Darcy Townley

Competency Standard 1- Promoting Child Development and Learning

In order to promote childrens development and learning one
must understand childrens needs, what influences childrens learning,
and be able to create supportive, challenging learning environments
for each individual child. I believe that it is of the upmost importance
that we as early learning professionals understand how children
develop so that we may know how to effectively teach them. Without
this knowledge base we may teach concepts that are below or above
an appropriate development level.
To demonstrate my understanding of this competency standard I
chose to use my teacher made resource assignment that I created for
CHD 145: Teaching Math, Science and Social Studies to Young Children.
My goal for this lesson was to teach one to one correspondence to 3
and 4 year olds. Before creating this lesson I had to first understand
that one to one correspondence was a concept that children in this age
range could begin to understand and eventually master. I also had to
make the project fun and engaging. Most importantly I had to tailor the
activity to fit the varied learning levels in this particular group on 3 to 4
year old children.
This activity consisted of 4 laminated placemats. Each placemat
contained 3 snowmen, each snowman wore a hat with a number 1-12
written it. Children were then given a number of M&M candies. They
were to look at the number written on the hat then apply the candies
as buttons on the snowman. For example if the snowmans hat had the
number 4 written on it the child would apply 4 buttons. For younger
children, or children just starting to understand one to one
correspondence I pre-drew the buttons on to the snowman. For older
children or children with a firm grasp of the concept there were no
buttons on the snowmen. I was very proud of how this lesson turned
out. The children were so engaged while performing the activity. They
were collaborating together and helping one another complete the
activity. The adaptations I made to this project spoke to each childs
individual learning level. The project was bright and colorful and
grabbed the childrens attention right away. The permanent teacher in
this classroom made this activity a center in her room during the
wintertime and the children kept returning to it during open center
time. This proved to me that it held the attention of the children and
remained a fun challenge to them. I could not have made such a
successful lesson had it not been for my prior knowledge in child
development and child learning.