I’ve been meaning to write this blog post for over a year now, and each time, I put it on the back burner and somehow make the decision to write about something a little more ‘relevant’ to everyday teaching. As I sat down to finally hit ‘publish’ on this blog post, it occurred to me that […]
Three Ways to Create Meaningful Documentation
With fall transitioning into winter, and colder weather arriving in a few short weeks, we decided to create a documentation panel to frame our autumn inquiry. Naturally, we began the process by collecting evidence of student learning such as photographs, artwork, observational drawings, records of conversations and anecdotal notes to help us communicate student learning […]
Funds of Knowledge – Connecting Culture with Play
“Wait, no, we don’t throw rice over our heads!” I explained to K.S. a (JK) student playing at the sensory bin. Our sensory bin is currently filled with rice and alphabet letters for students to discover, and in theory, students would quietly engage in exploration and find the hidden letters, and perhaps even identify them […]
Expectations vs. Goals – Is it just a question of semantics?
As I continue to write my dissertation, I find myself increasingly interested in words, and in particular, their meanings, definitions, and the possible underlying messages they may or may not imply. Last week, as I explored assessment in the Full Day Early Learning Kindergarten curriculum document and Te Whariki, New Zealand’s Early Childhood Education curriculum, I […]
Can a curriculum be neutral?
Year after year as a kindergarten teacher, my curriculum document was (and to some extent, still is) the foundation of my teaching practice. I would use it to think about what I needed to teach students, how I was going to teach (grouping specific expectations together), when I was going to teach a given subject area. Grundy (1994) […]
