Math and Science

Just like the ruts that teachers get into related to language we fall into these patterns with Math and Science. Focusing on rote counting for math and frog, caterpillar or plant growth sequences for science. When teachers are in ruts they often miss the learning opportunities available in the everyday world of children. The Intentional Teacher presents a great example of an argument over who will ride a big truck around the playground. The group problem solving process in this case presented an excellent teachable moment in math. Chapter 4 also provides thoughtful suggestions related to computer use in the classroom and math and science concepts tied to materials that can be used to develop these concepts

Emergent Literacy and DAP

Chapter 3 of the Intentional Teacher does an excellent job tying together the prerequisites to reading Emergent Literacy and Developmentally Apporpropriate Practices. It has refreshing teaching strategies that go beyond glueing beans on an alphabet letter B or tracing the letter B on a worksheet. For example under the topic of print knowledge utilize what the author calls letter links. Pairing a child's printed nametag with a picture or even better a real object or 3 dimensional representation of that object and the printed name of that object. " A letter link for Aice might be ant and one for Pedro could be paintbrush."

Best Practices

Chapter 2 of "The Intentional Teacher" outlines what is called best practices-approaches used to "foster children development and produce real and lasting learning." (Epstein, 2007). The author briefly but thoroughly covers the physical learning environment, scheduling, interacting with the children and building relationships with families. There is an especially useful insert provided gleaned from a High Scope article regarding children with special needs. This includes a great group of suggestions for seven types of categories from Learning Disabilities to Emotional Disturbances.

New Focus: The Intentional Teacher by Ann Epstein

In Chapter 1 of Epstein's book she walks us through the terms she uses throughout her book and which are used in the new Developmentally Appropriate practice edition. She clearly defines and describes child-guided experience, adult-guided experience, intentional teaching and content.

Outlining and defining these terms can help assure that we are all talking about, visualizing and carrying out the same approaches. The author also brings up the need for a term that describes the need for balance in educational programs for children and lack of an adquete term to describe this. We balance age appropriate, individually appropriate and appropriateness for language and culture. We balance the many educational philosophies. We balance vertical and horizontal learning. We balance child and adult guided experiences. The list goes on and on.

Intentionality by Age

The last section of the Intentionality online course focuses on specific age groups and how intentionality may differ. The video footage is especially interesting for the infant toddler group. There is a clip of approximately eight toddlers removing pegs and peg boards from a large storage container. It is interesting to view how the toddlers carry out the task and how the teachers facilitate and support that process. Upon completion of the course you recieve a completion certificate. I wish this certificate included the new cover design of the book to make it more interesting. It is just a white paper with your name, the course and date of completion.

Intentionally Building on Children's Learning

Section Four of the Developmentally Appropriate Practice training focuses on learning formats large and small groups, learning centers and routines. It very adeptly introduces how and why an intentional teacher would pick a particular format and the sequential building of ideas by presenting these ideas in different ways, with a minute adjustment in depth. There is exceptional video footage of learning formats for all of the early childhood age groups from infant to school age.

Intentionality In Teaching Approaches

Section Three of the NAEYC course focuses on the importance of flexibility and observation in determining the use of teaching approaches in the classroom. There is an exciting video clip of a teacher utilizing the play that children have been carrying out in the classroom to introduce the scientific concepts of levers and fulcrums to preschoolers. This clip also shows a teacher skilled at helping the children use the scientific method of coming up with a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis and determining if the hypothesis is correct.