Instruction in Large Motor Skills?

Although teachers consistantly focus on facilitating and supporting small motor skills, it is often assumed that as Epstein states in Chapter 6 "many movement skills appear spontaneously". Large motor development activities benefit children where "movements that are more difficult or complex and involve greater coordination of muscles, senses and feed back loops require a certain amount of direction and refinement..." This is especially the case for preschool and young school-age children. Thoughtfully planning and providing instruction in the outdoor environment can be especially valuable to children's long and short term large motor skill development.

Social Skills

Chapter 5 of The Intentional Teacher has some very valuable topics in bordered boxes throughout the chapter. One describes an adult's fundamental role when it comes to emotional development acknowledging and labeling children's emotions. When adults discuss the behavioral indicators of particular types of emotions, children develop the vocabulary to talk about emotions and understand ideas related to the wide array of emotions they experience. Another box gives an example of how teachers can encourage peer modeling and assistance rather than promoting dependence on adult assistance. And three more boxes outline important aspects of functioning as part of a group conflict resolution, child initiated rule setting and democratic decision making.

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.