Looking at the Early Learning and Development Benchmarks is a daunting task because of how long it is. Once you really dive into reading and looking at it, you begin to see how truly valuable these are to those who care for and teach young children. These Benchmarks recognize the importance of the first five years of life in a child and how children at this age rely heavily on adults for their development and learning. These Benchmarks do not follow any one theory, but blend together all of the different theoretical perspectives with scientific research. The purpose of these Benchmarks is to assist early childhood programs know what the children should know and things they should be able to do when they enter Kindergarten. One of the purposes of the Benchmarks is for teachers and professionals to share the tool with their student’s parents so that they know what developmental expectations they should expect from their children. The Benchmarks are split into four critical stages: 18 months, 36 months, 60 months, and entering into kindergarten. The Benchmarks is not meant to be used as a guide to child development and should not be used as a checklist for teachers or families. This is also not supposed to be used as a basis for a curriculum in the classroom for teachers. The Benchmarks are not meant to be used as an assessment instrument to determine any eligibility for any services or programs and it is not to be used to gauge children’s functioning or skills for an Individual Education Plan or an Individual Family Service Plan or to collect statewide information on the status of the children. These Benchmarks should recognize all children as capable of learning, achieving, and making developmental progress regardless of any b... ... middle of paper ... ...ly intertwined. Language Development has three aspects, content (vocabulary and meaning), form (grammatical structure or syntax), and use (function). Communication requires much previous knowledge and skills and children communicate before they master an actual symbolic language. Literacy Development is defined as encompassing reading, writing, other creative or analytic skills, and comprehension of the environment. The Washington State Early Learning and Development Benchmarks can be used for children birth to entry into Kindergarten. The Benchmarks can be applied to basics in a classroom and given to parents so that they know the basic guidelines in their child’s learning and development. Parents want information on if their child is developing “normally” or typically, and guidelines like these in a condensed form can give those parents some of that information.
California Department of Education. (2010). Desired Results Developmental Profile Preschool. Retrieved May 8, 2014, from: http://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/cd/ci/documents/drdp2010preschooleng.pdf
High Scope promotes the developmental domains in their Key Developmental Indicators (KDIs). KDIs break down the developmental domains, and it talks about how they can be incorporated in the curriculum. Cognitive development is promoted through their children exploring objects through their five senses, exploring similarities and different in on things in the environment, one to one correspondence, numbers, Seeing things form different perspectives, time intervals, and cause and effect. High Scope also promotes Cognitive development through their large and small group times. Social and emotional developments are promoted through teacher- child interactions, child- child interactions through play, group participation, children forming attachments to primary care teacher, and children distinguishing themselves from other. The KDIs helps as a tool for teachers to help promote positive and strong relationships with adults and children. KDIs also help promote physical development through movement abilities, fitness, and healthy behavior in the classroom. High Scope helps to...
Early childhood education is important since 90% of a child’s brain develops by the age of 3. Early childhood education can set young children on a good path. But there is an unfair advantage that makes receiving this education, simpler for higher income families. At a young age, lower income students are shown to have lower language skills than higher income students. They are also shown to not be as ready for school as kids from higher income families. Preschool or daycare can also help expose kids to numbers and words. Children from high class families are exposed to 45 million words by the age of 4. Children from low class families are only exposed to 13 million though. Good quality childcare is expensive and many families do not see the importance. Parents in the low social class may not have the money or time either. The unfair element is that children at such a young age are already leaps and bounds ahead of other...
Now there are development standards defined and expectations of a child as a whole. The development standards define the milestones a child should pass by a certain age. These milestones are basically “what children should know and be able to do”. (Shala 7). Because of this early childhood development’s main goal is to thoroughly progress a child’s potential in their social, motor, and cognitive development. (“Early” 1). While development itself is made up of changes in the amount of difficulty attempting certain activities and acquiring skills, gradual movement from basic to complex adjustments in learning, and gaining new ways to move one's body. (Damovska et al 13). For this reason it has become dire for programs to exist that are aimed at younger groups of children so that their mental and social development may continue on track. (“Early” 1). While their level of behavioral unde...
Price, Hugh B. Achievement Matters: Getting Your Child the Best Education Possible. New York: Dafina /Kensington Pub., 2002. Print.
One important lesson of the past decade, however, is just how difficult it is to close longstanding achievement gaps experienced by students from low-income families, students with disabilities, English Learners, and racial and ethnic minorities. We know from research that these gaps often start during the first years of life, even before children enter our education system, with children from low-income families starting kindergarten, on average, 12 to 14 months behind their peers in language development and pre-reading skills.
Popham, W. James. “Standardized Achievement Tests: Misnamed and Misleading.” Education Week. September 2001. Web. 28 June 2015.
The results of quality preschool programs can be seen early after they begin. Children learn many important life le...
Solley, B. A. (2012). On Standardized Testing: An ACEI Position Paper. Childhood Education, 84(1), 31-37. Retrieved December 3, 2012, from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00094056.2007.10522967
Infants and Children: Prenatal Through Middle Childhood. Pearson/Allyn and Bacon. Cooper, J., Masi, R., & Vick, J. (2009). The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'. Social-emotional Development in Early Childhood.
On August 30, 2000, the Maryland State Board of Education made a request for mandatory full-day kindergarten to be added into their budget for the fiscal year of 2002. The Board’s goal is to have full-day kindergarten programs implemented in all state public schools by the 2004-2005 school year (Maryland State Board of Education [MSDE], 2000). Making this change from half-day kindergarten to full-day kindergarten, they hope full-day kindergarten will help children benefit academically in the long run. Despite these goals, it is unclear as to whether full-day kindergarten is actually beneficial to all children.
This added to the baseline I already generated with the pre-parent surveys (Appendix D) and the individual learning plans. Once I completed the assessment on the eight children I noticed that some children may need additional support in handling the pencil to build their fine motor development. But many children needed to be reminded the order of the letters in their name to begin writing their name, along with the directions of how to form some letters that they had trouble making. I did an overview of all eight children’s individual learning plan goals which the parents created at the beginning of the school year. The goals that were set from the beginning of the year were in alignment with the pre-parent surveys (Appendix D).
In order to promote the best outcome from the curriculum we must consider that each child is an individual in their own right. Tricia David (2001: 55) states that early childhood should be a time of “spontaneity and of exploration according to individual interests”. Thus accounting for the child’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as their likes and dislikes, provides a curriculum, which will promote optimum development. This is also known as a ...
This article Curriculum-Based Early Literacy Assessment and Differentiated Instruction with High-Risk Preschoolers by Maribeth Gettinger and Karen Stoiber (2012) claims that the National Early Literacy Panel (NELP) was chosen to examine literacy practices used with young children due to the growing national recognition the importance of early childhood education mainly achievement of early literacy and language skills. NELP found during its analysis of the literacy practices used with young children to be moderate-to-large positive effects with preschool interventions. With the knowledge gained from the NELP report, teachers and researchers will develop prereading skills prior to kindergarten entry.
In this practicum, I will discuss an interview that was done with a pre-k teacher, who teaches four and five-year old’s. I will also discuss an observation that was conducted in a pre-k classroom. The interview and observation focuses on assessing students learning. Which will include four developmental domains, language, social emotion, cognitive, and physical progresses.