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Welcome to module 1 of the Advanced Course on Emotional & Social Development and Family Engagement. Before beginning the module, please be sure that you completed the pre-learning activity. The pre-learning activity directions and article can be found by clicking the buttons with the purple headings on the slide. Press next to continue when you are finished with the activity. A 5-item pre-learning quiz will follow on the next 5 slides.
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This module is the first in a series of professional development modules on effective teacher practices supporting high quality supportive environments and nurturing, responsive relationships as they relate to the North Carolina Foundations for Early Learning and Development. This first module provides an overview of Foundations and a detailed description of the structure of the modules.
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The objectives of this module are to help early care and education professionals understand:
1. The structure of the professional development modules for practices that promote high quality supportive environments and nurturing and responsive relationships;
2. The relationship between the early learning standards and curriculum;
3. The relationship between the North Carolina Standard Course of Study for Kindergarten and the North Carolina Foundations for Early Learning and Development;
4. The benefits of family engagement children, families, and early childhood programs and professionals; and
5. The teacher’s connection to the NC Infant/Young Child Mental Health Association’s Recommended Early Childhood Mental Health Competencies.
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Almost every state has developed early learning standards for prekindergarten-age children. North Carolina was one of the first when they developed the first North Carolina Foundations for Early Learning and Development in 2003. The Infant-Toddler standards were released a couple of years after the first preschool standards. Both efforts were cross-sector and collaborative. Planning efforts included people from universities, community colleges, school systems, child care, Head Start, families, and more. The breadth of Foundations contributors reflects the diverse partners that comprise North Carolina’s early childhood system.
During the Foundations’ revisions in 2011, the decision was made to combine the Infant-Toddler and the Preschool Foundations into one document and to showcase the developmental continuum that occurs across the span of time from birth to 60+ months of age for each goal.
The title of this document—Foundations—was selected because the Goals and Developmental Indicators described for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers are critically important to children’s success later in school. What children learn between birth and the time they start kindergarten lays the foundation for their learning and development for years to come.
The team of state leaders that revised Foundations carefully studied North Carolina’s Standard Course of Study, which includes both the Common Core State Standards and the North Carolina Essential Standards -- for what kindergarten children should know and be able to do. An overview of their crosswalk can be found on page 19 of the Foundations document.
The goal of the crosswalk was to ensure that expectations for children presented in Foundations aligned with the expectations for children in Kindergarten. This doesn’t mean that the skills and knowledge described in Foundations are exactly the same as those included in the Kindergarten standards. Rather, the focus in Foundations is on the early precursor skills that research suggests are important for laying the foundation for what children learn later.
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This Venn diagram shows the five developmental domains outlined in Foundations. Notice that the child is in the center of the diagram where domains overlap. This emphasizes that developmental domains don’t exist in isolation in children. Children, in their everyday activities and experiences and with their family cultures and languages, integrate skills and behaviors across the domains. The domains help professionals categorize children’s behavior and growth, often for assessment purposes.
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Before we continue, let’s take a moment to address our audience. We know that some of you are teaching staff or child care providers, others may be supervisors or administrators. Some of you are B-K licensed teachers and those of you who are not, may not be directly concerned with the NC Teaching Standards. We still want you to be aware of the connections to the Standards because the care you provide sets the stage for what children will learn when they get to kindergarten and beyond.
In our modules, there will be activities that put you in the shoes of either an administrator or a teacher. We hope this will help give you a look at both sides of Foundations; from hands-on provider to evaluator/principal. If you are a supervisor and are working through an activity that is classroom-based, feel free to modify the activity to meet your role as a supervisor. For example, if an activity asks you to “think about your classroom”, you can instead think about the most recent classroom you observed and proceed from there with the activity.
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Now take out your Foundations document and we’ll go on a treasure hunt! A digital version can be found by clicking the button at the bottom of the slide.
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Let’s make sure you are oriented to the document. The document provides information about the five developmental domains we showed you in the Venn diagram: Approaches to Play and Learning, Emotional and Social Development, Health and Physical Development, Language Development and Communication, and Cognitive Development. Each domain contains several sub-domains, which help us organize our observations of children’s development. Under each subdomain are a number of goals which we support children in achieving by the time they reach kindergarten. Look at page 29.
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Notice that four subdomains are listed under the domain of Approaches to Play and Learning. Notice that goals are listed under each subdomain. The goals are numbered consecutively within each domain. You may wish to put a sticky note or tab on page 29 for easy reference back to this list of subdomains and goals for Approaches to Play and Learning. Next go to page 51 to see subdomains and goals listed under Emotional and Social Development. Feel free to pause the module after each treasure hunt step so that you can find the page and tab them for future reference.
Next, look at page 69 for Health and Physical Development – place a tab there. Page 92 shows the subdomains and goals for Language Development and Communication – tab that page, and on page 119 you have the subdomains and goals for Cognitive Development. Did you see how the domains are color-coded? An overview of the domains, subdomains, and goals begins on page 8. Notice the typo on page 11 – Goals LDC-9 and LDC 10 were left out! On the next few slides, you will have 3 questions to answer. Look at the description of the treasure and search for the page number on which it can be found. If you have a printed Foundations document, you may also want to use sticky notes to tab pages for future reference.
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A few things to note about Foundations: Did you see how the age ranges overlap on page 5? Although development is a continuous process with a predictable sequence, its course is unique for every child.
The text boxes on page 7 warn against using the developmental indicators in Foundations as a checklist for child development. It is important to use appropriate tools for assessment that are designed for that purpose. They should include detailed age referencing that will help users understand and describe the child’s level of functioning.
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Goals are listed for each domain of Foundations with developmental indicators along the continuum of development from birth to 60 months of age. Please note the age ranges for each of the five age bands. The developmental continuum shows how skills emerge over time.
Let’s look at page 52 for an example. This is the domain of Emotional-Social Development. What is the sub-domain?
If you said, ‘Developing a Sense of Self’ you are right.
What is the goal? “Children demonstrate a positive sense of self-identity and self-awareness” is correct.
Notice the developmental continuum on page 52. As infants, children show awareness of their bodies by looking at their hands, feet, mouth, etc. When they move into the next age period they may recognize themselves in the mirror and point out their body parts. As older toddlers, they may then be able to recognize themselves in a picture. At the younger preschool period they develop a sense of self as demonstrated when they can tell you their first and last name. Finally, older preschoolers can tell you that they are a member of their family or a preschool class or an ethnic group.
These developmental indicators are examples of skills and behaviors children show at various age levels. Remember that sometimes our best source of information about what skills a child has developed is a child’s family, and schools/centers must work in partnership with families to gather this information. We know that many steps of learning and growth occur between the indicators. That’s why indicators may be used to guide instruction, but should not be used in the assessment process.
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Recently, a preschool teacher asked, “How do I use Foundations now that I’m using a specific curriculum and assessment program?” Her question reflected the concern many teachers may have about being asked to do ‘yet one more thing’ and the need for clarity about how the various ‘things’ fit together. One way to address this question would be to think about the relationships among the standards, the curriculum, and the ongoing/formative assessment practices that teachers are required to implement.
Let’s look at some definitions based on the work of Margaret Heritage (2013) whose writings on ongoing/formative assessment were seminal to the development of North Carolina's Assessment Learning Community's Online Network (NC FALCON) and are guiding the development of the kindergarten entry child profile by the NC Department of Public Instruction.
For more information about NC FALCON, you can go to the link provided on the slide.
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First let’s look at standards. Standards are the areas of knowledge and skill children are expected to acquire. Standards are organized by age level, are based on research, and assume that children learn information and skills in order from simple to complex. Teaching standards embody best practices for early education, and while non-licensed teachers do not have standards such as these to follow, they are a good roadmap towards quality.
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While standards focus on what children should know and be able to do, the curriculum helps teachers help children reach the standards by providing a scope and sequence of instruction. The curriculum defines the scope – the breadth and depth of content teachers should cover, and the sequence – the order in which teachers should present the content, and activities to promote learning. There are many curricula available and depending upon what agencies your early care and education environment reports to, there are different guidelines.
For example, the NC Pre-K program states that staff must be knowledgeable about Foundations and use these early learning standards to guide their planning of developmentally appropriate, high-quality prekindergarten experiences for children.
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North Carolina’s definition of ongoing/formative assessment is based on the definition developed by Margaret Heritage (2010) for the Council of Chief State School Officers: “Ongoing/formative assessment is a process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning to improve students’ achievement of intended instructional outcomes.”
Adapting this definition for our early childhood instruction, our definition reads: “a process used by teachers and children during play and learning activities that provides feedback to the teachers and children, so that teachers can adjust their teaching to meet the needs of children, and so that children can understand what is expected of them.”
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With these definitions in mind, let’s look at the relationship between Foundations and an objective from one of the assessment systems that is widely used in NC.
Let’s say we have a cognitive development objective called “persists”. Use your Foundations document or your Foundations At a Glance document to identify the Foundations for Early Learning and Development goal or goals in the Approaches to Play and Learning domain that align with this objective “persists”. Both of these documents – Foundations and At-A-Glance are available via buttons on the slide. Pause the module until you are ready to answer the question on the next slide.
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We may hear school principals ask, “How do the NC Foundations align with the NC Standard Course of Study?” They need to see the continuity between the standards for preschool and the upper grades – especially kindergarten. This slide shows how infant and preschool standards in English Language Arts lay the foundation for what is expected in third grade, fifth grade, and high school English Language Arts standards.
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This slide shows the early Mathematics standards that lead to “Arithmetic with polynomials and rational expressions” in high school.
It may have been a few years since you have taken algebra, so as a reminder, here are the definitions of these terms. A polynomial is a mathematical expression that can have constants (numbers such as 3, -2, 2/3), variables (such as x and y), and exponents (such as the 2 in x2) that can be added, subtracted, multiplied, or divided by a constant. Examples include 3x; x-2; 3x2+2x.
A rational expression is the ratio of 2 polynomials with one polynomial in the numerator and one in the denominator.