Dream School Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Dream School - Term Paper Example Therefore, activities and materials used in the school will be design to provide the preschool children with a wide range of experiences in all developmental stages. Consequently, these can facilitate their growth and give them numerous opportunities from which they can choose from to carry out preferred tasks. As such, these materials and methods in the school will reflect the philosophy of Piaget and incorporate the most appropriate materials of other educators in order to assist the learning process of children. Similarly important would be the children’s teacher, hence the presence of well qualified teaching staff members to positively contribute to the personal development and fulfillment of preschoolers as well as instill the values of care and love. The following sections will then look into the educational philosophy, curriculum, physical building and facilities, and the choice of teachers in the ideal school that aims to emphasize the developmental learning of prescho olers. Educational Philosophy The educational philosophy of the school would place an emphasis on interactions between adults and children as well as relationships in school and at home. The school will also incorporate developmentally appropriate practices that have been established by professional organizations that support early childhood education, such as the National Association for the Education of Young Children. As developmentally appropriate practice entails, teachers must be knowledgeable regarding the different stages of a child’s development as well as their implications. Such knowledge consequently becomes the principle from which they share information, construct the content of the curriculum, evaluate what has to be implemented, evaluate what the children have learned, as well as determine how their curriculum will be adapted to meet the individual needs, interests, and strengths of children in preschool age (Bredekamp and Rosegrant, 1992). In addition, teache rs should know the children they are teaching as well as their families to increase their awareness of the latter’s cultural and social settings. The school’s principles are centered on the recognition and responsiveness towards preschool children who are in the preoperational phase of development, as noted by Piaget. They recognize that objects do exist without touching them and can develop their own set of symbols, such as words and images, as representations of the real world. The school also recognizes that lessons will take place through assimilation, adaptation and accommodation. When children are introduced to new occurrences, they will try to understand these by associating them with the things that they have already known. Once they have obtained experience with such new phenomenon, their thoughts, feelings, and approaches may change to accommodate the attributes of this new phenomenon. Implications then point towards the need for children to be exposed to new experiences which can be associated with previous ones but, to some extent, should also bring about challenges for their way of thinking. Therefore, in order for this ideal school to maintain practices that are appropriate for children’s development, they must establish a secure, stimulating, and nurturing environment as well as develop a flexible curriculum, reflecting the themes and activities of teachers and children. These young

Low Phonemic Awareness Skills Among Disadvantaged Families Dissertation

Low Phonemic Awareness Skills Among Disadvantaged Families - Dissertation Example Empirical research into language use shows that there exists a wide gap between language use among children from well up families and those from economically disadvantaged families. Most children from disadvantaged families have low phonemic skill awareness compared to those from well up families. The purpose of this research is to identify ways in which the problem of phonemic awareness among children from poor background. The research will use a sample of 50 students from whom phonemic awareness skills will be evaluated. To provide credible conclusions and recommendations, this research will take a quantitative approach. Previous Research Phonemic awareness is a topic that has garnered a lot of attention among researchers in the recent past, owing to the persistent language problem that has indicated phonemic awareness weakness among many students in institutions. Dickinson and McCabe (2004) researched on the existence of phonological problems among children with a bilingual orient ation. The deduction of this statistical survey is that there indeed exist numerous factors that contribute to weakness in language among these students. Among these factors, Dickinson and McCabe (2004) identified that the standards of living played a key role in determining the success of language learning among children. Although this research was not directly designed on measurement of poverty levels, it was possible to outline the link between educated parents and a better economic social status (Koutsoftas, Harmon & Gray, 2009). The major conclusion of this research was that children who were fostered by learned parents had a better phonemic expression. Nichols et al (2004) found that Latino children and children from low socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to fail to develop phonemic awareness and concepts in print owing to the fact that they lack preschool experience, causing them to lag behind when compared to children from different ethnicities and better socioeconomi c backgrounds. Latino children are at risk because English is not their first language meaning that they will categorize phonemes in their primary language as that is how their linguistic minds are programmed. Children from these categories are seen to either lack the prior knowledge or misunderstand the instructional discourse, along with the language of the text and teacher, resulting in delayed acquisition of crucial concepts that are in print (McGee & Ukrainetz, 2009). Notably also, findings from this study indicated that gender was not linked to development of phonemic awareness. These students require instructional intervention that looks into their needs and in a broader perspective. McDowell et al (2007) found that children, who undergo early reading challenges, receive less practice than other children, miss opportunities to develop reading comprehension strategies and are likely to have a negative attitude towards reading. Callaghan and Madeleine (2012) attributed the diff erence in phonemic awareness between children from low socio-economic backgrounds and their peers from high or middle socio-economic backgrounds to varying levels of emergent literacy. This variability is in turn explained by previous home environments, level of oral language and provision of good early intervention programs. In contrast, Neuman and Dickinson (2011) suggest that genetic predispositions