time, I was able to analyze sections one through seven and its questions. Part B. Describe the data you collected and discuss your analysis of this information. I collected data based on sections one through seven of the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale. I would like to describe each of the sections I observed and my interpretation of my findings. The first section that I covered was Indoor space. Under this section, I found that the most accurate description of my indoor space is that there is ample indoor space that allows children and adults to move around freely. A concerning finding under this section had to do with accessibility. Even though I was able to mark yes for the section space is accessible to all children and adults currently using the classroom, I fear that if a family with a

student with a physical special need came to tour the classroom, they may not feel comfortable with the environment that they see. This is not to say that editions could not be added to make the environment accessible, but I believed it could hinder some potential students. The next section I evaluated was for furniture for care, play, and learning. I think my classroom is highly well equipped for young children in terms of furniture that is their size. One issue that we grapple with on a daily basis is the fact that we have twenty six students, but we only have eighteen student chairs in our classroom. This prohibits us from ever having family style snack or doing any kind of whole group writing activities. I believe we make it work well in the classroom despite the resources, though, because instruction is much easier in small groups for activities like writing and other activities at the tables. I found all the furniture to be clean and sturdy when I looked closely at the pieces. The next section I looked at involves furnishings for relaxation and comfort. I rated my classroom as a cozy environment where children have access to soft furnishings if they need the space. We have a large couch in our classroom and many soft pillows in our library. We also have floor cushions where children can sit at the lower centers in the room. Also, what I believe is a great aid for comfort for all of our children is the use of yoga squares at large group meeting times, especially music and movement. The fourth section I was able to take a look at is in reference to room arrangement. I believe, after looking at the criterion under this section, my classroom is well defined in terms of centers. There are at least five different interest centers that provide a variety of learning experiences. I have observed that having almost around twelve center options each day is beneficial to the range of learners we have in our classroom. The centers range from quiet to noisy. Some require little physical activity, while others are rather physically demanding.

Others are optimal for just two children, while some are equipped for a large group of students. I believe the range of choices helps increase students comfort levels in my classroom. I think section five, space for privacy, was interesting to evaluate in my classroom environment. During group meeting times, we allow certain students we believe need a moment to themselves to retreat to the couch for a short time. We assess individually how long they should be able to stay away from group time so that we do not develop any bad habits. We have talked a lot about creating a space for our students where they can go, be alone, and be safe at the same time. I think the time that we find that this is most challenging is during activity time, when all students are instructed to be in the main area of the classroom. One option we have found is that there is a couch in the main hallway right outside of our classroom, which would have less people and noise than the classroom. I believe we still have room for improvement in terms of a place where students can go to be a bit more alone but obviously still supervised for their safety. Section six relates to child-related display. This is a topic we have explored a lot in our courses in the Early Childhood Education program. We have talked about the importance of our students seeing themselves in our classroom. The interesting thing, though, is that my cooperating teacher rarely puts any of the childrens work on the walls. We are currently working on creating a family board, and there are photographs of some students on our project wall. My cooperating teacher asked families to bring pictures of their child playing with water, which is our project approach topic. Only some of the families have brought pictures, so only some of my students are represented in this way on the walls. I would say we are about halfway there in terms of child-related display because I had marked half of the criterion on the optimal side and half on the side that could use improvement. Many items in the classroom are displayed

at childrens level, which I believe is great and important for their learning. All materials on the wall are appropriate, but I would like to see all of my students able to see themselves on the walls in some way. The last section I was able to analyze was space for gross motor. I believe we are highly fortunate at University Primary School to have adequate outdoor space. We also have a group meeting room, which is where we hold our daily activity of Music and Movement. I would, without a doubt, rate this section as excellent because of the adequate space, the areas abilities to be adapted to changes in weather on our playground and the prairie nearby. Also, the classroom has two doors that lead to the outdoor play area, which is quite convenient when you are dealing with lots of little ones. They often have to go to the bathroom and need to get a drink after playing outside for a lengthy amount of time. Also, all the equipment on the playground and in the group meeting room have storage places to keep the areas safe when we are doing other activities in those spaces. Park C. I have attached the score sheet I used in the condensed version of the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale. Section IV. I have a few suggestions and recommendations for making my classroom environment more adapted to the needs of my target child. Taking all of my inconclusive ratings and observations according to the ECERS tool into account in relation to Samanthas needs is an interesting and reflective process. I have observed that she can get quite overwhelmed during activity times if there are lots of people around. When she gets really overwhelmed in other times of the day, we try to calm her by looking at her personal daily schedule, which is a smaller

scale version of our daily schedule that is posted in the group meeting room. I believe that we should replicate that large daily schedule to place in the main room of our classroom so Samantha can walk to that schedule or be quickly referred to it in order to help self-regulate these moments that may cause high anxiety and confusion. I believe that this daily schedule should be a pocket chart that is on the childrens eye level. I think pocket charts are great To make this even more helpful, I believe we should include the Korean characters of each activity on the labels of each activity on the daily schedule so that Samantha can see her primary language represented. A second recommendation I would make to modify the environment for Samantha would be to create an additional safe space in the classroom where a student could essentially be alone. While this would be beneficial for all students at one point or another, I believe it would be especially beneficial to Samantha. Certain times throughout the day seem to trigger outbursts in Samantha, such as transitions and group meeting times. I think most of these issues come from confusion with language and behaviors that she learned in her primary environment in Korea, but I believe we can ease Samantha into feeling comfortable in our classroom. I think that, in the severe cases, she needs time to cool down and be alone before she is ready to verbally communicate. As of right now, the couch, bathroom, and occasionally the group meeting room are areas where children can go to be alone. The issue with this is that, often times, with having twenty-six students in our classroom and four teachers, these spaces are often occupied for something. We have thought of even building a boxed space that has a small light and a curtain in it, so a child could safely close himself or herself in this space and still remain safe. Issues that could arise with this would be that a child would go into this space without an adult seeing,

and then we may not be able to quickly locate the child. With more brainstorming and critical thinking, I believe we can come up with a solution. Conducting part of the ECERS analysis tool helped me analyze my classroom environment closely. I would love to have the opportunity to discuss my findings with the expert that came into our classroom and completing the whole rating scale, and I would also love to be able to fill the whole scale out myself. I now have a deeper appreciation for those who take the time to critically analyze environments. I also see how helpful they can be in making critical adaptations to the environment for individual students.