1. Teaching Learning and Leading in the 21 st Century Instructor Dr. Rich Newman Final Project By Gisela Reoyo

2. Educational Philosophy I believe that all children need a safe, nurturing environment, with staff who respect them and know how to meet their needs. It is my desire and responsibility as an educator to stimulate the social, emotional, physical, and intellectual development of children by creating a curriculum based on student needs to foster their natural interest to learn things around them. My role as a teacher is to teach all children by providing concrete objects and tools with which they can start building their own knowledge and vision of everything around them. I will give all the tools and materials to students to develop their natural curiosity for everything that interests them. By providing hands-on activities and time, children can apply concepts being studied to construct their own knowledge. I will use topics, integrate units, group projects, and individual work and art in the lesson planning to facilitate children to become active learners. As a teacher, I expect to have the opportunity to create a good classroom environment with the use of technology, tools, and equipment to facilitate the new learning strategies in an inclusive classroom for all children. Language development in the first five years of children development is very important. Language is the key to learning across all domains. Language development skills facilitate children to be more socially competent and provide the ability to comprehend and use language appropriately. I will encourage my students to learn the ability to use language by engaging them in book reading and other forms of language. I believe every child can bring something interesting and unique to the classroom. I will help them to build strong feeling of trust in themselves as an important part of the world, where they can express their opinions and feeling about themselves. I will allow children to participate in classroom responsibility by attending to meetings, selecting the classroom leader and rules that all children will follow during the learning period. Children learn better when they have the opportunity to interact with one another during group projects and play time. I will encourage children to express their feelings by drawing pictures and taking part in role play.

3. Classroom management plan is more than discipline and guidance that teachers provide to the students in the classroom. Managing effective classrooms that foster a good and safe learning environment for the student requires more attention to setting the classroom, curriculum choices, classroom rules and routine including time management, and the guidance, discipline, and supervision of the children.  Setting the classroom or physical arrangement: all areas or learning centers should be located and identified with toys, clothing and other props to stimulate children curiosity. Block, Dramatic, Quiet, Art, Science and Math areas should be full of toys, books, and materials that all the students could easily reach without endangering children’s safety. The classroom furniture and equipment arrangements should be to the children eye levels. The classroom’s visual display should reflect children’s art work, interests, and also cultural experiences. The classroom center learning areas should be full of open-ended materials and manipulative toys that promote curiosity. The outside playing areas should have enough spaces for active play with equipment without endangering each other’s safety.  Curriculum choices: teachers need to choose the toys, props, and multicultural materials to place in each area to encourage children’s curiosity, creativity, language development, and cooperation during classroom activities.  Time management and classroom routine including rules: Teachers need to develop classroom rules and discipline to maintain a classroom with less distractive and inattentive behavior that may decrease the effectiveness of a lesson plan. Time management is very important to teachers success when planning activities that fit into the children interest and attention, planning activities with enough time to keep students focused or keep them engaged in the activity. Teachers need to learn how to manage the quality time for students with less distractive behaviors.  Classroom Routines: It is very important that teachers follow the routine. The classroom must be kept under control, where children and teachers know what activity come next. Young children learn better by being consistent when following the routine. Sometimes teachers may have to do some changes because of the weather or other emergency situation but those changes have to be communicated and approved by the supervisor first, then teachers need to explain that situation to the students.  Guidance and discipline in the classroom is an important part of the management plan. Teachers need to establish classroom rules at the beginning of the school year and be consistent in encouraging children to follow them. They can enforce the rules by talking with children when they show behavioral problems during interacting one another or during other parts of the routine. Teachers need to plan activities that will help students solve problems by using their words instead of physical approaches. Teacher need to encourage children to keep their hand to themselves, take turns when using toys, use inside voices and waking feet when children are inside the classroom, and raise their hands before talking. Also teachers can plan activities to help student solve conflicts and behavioral problem among peers. Classroom management Plan

4. Different School Models  Motivation and creativity in their first years of life, in young children, is very important in the learning process. Teachers have the responsibility to create a positive classroom environment for all children. Teachers needs to create a classroom environment where children feel welcomed and all their needs are met. Children are all different and learn differently so schools should use different models. After I finished the visits to the two different schools, I have learned that in all types of programs related with teaching children, the role of the teaching staff is very important to foster and create a safe environment for young children and support the natural creativity and style of learning. For example, in a head start program model, the purpose is to serve the children of families with low income and the funds are provided by the federal government. Children in this program receive educational services by planning a curriculum that teaches social, cognitive, language development, math, science activities, physical development and health. In this program it is required to use a curriculum that is developmentally appropriate, research-based, and aligned to the framework. Teaching needs to be intentional and focus on how preschool children learn. Investigation and exploration are encouraged in all playing activities as well as cognitive activities. Teachers provide intentional and scaffold instructions based on the development level of each child.In this program, ongoing child assessment is conducted throughout the year to determine if instructional strategies need to be adapted to meet children's needs. Every 45 days assessment are conducted by using different instruments, methods, and procedures to get the most accurate information of the children’s knowledge, skills, and abilities. In the head start program, the student to teacher ratio is ten children to one teacher and eight children to one teacher assistant. All head starts schools are under the LACOE umbrella and the policies and procedures are established by the education department. This school model places an important role on using technology in the classroom. This program facilitate and supports the learning process of all children in the classroom with the use of computers, educational software, and other learning disability aids for children with diverse abilities. In this program, teachers support the use of 21 st Century skills in all the learning centers by providing all kinds of writing tools, books, math activities that will help children to use their critical thinking and enhancing problem solving. Children can use data information to analyze cause and effect when doing experiments. All head start programs are constantly facing the problem of budget cuts, health and safety issues and others state regulations. Parents in this program need to generate In-Kind, volunteers donations for the classroom in hours of working with their children. The population here is mostly Latinos.  The other program I did have the opportunity to be a part of is the Montessori Preschool Models. Here, the purpose of the program is to stimulate the child’s enthusiasm for learning by guiding them without interfering in the child’s natural desire to become independent. Montessori’s program has more children and their ethnic background is more diverse. This model does not compare a child to norms or standards that are measured by traditional educational system. In this program, children are taught the beauty of everything around them and children can work in their own peace without conducting assessments. The role of technology in this model is to shape children skills and motivate them to discover their curiosity and creativity in the learning process. Teachers in this program are facing issues like teacher education and competency.

5. Effective Lesson Planning Good lesson planning is essential to the process of teaching and learning. Taking time for planning the lesson is important because the lesson plan communicates to students or learners what they are going to learn and how they will be assessed. Planning effective lessons benefits instructors and students because it provides a framework for instructions and the implementation of educational standards. There are different designs of effective lesson planning:  Effective Lesson Planning Backward Design : In this design, the teacher starts with goals, then creates assessments, and finally plans the lesson. The purpose of this design is to teach toward the “end point” or in other words towards the goals. This method facilitates a more clear understanding of the process that students are learning. With this design, teachers put all their effort or focus on meeting the student’s needs as well as focusing on the kind of evidence that can be collected as proof of the concepts and subject matters that children have learned. Some of the evidence that teachers can use are observation, informal check lists, and quizzes or tests. Backward design teachers develop the assessment directly after the outcome to ensure that the assessment aligns with the outcomes. With this design, the learning process starts with the outputs. Teachers use performance tasks and evidences that can be used to evaluate the students and to provide feedback to them. Then, teachers can reteach or choose new topics.  Traditional Model of lesson Planning: In this design, teachers identify the standards that will be covered in a unit. The teachers focus more on planning the learning activity for students to engage in. In other words the primary focus is on the inputs. Traditional models of lesson planning give assessment and may or not may align with the students work. Then, teachers determine the results and provide feedback to students. Finally, teachers choose a new topic to cover.

6. Assessment Matters The purpose of assessment is to inform the teachers about the child’s progress and how the child is mastering the skills being taught in a certain period of time. All kinds of assessments help the teacher in improving the communication skills and instruction given during the time that information is delivered. Assessments will allow teachers to get information and documentation of the student’s achievement and cognitive development in all the areas. Teachers also use assessment to identify children with special needs or learning disabilities. Assessment methods should be child age appropriate and up to the developmental level of individual children. There are two different types of assessments, formative and summative.  Formative assessment is used to promote improvement of the students understanding during the learning process. It also involves the student in the ongoing assessment by giving responsibilities to students for their learning process. Teachers can use this method at anytime to see how well the students are doing or figure out what topics teachers need to go back to and reinforce in the lesson. With formative assessment, the teacher can get feedback that will help the teaching and learning process. The information from this assessment can be used to take decision that will help the instructional process immediately. This assessment can be implemented by using evidences that show the child’s progress, such as anecdotal, running records, reading levels, or check lists.  Summative assessment is used to determine the student’s overall achievement level in specific area of learning at a particular time. This assessment is used at the end of unit, chapter, or end of the semester. This form of assessment is about the sum of what students have learned in some period of time. The result or scores are used for accountability for school district or other institutions. As a teacher I would like to recommend the Formative assessment method because teacher can get information of the students learning process at anytime and take that in consideration to make corrections if need, such as go back and reteach the lesson or see how well the student are doing, this form is not don’t at the end of the units or chapter, so this could be very beneficial for both teachers and students to be involve in the learning process by taking responsibilities for own success. Formative assessment provide feedback from teachers and other staff that will encourage students to work harder for a better results, students can use different 21 St Century skills to improve their understanding by collaborating with others peers when doing project or using their creativities, and critical thinking skills when looking for solution to problems.