Beginning With Objectives in Mind

Overview

When you do lesson planning, do you pick activities first and then find the Foundations which are being met? Are you confident that you are teaching what children need to learn? It is not enough to plan your instruction by writing down the name of your theme (e.g. transportation) and the topic of the day (e.g. cars). Jotting down the name of a book or an activity isn't enough to tell your assistant, director and parents what you are teaching children.

Using learning objectives to drive your lesson planning lets you focus your instruction and increase children's learning. We'll use the Foundations to the Indiana Academic Standards for Young Children and ISTAR-KR to identify objectives for instruction. Then we'll find ways to weave themes and projects around the objectives and extend learning across the day.

Workshop Description

The field of early childhood education is changing along with the rest of education. Teachers are asked to be more effective so that children can learn more. Research is revealing which education practices are most beneficial. These practices are related to what we teach, how we teach, and how much we teach.

This workshop centers on using learning objectives to focus your instruction and increase children’s learning. We’ll use the Foundations to the Indiana Academic Standards for Young Children and ISTAR-KR to identify objectives for instruction. Then we’ll find ways to weave themes and projects around the objectives and extend learning across the day.

Participants in this workshop will:

1. Differentiate objectives-based planning and activity-based planning.
2. Pinpoint reasons for using learning objectives to plan instruction.
3. Use the Foundations and ISTAR-KR to select learning objectives.
4. Identify ways to teach the learning objectives in themes or projects.
5. Determine ways to extend instruction in the learning objectives across the day.

Details

Alice Frazeur-Cross is the instructor for this workshop.

Dr. Alice Frazeur-Cross has had a wide array of experiences in the early childhood field. Alice is a Research Associate in the role of Early Childhood Education Specialist. In this role she has written articles, conducted research, and provided training on school readiness, prekindergarten education, and the inclusion of young children with disabilities. She has been director of child care centers, regional resource and referral director, Head Start education coordinator, adjunct faculty of Ivy Tech, kindergarten teacher and classroom teacher of four- and five-year-olds.

Workshops:  All topics presented by the Early Childhood Center can be designed to meet your in-service needs. Topics can be presented as full- or half-day workshops.

Technical Assistance: We have recently been using two nationally validated classroom assessment measures to examine the quality of children's time in preschool and the quality of teacher-child interactions that children experience--the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) and the Emerging Academic Snapshot. We have used these tools to evaluate both individual classrooms and overall early education programs followed by more individualized inservice training. Talk to us about how we might bring these new resources to your program to improve the quality of your early learning environments.

How to Register

There are currently no workshops on this topic planned.