Rethinking How We Can Use Free Choice Time

Overview

Free Choice. Free Play. Centers. Whatever we call these times, children in early care and education programs spend a large part of their day in them. They are classroom routines when children are free to choose from multiple "centers" and direct their own play and actions. Free choice time has been guided in the past be a common belief that young children learn best when activities are more child-directed and play-based.

Recent work on children's learning and effective early education practices present major implications for how we design and implement free choice times. It may be necessary for us to rethink how fre choice time based on research on effective teaching strategies, the importance of intentional teaching, and an examination of Indiana kindergartens and beginning expectations for children.

This workshop introduces research-based strategies for improving free choice time to maximize children's learning and better prepare your children for kindergarten. During this workshop we will:

1.  Review both nationall research on effective early education practices and Early Childhood Center research on Indiana kindergarten and prekindergarten classroom practices,
2.  Examine and evaluate the physical, social and learning designs of your current free choice time,
3.  Outline your purpose and broad educational goals for free choice time that will guide your planning,
4.  Define the roles and expectations you have for yourselves and your staff during free choice time,
5.  Design individual free choice centers and activities that are developmentally and educationally sound,
6.  Learn about effective teaching strategies that will shape hyour interactions with children to build on their play and teach important skills, and
7.  Differentiate your plans and teaching strategies to accommodate children's individual needs and different developmental levels.

Details

Dr. Michael Conn-Powers is the presenter of this workshop. Dr. Conn-Powers has worked in the field of early intervention for over 30 years. He is currently a Research Associate at Indiana University, and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the School of Education, and Director of the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community's Early Childhood Center. Over the past 5 years, Dr. Conn-Powers has been extensively involved in research and product development in the areas of early intervention, service coordination, school readiness, and universal design. Dr. Conn-Powers has also been involved with designing and implementing Indiana's First Steps (Part C) child and family outcome evaluation system.

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 offered on this topic.