PLEASE READ AND FOLLOW THE GUIDED RESPONSE
RESPOND TO PEER1 THEN TO PEER2 SPERARTLY
Guided Response
1. Analyze and share at least two positive implications of having a solid foundation in the Developmentally Appropriate Practice your classmates discussed.
2. In addition evaluate what the consequences might be for children who are in a classroom that does not utilize this developmentally appropriate practice.
PEER1
Interactions with Family and the Community
When referring to the application of Developmental Appropriate Practice in an educational environment, the interactions with family and the community is an important aspect.
Involving the family in a child's education is fundamental to their success and overall development. There are principles the NAEYC recommends to implement an effective practice in regards to family inclusion. These align with my beliefs and understanding of the importance of fostering healthy relationships with the families and communities of the students we teach. As with most aspects of education, implementing a developmentally appropriate practice involves several area's that can be supplemented with an ideology of teamwork between the educator, their students, their families, and the community.
Decision Making: Keeping parents involved in making decisions pertaining their child's education is important because it facilitates a positive relationship between the educator and the student/family. The following are principals and strategies as they relate to my position on the educations systems interactions with family and community.
Goal-Setting: Incorporating parents in the goal-setting process for their child helps keeps parents informed about the goals that their child are expected to achieve and can facilitate a parents engagement with their child outside of school.
Building Reciprocal Community Relationships: The phrase "it takes a village to raise a child" is spot on when it comes to education systems. Building community relationships helps your organization or school; build name recognition and a positive reputation, remain informed of local events and community resources, and your organization's credibility is enhanced.
Administrative Policy: Any educational institution should have policies implemented that enforce family and community Involvement as well as, provides support for this from an administrative standpoint (i.e budgeting for community collaboration events, etc).
PEER 2
Assessment of Teaching and Learning
As educator, it is important for me to find and use the right tools that could help me to design individual and/or group curriculum for the children that I serve. One of the developmentally appropriate practices topics that the NAEYC suggest is Assessment of teaching and learning. In our text book, the author emphasizes " the term assessment is differentiated from evaluation, though the two terms are otherwise often viewed as synonymous" (Krogh, 2013).
In our daily basics, we observe the children while they play and interact with others. This observation can be used as an assessment that will help us determine where the children at, and will also help us to create a curriculum, strategies that will support their learning.
"NAEYC emphasizes the need for assessment to be systematic, ongoing, strategic, and purposeful. (Krogh, 2013). In our program we need to define what type of assessment we are going to be using with the children, how we are going to use that information to benefit the children's learning and how we are going to share this information with the parents. Teaching strategies goal is an ongoing assessment that "primary purpose is to document children's learning over time, inform instruction, and facilitate communication with families and other stakeholders" (TSG, 2011).
The way this tool works, is by uploading observations of the children in the different learning areas, and then we rate children's knowledge, skills and behaviors. The tool provides colored bands to show widely held expectations for various ages and grades. The assessment tool is easy to use and what I mostly like, is that it provides you age appropriate activities for children to do based on their interest and need. The tool has options where you can print a friendly summary for the parents and for the you to keep.