My Head Start Summary

My class consists of 17 students, 11 girls and 6 boys. They vary in age, some are three and others are four-year-old. My Head Start class identifies numerous standards: social/emotional, physical (including fine and gross motor skills), language, science/technology, literacy, creative movement, and mathematics. Each year, the curriculum changes, but learning occurs through play. The Creative Curriculum and TS Gold instructional assessment is utilized to measure the student’s outcome. Students are pretested within the first two weeks of the school year, using the Brigance Screening. The Brigance Screening requires the teacher to ask the child certain questions, e.g. first and last name, age, counting blocks, learning colors, etc. Students in my classroom and inside the school reside in the inner-city limits of Richmond. School runs for 6-hours, from 7:50 a.m. to 2 p.m. Our daily routine includes breakfast, circle time, music/movement time, lunch, brushing teeth, a rest period, and snack. Throughout the day,
Using the Piagetian perspective, constructivism is applied (Ensar, 2014). Educational constructivism begins with the work of Giambattista Vico (Ensar, 2014). Ensar defines constructivism in four principles (2014). These principles are “prior knowledge,” accommodation and assimilation, learning has an organic invention, and “meaningful learning occurs through reflection and resolution of cognitive conflict…” (Ensar, 2014, p. 35). Vico’s belief in De Antiquissima Italorum Sapientia study, stated that “knowledge is something that is constructed by the learner” (Ensar, 2014, p. 34). Philosopher Rousseau also believed that “children absorb knowledge through their own sensory experience and learning only occurs by doing” (Ensar, 2014, p. 34). When I began teaching almost a decade ago, Rousseau’s belief resonated with my initial teaching