Approaches & Curriculum

Learning outcomes
By the end of this topic, you should be able to: Describe a balanced curriculum; Discuss the philosophies and objectives of a balanced curriculum; Discuss the five models in teaching affective development; Discuss the developmentally appropriate practices in teaching young children; Describe different approaches to teaching affective development; and Explain the concepts of teaching and learning in affective development.

What is curriculum?

Curriculum
What is balances curriculum?
Including Reading Mathematics science Music Art Drama Physical Social Affactive activities

Construct knowledge and apply that knowledge in meaningful way

Elements
Teaching and learning will be most effective if they engage and build on childrens existing understanding; Key concepts involved in each domain of preschool must go hand-in-hand with information and skill acquisition; and Metacognitive skill development allows children to learn more deliberately. It involves curriculum that encourages children to reflect, predict, question, hypothesise and set the course for effective engaged learning.

Sources
Child development knowledge; Individual characteristics of children; Knowledge-based on various disciplines; Values of our culture; Parents' desires; and Knowledge the children need to function competently in our society.

Think about this

Most curriculum developers ignore the importance of affective development and focus too much on cognitive development. The child ends up disliking school for its lack of attachment. Some might think it is better to stay home and study, rather than to go to school. Therefore, affective development should never be overlooked.

PHILOSOPHIES AND OBJECTIVES

A good curriculum would cover every aspect of learning. Curriculum should always be balanced motivate students. Creating interest in learning is a key factor to effective learning programmes around the needs of the students.

Program Models

The Montessori Model

Environment Materials Activities

Program Model
Waldorf Model
Curriculum
based on a profound understanding of human development that addresses the needs of the growing child. schools should cater to the needs of the child, rather than the demands of the government or economic forces. not be rushed into growing up too soon. the best way to provide meaningful support for the child is to comprehend these phases fully and to bring "age appropriate" content to the children that nourishes healthy growth.

Waldorf Model
Curriculum
During the first seven years children are physically forming and live very much in their imagination. whole child - the body, mind, and spirit. Play is viewed as the work of the young child and the magic of fantasy storytelling and fantasy into the curriculum Academic subjects are kept from children in Waldorf schools until a much later age.

Waldorf Model
Curriculum
music, dance, and theatre, writing, literature, legends and myths are not simply subjects to be read about, ingested and tested. They are experience

Waldorf Model
Environment
From birth to the age of six or seven, children experience the world and learn mainly through physical activities and the effects of physical stimuli. Environments are characterised by many homelike features, soft colours, natural materials and simple learning materials. creating a genuine love of learning within each child

Waldorf Model
How do we establish within each child his or her own high level of academic excellence? How do we create enthusiasm for learning and work, a healthy self-awareness, interest and concern for fellow human beings, and a respect for the world? How can we help pupils find meaning in their lives?

WALDORF MODEL
Activities
nurturing and rhythmical in nature. Activities are scheduled at the same time each day, rotating through the week. This rhythmical element ensures a strong sense of consistency, order, and security which is essential to the healthy development of the young child The preschool room is structured to offer a variety of play activities, both for individual and group activities. Outdoor playtime is scheduled every day, even in rainy weather Opportunities to observe a variety of multi-cultural and multiethnic celebrations prepares a simple story, accompanied by rhyme, song and puppetry, which the children sit and listen

Reggio Emilia Model

The Reggio Emilia can be described by the in terms of eight principles.
The child as a protagonist (children are capable of constructing their learning, negotiating with their environment). The child as a collaborator (children form themselves by interaction with others; emphasizes on small groups). The child as a communicator (children can express what they know, understand, wonder about, question, feel and imagine through visual arts).

 The environment as a third teacher (every space has its own identity and purpose and encourages children to engage and communicate). The teacher as partner, nurturer and guide (teachers must listen and observe children closely to discover childrens ideas, hypotheses and theories). The teacher as a researcher (teachers exchange information with other teachers). The documentation as communication (teachers record the childrens behaviour to better understand the children. The parent as partners (parents play an active part in childrens learning experiences).

The Reggio Emilia Model is based upon the following set of principles:
Children must have some control over the direction of their learning; Children must be able to learn through experiences of touching, moving, listening, seeing, and hearing; Children have a relationship with other children and with material items in the world that children must be allowed to explore; and Children must have endless ways and opportunities to express themselves.

Read later..
The project model The high/scope model

DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE PRACTICES

defined in terms of two dimensions:
age appropriateness and individual appropriateness.

DAP are based on the following variables:

A) Theories of child development
Age related human characteristics that allow teachers to predict what children are able to do. Materials/interaction/experiences that will be safe, healthy, interesting, achievable and also challenging to children.

B) Individually identified strengths and weaknesses of each child uncovered through authentic assessment.

C)The child's cultural background as defined by his community, family history, and family structure to make sure that learning experiences are meaningful, relevant, and respectful for the child.

The theoretical basis of the guidelines resulted in the following assumptions about interactive learning and teaching:
1. Children learn best when their physical needs are met and feel psychologically safe. 2. Children construct knowledge. 3. Children learn through social interaction with adults and other children. 4. Childrens learning reflects a recurring cycle that begins in awareness and moves to exploration, to inquiry and finally to utilisation. 5. Children learn through play. 6. Childrens interests and need to know feeling motivate learning. 7. Human development and learning are characterised by individual variation.

Examples of Developmentally Appropriate Practices By Age Groups

Infants 1. Frequently holds and carries infants to provide a wide variety of experiences. 2. Talks to infants before, during, after moving them. 3. Attentive during routines, explaining what will happen, is happening, or is going to happen next. All this equals learning for infants. 4. Responds quickly to crying and calls of distress.

Toddlers 1. Lots of one-to-one, face-to-face conversations with toddlers. 2. Encourages toddlers to initiate language, label things (including feelings), describe events, and reflect feelings. 3. Allows child to do tasks that the child is capable of doing. Assists in frustrating tasks but does not take over. 4. Respects preference for familiar things. Gives limited options. 5. Recognizes that testing limits and saying "NO"! is actually a healthy sign of development.

Preschool children 1. Models appropriate social skills (self-control, responsible anger management, is polite) 2. Speaks in friendly, courteous manner to individual children, at their eye level. 3. Asks "open-ended" questions. 4. Encourages appropriate independence in children.

Developmentally Appropriate Practices (DAP) defines meaningful curriculum as:

1. how children learn and address the entire learning cycle; 2. reclaiming the whole child and redefining childcentredness; 3. providing depth of understanding and promoting conceptual development through integrating experiences; 4. individual appropriateness which means it is based on childrens needs and interests; 5. deriving from knowledge-based to the disciplines and has intellectual integrity; and 6. resulting from interactive teaching.

According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (2004), a curriculum based of DAP will include the following twenty features. This is mentioned next:

REFER TO PAGE 103 & 104

1. It is grounded in the most current knowledge of child development and learning.

2. It addresses the development and learning of the whole child, which includes the social, emotional, physical and cognitive goals. 3. It addresses the development of knowledge and understanding, processes and skills, dispositions and attitudes. 4. It addresses a broad range of content that is relevant, engaging, and meaningful to children. Its goals are realistic and attainable for most children in the designated age range for which they were designed.

6.

Its content reflects and is generated by the needs and interests of individual children within the group. Curriculum incorporates a wide variety of learning experiences, materials and equipment, and instructional strategies, to accommodate a broad range of children's individual differences in prior experience, maturation rates, styles of learning, needs, and interests. It respects and supports individual, cultural, and linguistic diversity. It supports and encourages positive relationships with children's families.
It builds upon what children already know and are able to do (activating prior knowledge) to consolidate their learning and to foster their acquisition of new concepts and skills. It provides conceptual frameworks for children so that their mental constructions based on prior knowledge and experience become more complex over time.

8.

9.

DAP learning cycle

TEACHING AFFECTIVE DEVELOPMENT APPROACHES

The childs readiness for a group experience will depend on two factors.
1. The most important factor is the preparation he has had within his own family. 2. The second is the nature of the group he enters and the help available to him in making the adjustments there.

The scheduled parts may include the following:

1. 2. 3. 4. Small-group time Large-group Class Transition times

Group time can be used to introduce new: 1. Materials; 2. Activities; and 3. Concepts

Remember..
Small/large group times for preschoolers tend to last for around 15 minutes. Adults will use this time to introduce children to new materials, ideas and activities and the children will continue to learn more about it during work time. Transitions are the times in between other activities. Instead of being incidental, activities should be planned to provide chances for children to make choices, move in different ways and learn important concepts.

Individual
conversations during different times Always encourage children to express their ideas and explain what they have learned. Extra learning materials

Small Group
It should be based on childrens wide-ranging interests enhance the growth of young children are language, logic, pre-reading and counting skills Group time is always a good time for children to socialise with others. No pressure Group times should be systematic where children should be able to learn specific skills and concepts.

Class
Circle time Circle time is a great time for children to gather together and learn several things such as: 1. getting to know one another; 2. learning to listen to others; and 3. having fun while learning through singing and playing games.

Teaching and Learning

Concept of Teaching
1. Goal setting 2. Assessment 3. Grading

Goal setting
Objectives are always helpful in both curriculum designing and achievement testing.
Instead of just focusing on the content, teachers should take into account concepts and skills they want the child to learn. 1. Choosing objectives (content and performances); 2. Understanding student characteristics; 3. Understanding and using ideas about the nature of learning and motivation; 4. Selecting and using ways of teaching (methods and practices); 5. and Evaluating student learning.

Classifying Objectives
Classifying objectives help teachers organise their thinking about objectives. They also help in teaching students and assessing their achievement. 1. Cognitive objectives (knowing, perceiving, recognising, thinking, conceiving, judging, and reasoning). When a teacher is concerned about Josh's inability to spell words correctly, she is referring to an objective in the cognitive domain. 2. Affective objectives or feelings (likes and dislikes, emotions, attitudes, appreciations, interests, values, and the like). When the teacher worries about Joshs boredom with reading, she is dealing with the affective domain. 3. Psychomotor objectives (skilled ways of moving; such as handwriting, dancing).

b) Assessment
Classroom assessment involves two major activities, which is measurement and evaluation. These are stated as follows: 1) Measurement collecting information about how much knowledge and skill students have learned. 2) Evaluation making judgments about the adequacy or acceptability of each student's level of learning.

four most common reasons for assessment

1. To provide summaries of learning, (to sum up how well a student has performed over time and at a variety of tasks); 2. To provide information on the learning progress, (teachers want to know whether students understand all of the materials that have been covered); 3. To diagnose specific strengths and weaknesses in an individual's learning, especially for students whose pace of learning is either slower or faster than average, you can introduce supplementary instruction or remedial instruction. 4. To motivate further learning.

Performance tests assess

Direct writing assessments (writing about a specific topic under a standard set of conditions). Portfolios (may contain one more pieces of a students works; such as drawings). Exhibitions (paintings, drawings or writing done by the student). Demonstrations (students are required to show how well they can use their knowledge or perform a task; reading a book).

c) Grading
Norm-referenced grading known as grading on the curve (based on the bell curve or normal distribution of students), it is based on how well other students do. Criterion-referenced grading grades are determined by whether they have achieved a certain stand (or criterion) of achievement or performance

Concept of learning
A learning strategy is a plan designed to achieve a distant academic goal (for example, getting an A on your next exam). A learning tactic is a technique used to understand an immediate objective (to understand a concept).

Most learning strategies can be placed in one of two categories based on each strategy's intended primary purpose.

Motivation
Motivation is defined as the reason that an individual behaves the way they do. Motivation is an important teaching tool since it encourages children to learn without being forced to do so. Once a child is motivated, they become more focused and learning becomes easier.

Operant Conditioning and Social Learning Theory

Operant Conditioning Students tend to repeat actions that are reinforced and that behaviour is shaped by the reinforcement.
Example: If a student answers the correct answer, he is rewarded, which motivates him to answer more questions. Social Learning Theory Observation, imitation and vicarious reinforcement play important roles in learning.

Example: A student who identifies with and admires a teacher may work hard to please that teacher and try to become like that individual.

Cognitive Views of Motivation

Human behaviour is influenced by the way people think about themselves and the environment. It is influenced by the next various factors: The inherent need to construct an organised and logically consistent knowledge base; 1. One's expectations for successfully completing a task; 2. The factors that one believes account for success and failure; and 3. One's beliefs about the nature of cognitive ability.

The Need for Achievement

Based on John Atkinsons theory that differences in achievement behaviour are due to differences in the need for achievement, individuals with a high need for achievement have a stronger expectation of success than they do a fear of failure for most tasks and therefore anticipate a feeling of pride in accomplishment.

The Humanistic View of Motivation

Maslow describes the cognitive needs and aesthetic needs. These two classes of needs play a critical role in the satisfaction of basic needs. Maslow maintains that such conditions as the freedom to investigate and learn, fairness, honesty, and orderliness in interpersonal relationships are critical because their absence makes satisfaction of the five basic needs impossible.

Cooperative Learning
The effectiveness of cooperative learning is based on a few things. 1. 2. 3. Group Heterogeneity: The size of cooperative-learning groups is relatively small (4-5) and as heterogeneous (diverse) as possible. Group Goals/Positive Interdependence: A specific goal, such as a grade or a certificate of recognition, is identified for the group to attain. Promotive Interaction: This may involve episodes of peer tutoring, temporary assistance, exchanges of information and materials, challenging of each other's reasoning, feedback, and encouragement to keep one another highly motivated. Individual Accountability: Each member of a group has to make a significant contribution to achieving the group's goal. Interpersonal Skills: Positive interdependence and promotive interaction are not likely to occur if students do not know how to make the most of their face-to-face interactions.

4. 5.

Effect on Social Relationships

1. Motivational Effect Learning is seen as an obligation and a valued activity because the group's success is based on it and one's group mates will be rewarded for it. Cognitive Development Effect According to Lev Vygotsky, collaboration promotes cognitive growth because students model for each other more advanced ways of thinking than any would demonstrate individually. According to Jean Piaget, collaboration among peers hastens the decline of egocentrism and allows the development of more advanced ways of understanding and dealing with the world. 3. Cognitive Elaboration Effect A particularly effective means of elaboration is explaining something to someone else.

2.

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