designing a classroom environment for early childhood

McGraw-Hill/Irwin © 2005 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Differentiated instruction in an inclusive classroom is accomplished through the use of teaching strategies that are responsive to individual children who vary in culture, language, ability, and demographic characteristics. Child-centered or child-initiated learning ,matched to the child’s development is commonly associated with Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP) and embraced by educators in early childhood and early intervention.

INDIVIDUALLY APPROPRIATE SUPPORT


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Embedded Teaching Approaches

An overarching approach to pedagogy in early childhood education is an embedded teaching method. The embedded approach contrasts with clinical teaching approaches in which children are “pulled out,” away from typical settings, to receive instruction for a targeted skill under a structured set of conditions. Naturalistic and milieu approaches are among the types of teaching methods considered in the embedded teaching category. Using embedded teaching approaches, teachers try to match their support strategies to best accommodate the individual child and enhance that child’s chances for success in typical activities and play.


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Identifying strategies for individual children.

Observing children as they work and play is one way that teachers can plan teaching strategies that are well-matched to individual children. Teachers can focus observations toward the identification of each child’s areas of strength, with the aim to notice some of the conditions and strategies for learning that appear to result in a child’s success. Pinpointing a few of the ways individual children are successful in learning can provide a basic for planning future scaffolding, as a child introduced to new concepts and skills.


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While watching and working with each child, the teacher can use the following questions to guide observing and recording of in formations :

• *What conditions seem to help the child learn best?

*Can you describe the strategies the child tries?

*How does the child solve problems?*Is the child most successful learning alone or

with others?*What kind of teacher assistance seems to

work best?


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Range and intensity.

Matching teaching strategies to the children in inclusive classrooms needs thoughtful consideration. The range of abilities represented by children in such classrooms is often broad; consequently there is evidence to suggest that using different kinds of strategies will be needed to produce beneficial effects for individual children.


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Evaluating the effectiveness of strategies

It has often been said that teaching is both an art and a science. Teachers must have a fund of scientific, research-based knowledge from which to draw upon during teaching situations. Whereas teachers can become knowledgeable about the various strategies that can be used, it is critical that they gain expertise in applying strategies to situations where the techniques are most likely to have a positive outcome. The latter, the art of applying the strategies, has been examined and pondered by educators.


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Lay-Dopyera and Dopyera (1992) contend that early childhood educators are rather automatic in their strategy use. However, early childhood teachers are often unable to describe their actions and tend not to think about why these strategies were successful.


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Donald Schon (1983, 1987) has explained the phenomenon as a teacher “knowing in action” that the strategy works. He believe that teachers should strive for a more conscious orientation toward strategy use. A teacher who is monitoring her actions and whether the strategy is working has achieved a level of awareness that may allow her to be even more effective in strategy use, Schon says a teacher who is conscious of her actions is “reflecting in action” and is able to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategies she is using in the learning situation.


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An early childhood teacher who wishes to provide an inclusive learning environment for all children must be willing to move beyond the automatic use of strategies toward thoughtful, deliberate, and planned implementation.


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Explicit Teaching Strategiesare deliberate, planned support

strategies to facilitate a child’s understanding, learning processes, or skill acquisition. Using explicit teaching can create an apprenticeship relationship between the teacher and the child.For example, a teacher may demonstrate a cognitive strategy for solving a mathematical problem. As the child learns the strategy, less support is provided by the teacher.


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Prompts

Prompts and cues are among the commonly used types of explicit strategies routinely used in inclusive classroom. Teachers use prompts to help the child respond accordingly, which promotes a child’s learning. Prompts and cues offer the learner additional information or turn the child’s attention toward relevant features of a task.


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The following are usual types of prompts and cues that offer varying levels of support to the child:

*Cue: a command or direction that helps a child know that a response is necessary.*Physical or manual prompts: the providing of physical assistance to cue a child to respond, accordingly. This type of prompt is also called hand-over-hand prompting.*Verbal prompts: the use of words or voice inflections to help a child gain information*Visual prompts: the use of pictures, words. or graphics to convey information or help a child learn concepts*Gestural prompts: the use of nonverbal signs or gestures to convey information and invite responses*Modeling: the demonstrating of the desired performance or set of behaviors.


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Graphic Information and organizers.

Providing visual information and organizing curriculum content with graphic advance organizers is beneficial for children who are English language Learners (ELS). Advance organizers help these children access their prior knowledge and make links to the newly introduced content knowledge.


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Corrective Feedback

Providing a child with a specific information regarding his/her performance on task can help the child improve subsequent attempts. Offering feedback to correct a child’s mistakes is best when information is specific and offered immediately following performance of the task.


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Individualize Reinforcement

Certain children may require reinforcement to encourage their participation in learning activities. For example children with developmental delays may need systematic reinforcement of their participation.


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Common Misconceptions

It is important to distinguish between explicit strategies and other teaching practices based upon behaviorist tenets. Explicit strategies refer to a variety of teacher-mediated techniques that may be used to provide systematic instruction to children when individually appropriate.


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EMBEDDING EXPLICIT STRATEGIES

Explicit teaching strategies can be used before authentic learning opportunities as advance organizers, during a learning activity to guide responses, and after experience to provide feedback and reinforcement.


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Intensifying child-focused support.

To achieve individually appropriate practices, teachers may use explicit strategies, singly or in combination, with natural activities and routines that occur. Experts in early intervention recommend child-focused interventions as international actions to intensify intervention and help some children gain greater benefits from natural contexts, such as homes, child-care centers, and inclusive classrooms.


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Embedding Social and Communication Strategies.

Children learn social interaction skills during infancy and early childhood through opportunities in various contexts. They gain in social skills through feedback from family and others they encounter within their school and community.


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Research has revealed that teachers may observe children who:

• usually play alone•Wander and avoid participation•Tend to be aggressive-hitting, kicking, biting, or verbally abusive.•Lack friends


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Embedding reading and Literacy Strategies.

Explicitly teaching instructional strategies and routines has been reported successful in helping children with learning disabilities improve their performance in reading and literacy. Teachers model specific strategies for planning and conducting tasks and provide guidance until students can perform the routines independently.


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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF EXPLICIT TEACHING STRATEGIES

Certain children may require more overt and intensive intervention to promote their learning. Naturalistic teaching strategies may not provide sufficient support for children with severe disabilities.


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Implication for Collaboration

Use of embedded explicit strategies has implications for collaboration among professional and family members. Collaborative team planning and involvement of families is important to maximize the positive effects of embedded teaching.


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TEACHING COGNITIVE LEARNING STRATEGIES

This category of explicit teaching strategies encompasses techniques and practices teachers use to facilitate each child’s learning and promote the development of a child’s own strategies for learning. Some refer to this category as strategies instruction or cognitive interventions (Owen & Fuchs, 2002).

Children with typical development naturally become strategic learners, gaining knowledge and skills from their experiences and interactions with others in their social and physical environment.


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Defining Cognitive learning strategies

From birth, children embark on a lifelong mission to learn how to learn. As infants, children are immersed in a barrage of sensory information. There are sources of visual stimulation, such as colors, shapes and images, moving across their field of vision. Children hear a cacophony of sounds produced by objects, animals and people in their environment. They feel different temperatures and textures.


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Mediated Problem Solving

Vygotskian theory explains that children first learn their metacognitive and problem-solving skills in social interactions with others (Vygotsky, 1978). Children benefit from teachers and parents who are good mediators of their experiences.


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Strategies that have found effective are:

•Simple•Explicit•Concrete examples•Developmentally appropriatePeer Mediated


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Modeling Cognitive learning Strategies

Children benefit when teachers model strategies to enhance thinking and processing information. Teachers can act as coaches, showing how, helping the child attempt the strategy, and evaluating the results. It is important to provide children with effective feedback to keep them motivated to complete the task.


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Supporting child acquisition and Use of Strategies

A lifelong process of becoming successful learner begins at birth. The early childhood years is an extremely important time in brain development. Moreover, children are acquiring strategies for learning through their experiences with physical environment and social interactions within their learning environment.


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Helping Child Activate Prior Knowledge

Another objective teachers aim to accomplish is to activate the prior knowledge of the learner. Children can more easily grasp new information if they can establish a link between the new information and what is already known. Teachers are instrumental in helping children remember their experiences and knowledge that relate to the new facts and concepts.


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Help child Identify and Use Strategies

In inclusive classrooms, the distinction between teaching strategies and learning strategies is blurred. Teachers realize that the goal is to help children acquire and effectively use a variety of strategies to learn. Children naturally develop strategies for learning; however, some children are more efficient at acquiring learning strategies than others.


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KEY LEARNING STRATEGIES

•Increase children’s motivation for learning.•Involve children in active learning.•Help children become aware of salient sensory cues.•Encourage children to hypothesize and make predictions.•Ask different types of questions, especially open-ended questions.•Stimulate children to find alternatives and creative solutions.


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•Offer opportunities to recognize and solve problems.•Promote collaborative thinking and problem solving.•Model use of learning strategies and problem solving.•Help children recognize their emerging strategies for learning.•Provide activities to develop memory strategies.•Activate children’s prior knowledge.•Think aloud and foster children’s metacognitive awareness.


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•Provide time, space, and props to support cognitive play.•Foster increased attention to tasks and sustained on-task behavior.


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Teachers plan their facilitation strategies by thinking about:

•Ways to present problems•Types of question to ask•Ways to promote i8nteractions with peers and teachers


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Encourage Engagement

The amount of time children spend exploring physical and social aspects of their environment is referred to as engagement. Children vary in their adeptness in gaining meaningful information and learning from these interactions (McWilliam & Bailey, 1992). Engagement is considered fundamental to learning and skill development, is a good predictor of child’s achievement , and is purported to serve as one indicator of the worth a child’s program.


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Improve quality of engagementAn important part of the teacher’s role is

to make decisions about the degree and quality of the child’s engagement in task. Engagement is the degree to which the child is persistent and maintains attention on the task or activity. Strategies that help a child remain focused and attentive to the task may improve engagement and increase the potential for the child to learn in the situation. Therefore, teachers in inclusive classrooms need to be prepared to use strategies designed to assist children in developing patterns of high quality engagement in a variety of task and interactions.


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TECNOLOGY-BASED STRATEGIES

KEY PRACTICE TECHNOLOGY•Equalizes playing field for some children•Fosters collaboration•Promotes problem solving•Permits saving work to re-examine later•Offers flexibility and wealth of options


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Significance of Technological Strategies for Inclusion

A major emphasis of the Goals 2000 Initiative was to promote children’s acquisition of computer skills (Goals 2000: Educate America Act, P.L. 103-227, 1994). Subsequently, instructional strategies and practices involving the use of technological equipment and software represent an emerging area of teaching. The rapidly accumulating research base has indicated that these tools can positively facilitate children’s learning and social skills.


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Computers and young childrenComputers and young children

Acceptance of computers for young children in early childhood education settings was not immediate. Initially, early childhood teachers and professionals were wary, and professional organizations voiced their concerns. It was feared that computers would isolate children from interactions with their peers. Further, teachers were cautioned that computers were poor substitutes for a child’s interaction with authentic , concrete materials in the physical environment. Professional organizations were also prudent in their recommendations, and urged teachers to be judicious in the use of computers for small children until sufficient research was conducted to elucidate possible benefits or disadvantages of computers and technology in early childhood classrooms.


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Social emotional advantages emerge

Accumulating research studies have substantiated numerous positive contributions of technological strategies to acquisition of social interaction skills. Rather than socially isolating children, research has shown that computers serve as social catalysts attracting children to cooperate, talk and create together.


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Benefits for Learning

The opportunities to advance various learning skills abound with technological tools. Different kinds of software will foster opportunities to practice and learn an array of skills across the curriculum. Computer activities offered in conjunction with a full range of hands-on, developmentally appropriate learning activities create many learning options.


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Legal provisions for assistive technology

For children with disabilities, technological strategies can be crucial to their success in learning. The critical need for some children to access to assistive technology was underscored in provisions of the Individuals with disabilities Education act (IDEA, P.L. 101-476). The mandate requires schools to provide any technological devices a child needs to achieve success in the learning environment and to have the technological devices available across all contexts of the school setting (Parette, Hourcade, & VanBiervliet, 1993)


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Assistive technology can permit some children to circumvent their weaknesses and use their inherent strengths to propel their learning (Winter, 1997; Winter, Bell, & Dempsy, 1994). Using adaptations or assistive technological devices when warranted, children with disabilities can also be highly successful with computers as tools to stimulate and support their learning (Clements & Samara, 2002). Cases of children with special needs demonstrating unexpected capabilities through computer use have been reported. In 1998, The Assistive Technology Act (P.L. 105-394, S. 2432) was passed, which made it clear that is the right of eligible children to have access to technology.


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KEY TECHNOLOGY STRATEGIES

•Provide carefully selected assistive technology to support learning of children who are likely to benefit.•Integrate technology across the curriculum•Combine technological activities with manipulative activities.•Promote cooperative use of computers•Use technology to create more relevant, meaningful learning opportunities.•Select a variety of software types for different instructional purposes.


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Planning the Use of Assistive Technology

Assistive technology also called adaptive technology, can help children with certain disabilities access to content of the curriculum (Broderick et al., 2005). It is designated as an instructional accommodation in the child’s Individualized Education Program (IEP).


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KEY TECHNOLOGY STRATEGIES

•Provide carefully selected assistive technology, to support learning of children who are likely to benefit.•Integrate technology across the curriculum.•Combine technological activities with manipulative activities. •Promote cooperative use of computers.•Use technology to crate more relevant, meaningful learning opportunities.•Select a variety of software types for different instructional purposes.•Choose software that allows latitude and flexibility to accommodate a full range of learners.•Use technology to stimulate thinking, learning, and problem-solving processes.•Monitor, interact, and scaffold children’s technological activities.


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Collaborative Planning for Technology Collaborative Planning for Technology IntegrationIntegration

Technology advances at a fast pace, making it difficult for educators to stay current on the latest trends. Developing communities of practice o help teachers acquire knowledge and gain competence in using technology is a concept that has proven highly successful. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education funded a five-year model professional development program to promote the integration of technology. Supporting Teacher to Achieve Results by Integrating Technology into the Curriculum (STAR Tech) was designed to provide technical assistance to teachers, help them acquire knowledge, and develop leadership in classroom technology use.


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