Learning is changing. . .
When I completed my licensure, our instruction focused on child development, developmentally appropriate practices, learning through play using all the developmental domains - social/emotional, cognitive, sensory, large and small motor. This foundation has served me well, and as time goes on, we are charged with introducing more "academic" learning - letter identification and sounds, rhyming, number identification, patterning, graphing, etc. My own learning focuses on finding developmentally appropriate ways to teach these concepts throughout our classroom day - as well as focusing on vocabulary development, receptive and expressive language goals for our EL students. Many of the classes I have taken in these areas are targeted for elementary age children, so there is much adaptation (with trial and error) needed to make it effective for my 3 and 4 year old students.
My use of technology in the classroom for the students is increasing - but something I am trying to improve. My struggle remains the fact that our students need so much time to do the sensory, physical, small and large motor work in addition to learning the social skills to succeed in a group that it is hard for me to prioritize computer time for them. I am building up a reportoire of games and activities that work on the skills in our units, and also making time to use them. I would say that my own use of technology to research topics and find resources online has been much more successful, utilizing part of my prep time 3-4 days a week. Technology is making my circle time and music use much more streamlined and easy to access with less down time for my students since I don't need to set up each song on a separate cd, it is all in my playlist.
In summary, learning is changing. There are always new resources, always new ideas and new goals for students. As we change our methods, we also are learning.
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