Early Focus synthesizes and makes understandable the experience of professionals from such fields as: education, orientation and mobility, pediatrics, ophthalmology and optometry, psychology, occupational therapy, and social work. This is a resource for both professionals and parents.
Children are intrigued by moving objects, even more so when they can engineer the movement. This volume in the STEM for Our Youngest Learners Series uses ramps and pathways as a context to provide children ages 3–8 opportunities to engage in STEM every day. Ramps and Pathways is a meaningful and fun way for children to develop engineering habits of mind as they explore concepts in force and motion, properties of objects, and how those properties affect their movement. In the process, children develop spatial thinking that is essential for future careers in STEM. The text also offers guidance for arranging the physical, intellectual, social–emotional, and promotional environments of a classroom to embrace the natural integration of literacy learning. Each volume in this series includes guidance for forming partnerships with families and administrators that support STEM learning, vignettes showing educators and children engaging in inquiry learning, tips for selecting materials, modifications and accommodations for diverse learners, ways to establish adult learning communities that support professional development, and more. Book Features: Alignment with both the Head Start Early Learning Outcomes Framework (ELOF) and the NGSS Science and Engineering Practices, with specific descriptions of how those science and engineering practices in Ramps and Pathways look and feel in Pre-K–2 classrooms.Examples of how to integrate literacy learning in a meaningful way.Descriptions of how the open-ended nature of ramps and pathways aligns with the Universal Design for Learning Framework (UDL). Guidance to help teachers anticipate and plan for all children to become purposeful, motivated, resourceful, knowledgeable, strategic, and goal-directed about learning.Examples of how to stage, introduce, and support children’s designs to develop engineering habits of mind (systems thinking, optimism, creativity, communication, collaboration, attention to ethical considerations).A meaningful and healthy context to grow children’s executive function skills (EFs), including inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. Contributors: Sherri Peterson, Jill Uhlenberg, Linda Fitzgerald, Allison Barness, Rosemary Geiken, Sarah VanderZanden, Brandy Smith, Kimberly Villotti, Shelly Counsell, Lawrence Escalada
Over the past years a substantial amount of research has been undertaken relating to the development of powerful learning environments for the acquisition in students of worthwhile educational objectives focussing on conceptual understanding, higher-order cognitive and metacognitive skills, and self-regulated learning. This research has been mainly undertaken from three distinct, but related perspectives in the study of learning and instruction, namely instructional psychology, instructional technology, and instructional design. Against this background a "research community" involving 14 European research teams has recently been initiated with the aim of interactively contributing to the advancement of theory and methodology relating to the design, implementation, and evaluation of powerful learning environments.This volume, based on the plenary lectures and working sessions during the community's third workshop, constitutes a collective output of this research community, focussing on the identification and analysis of major components and dimensions of powerful learning environments aimed at the promotion of deep conceptual and strategic learning in major domains of school curricula, like mathematics, physics, history, and social sciences.In Part I of the volume three chapters present general perspectives on the central theme of the third workshop. In Part II six studies are reported wherein novel learning environments for elementary and secondary mathematics education have been designed, implemented and evaluated. In Part III of the volume another set of five investigations is presented relating to the design, implementation and evaluation of powerful learning environments in other subject-matter domains (physics, history, social sciences) and in teacher training.
The authors of this text suggest that teachers need to be able to cope with pupil behaviour before thay can even begin to deliver the National Curriculum. Often classes contain both statemented children those offcially recognize as having behavioural problems and unstatemented but difficult children. Teachers have few strategies to deal with the kind of behaviour that these children present as little, if any, of their training is allotted to classroom and child management.; The authors aim to raise awareness of behavioural needs in the classroom and avoid exclusions. They do this by encouraging school staff to work together to develop policies which will encourage good behaviour.
This book addresses cultural variability in children’s social worlds, examining the acquisition, development, and use of culturally relevant social competencies valued in diverse cultural contexts. It discusses the different aspects of preschoolers’ social competencies that allow children – including adopted, immigrant, or at-risk children – to create and maintain relationships, communicate, and to get along with other people at home, in daycare or school, and other situations. Chapters explore how children’s social competencies reflect the features of the social worlds in which they live and grow. In addition, chapters examine the extent that different cultural value orientations manifest in children’s social functioning and escribes how parents in autonomy-oriented cultures tend to value different social skills than parents with relatedness or autonomous-relatedness orientations. The book concludes with recommendations for future research directions. Topics featured in this book include: Gender development in young children. Peer interactions and relationships during the preschool years. Sibling interactions in western and non-western cultural groups. The roles of grandparents in child development. Socialization and development in refugee children. Child development within institutional care. Children’s Social Worlds in Cultural Context is a valuable resource for researchers, clinicians/practitioners, and graduate students in developmental psychology, child and school psychology, social work, cultural anthropology, family studies, and education.