Justification of Program Plan

 

My activity for the toddlers was an emotion/ feelings board. I originally came up with the idea for the activity from the pre observational data, and the idea of my visual board came from inspiration I had seen in the classroom and on Pinterest. Throughout my pre observational data I was capable of seeing the interests of the child first hand before creating the activity as a follow up. This links back to the philosophy I follow which is progressivism, I always want to focus on the child’s interests first. Child L showed great interest in modelling empathy among her friends in the classroom. A lot of the times she would present it by giving out hugs when needed or even in verbal cues like “Don’t Cry!”. After I saw her effort in showing care towards her friends I thought the perfect idea would be introducing the different feelings and emotions to her in class as an activity. I created a large board full of different emotions and feelings modelled by very diverse faces. I Tried to make sure every child on the board looked unique in his/her own way. Within the activity I would ask the students if they could recognize the certain feelings and what they meant. A lot of the children enjoyed looking at the board and even mimicking the faces of the pictures. The happy face had a thumbs up so a lot of the children started giving me a thumbs up later that day when we were having outdoor play as a sign of how they felt.

 

Justification of Interaction Strategy

 

Interacting with my students is a huge part of my day, the best part for me is getting down to their level so they see me and know I am there for them. The children enjoy it when I initiate in story time because I take my time to role play within the story and even model out the character’s voices in the story. I try to make any period of time that I am getting with the children as memorable as possible. Referring back to the philosophy I follow the main aspect to grasp onto is focusing on the child and using them as the canvas of the classroom. Their ideas are what I will use as an educator to base my teaching methods off of.  I highly value the philosophy of education in particular progressivism, because it revolves around the child’s interests rather then the interests of the educator and what they think children should be learning. I am very happy I chose to work in this field and continue to want to change and help the lives of young students by encouraging them and supporting them in their schooling.

 

Justification of Artifact

 

The artifact I created to connect to the activity was an emotion/feelings board, I came up with the idea by similar boards I had seen in the class but were not meeting the expectations I wanted. All the posters throughout the class were modelled by cartoon images rather then real faces. For my board I took advantage of using real faces and having lots of diversity throughout the board as well. The children loved it and were able to point at the faces and even mimic the faces shown on the board. I completed this entire activity entirely based on the interests of the child which was shown in my pre observation where child L was modelling empathy amongst her friends in the classroom.