Program Cluster Early Childhood Education And Care: Curriculum Planning Formats

Analysis of collected planning formats

Discuss about the Program Cluster Early Childhood Education and Care.

Curriculum planning formats are the templates, where the upcoming curriculum activities of the children and their progress will be maintained and will be monitored in regular basis. These formats can be different for different classes. Such three sample of curriculum planning formats age given below:

Figure 1: Curriculum planning format 1

Source: Flannery et al., 2013

Figure 2: Curriculum planning format 2

Source: Mayesky, 2014

Figure 3: Curriculum planning format 3

Source: Ashdown & Bernard, 2012

After analyzing the three curriculum planning formats, I feel that these formats reflect positive view of the child and educator. The children with early age group (0-5 years) are developing and learning in nature. In this stage, they are prone to learning new things. Therefore, these formats actually meet that target. These formats explore the interests, abilities, culture, ideas and current knowledge in attractive ways (Haywood & Brooks, 2013). Through these formats, each child’s learning in a group is organized in such a way, where all the children can maximize their opportunities individually. Along with the children, the educators also get positive influence from these formats. The educators can communicate with the children in various ways. Due to these formats, the educators can focus on all the subjects with same importance in a same timing. The educators can compile the information, which is gathered from each child. These formats also help to build the professionalism of the educators.

In Framework’s Learning process, children actively participate in the daily learning session, where the educators can identify the interests and strengths of the children. Based on the learning outcomes, the educators design the appropriate learning environment and choose the proper teaching strategies, which are required for the children. These formats focus on all the subjects with same importance in a same timing. It will help to monitor each child through knowing its interests and strengths (Bacon et al., 2014). The overall group will be monitored through assessing individual child in Framework’s Learning. The Framework has worked as conclusive international evidence to recognize long-term outcomes and big picture. These outcomes direct the early childhood educators in a broad way in early childhood setting so that the children are learning while engaging and build the success of their lives. The goal of any learning process is to make sure that the children are able to learn the new things. This goal is achieved with the help of these planning formats in this learning process.

Developing new curriculum planning format

The curriculum-planning format should be made in such a way, where there will be separate column of certain criteria, like, children’s portfolios, international teaching, supporting skills and development, children’s interests and children’s progress. These criteria will be ,maintained on daily basis by the educators (Isenberg & Jalongo, 2013). The monthly progress report will be built based on that. Along with these planning formats, both the children and educators will maintain specific diaries. In the diaries of children, certain things will be reported, like, community events, family input, child input. The educators will also mention children’s reflections, their learning and spontaneous experiences in the planning format on a daily basis. In the planning format or in diary, there should be separate column, which will be meant for parents’ suggestions and input (Kimble, 2014). The educators will maintain their observations towards each child in their specific diaries. The educators can also note down their daily program plans in their diaries, so it can help them to present their teaching program plan in an arranged way. If these records will be followed in daily basis, then it will help to monitor the participation of each child in the program. Along with these, both the family and children will get the opportunity to give feedback and to comment about the curriculum. The curriculum planning formats will be changed in each six months. In the changed planning format, there will be separate column of future planning, like summer camp, yoga session, constructing class and foreign language learning. The children and their families will be informed about this future planning through the diaries or parents-teachers meetings. These programs will help to develop the learning and interests of the children. The children also will enjoy these session, as these sessions will be different from their regular classes (Mayer, 2013). The curriculum planning also can be made in such a way, where both the children and their families can actively participate together. Certain examples of these programs are physical activities, cooking competition, constructing competition. These programs will support the learning process and help to build the understandings between parents and their children.

These program formats will be printed in paper templates and will be distributed to the children at the staring of their learning process. It will make these formats easy to use, flexible and accessible. Both the educator staffs and families can interpret in these templates through writing their comments. These program formats will also be present in the systems of the particular institution (Cremin & Arthur, 2014). Educators will monitor the system formats. Therefore, this procedure will help to keep the track of the progress of the student. Due to this, the parents and educators can communicate regarding any child’s progress related issues at any point of learning.

The documented assessments can be arranged on half-yearly basis or in the gap of six months. In these documented assessments, the tests will be conducted on separate learning topics, where the children need to be performed. The educators will evaluate it and the children will be informed about the evaluation comments along with their parents. Apart from this, each child will be observed on daily basis and its daily performance on learning curriculum will be noticed (Flannery et al., 2013). The educators will make their critical reflection based on the observations.  The educators will also discuss about their critical reflective ideas on the children to their parents. These evaluation or assessments will help to recognize the interests, innovative ideas, communication skills, strong points and weak points. It will also help in monitoring physical and mental abilities. These evaluation comments will in term help to make the future curriculum process to modify the children’ learning.

Student Name: Week:  1^st week of month August    Class: Nursery

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Language Skills	Playing attention while reading short stories	Naming of different sounds, which will be heard in the class	Understanding the communication between friends and teachers	Writing activity and shared reading	Handwriting bookwork
Social/Emotional Skills	Imagination and creativity in provided topics	Talking about recent family gathering	Learning communication skills	Learning behavioural skills	Organising social programs
Math/Reasoning Skills	Matching similar items	Reciting 2-5 tables from memory	Counting small amount of items	Finding odds from given pictures	Learning substitution
Science Skills	Noticing various objects throughout the day	Identifying certain animals	Colouring the animals	Reading short stories on animals	Crafting items on animals
Physical Skills	Moving in rhythm with music and songs	Developing coordination and balance	Participating in a group activity	Learning music	Learning physical exercises
Extra Activities	Participating in Home School group	Grocery shopping	Visit to library	Observing drama or play performances	Visit to perk
Teacher’s Feedback
Parent’s Comments

This newly developed curriculum-planning format is easily accessible, as it will be published in paper template. In this format, the student name and number of the week are mentioned. It will help to monitor the children individually. The format is made for the children of nursery level. Therefore, it automatically will address and monitor the children of nursery group. The format has developed in such a way, where both parent’s views and educator’s views will be reflected.  According to the Piagetian approach, the children can learn through the hands on activities and play. It will help to concrete their experiences (Mayesky, 2014). Therefore, in this format, all the subjects are covered in terms of activities. It will also help to know the interests and strengths of the children individually or group. This will monitor the group in term. The format is maintained on daily basis and it is made for five days. In this way, this format will keep the records of each child’s participation in the daily activities. The topics in every subjects are presented in different ways on daily basis. It will help to build the learning. This format is also giving the opportunity to children and their family to participate in these programs actively. The row of parent’s comments is providing the family to give the feedback on both the programs and the evaluation of teachers (Yeung & Chan, 2013). After evaluating this planning format, it is observed that, this format will keep the track of daily progress of the children. It will help the children to perform in future assessments and to develop future aspects.  

The institution has planned for future “Summer Camp” program for the nursery children. It is important for the children, as the reviews will be evaluated in the final assessment. In order to meet the goal, the planning format will be made and then it will be distributed among the children in nursery group. The parents of the children will also be informed about this program through parents-teachers meeting (Lonigan et al., 2015).

Goals	Reflective practice Learning extracurricular activities Learning partnerships
Practice	Painting Crafting Dancing Game
Highlights	Beach party Attractive foods and drinks
Duration	15 days
Outcomes	Developing innovative ideas Building relationships Group participation

Barriers to learning/additional needs are certain challenges, which make the hindrance for the children in order to pursue their education. Among many other such barriers, the selected barriers are poverty and disabilities in the children.

Poverty:

Poverty is described as the educational barrier, where the children are not able to pursue their primary education due to lack of financial disability in their family. The children cannot get their additional needs due to the financial constrains of their family. This barrier occurs, as the parents of the children cannot afford school uniforms, transportation, foods, books and other school suppliers, like, chalks, pens and notebooks. Due to these challenges, the children are not able to continue their education. Moreover, in order to stable the financial condition, the children are forced to take the role of child labors (Van Oers & Duijkers, 2013). This need is diagnosed when the children cannot concentrate in their learning and they start missing their class. Their physical and mental situations start deteriorating, when they undergo this situation. In order to treat this barrier, both the families and the education institutes have to take the initiatives. In order to remove this barrier from the society; certain strategies can be implemented in the society. The families with economical constrains can take the guidance of social counselor. The counselor can help the children through providing all the necessary items, like, books, uniforms. Sometimes under certain government policies, the children who belong to lower level of economical background get the education at free of cost. However, many families are not aware of these facts. Therefore, the government, social counselors, teachers and volunteers have to take the responsibilities (Booth et al., 2013). They can arrange for educational camps where they can provide all the details about the free access of the learning materials. The volunteers can go to the families with financial constrain to motivate them so that they send their children for perusing education. Various institutions and teachers also can come together in order to provide the free education to the children.

After assessing the community, many professionals and agencies are found, which support the children education in low economical condition. These support systems are described below:

Compassion Australia is an agency, where the main goal of the team members is to lift the children out of the poverty and to provide them with beast quality of education. The Compassion’s Child Sponsorship Program focuses to make the children, who graduate with the skills to be emotionally and physically healthy, economically self-supporting and able to develop a genuine relationship with the Christ. They have 150team members and other volunteers, who provide their skills, energy and time to fulfill the objectives. This agency is generally situated in Newcastle, NSW. But is has other regional offices in Sydney, Perth, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide.

30Warabrook Boulevard, Warabrook NSW 2304 Australia

Tel: 1300224453

Tel: +61249355000

Fax: +61249355099

Email: [email protected]

The Smith Family:

The Smith Family helps the children, who are in unfavorable conditions, in order to provide the education.  This agency has worked on 94 Australian communities and sometimes outside of the local school.

Contact details:

Tel: +1800024069

https://www.thesmithfamily.com.au/

Disabilities in the children:

The disabilities in the children are described as educational barrier, as it makes hindrances in child’s education. The disabilities in the children generally occur due to the physical and mental abnormalities in the children. Sometimes, these abnormalities come genetically or sometimes it occurs due to certain accidents. The disabilities in children are diagnosed while learning, when the children face difficulties in learning and they cannot memorize. Sometimes the children face problem in hearing and visualizing the objects in the class. They cannot communicate properly. They generally start their education at very older ages. Sometimes these challenges can be treated after several medal settings (Lewis Presser et al., 2015). However, some issue cannot be solved permanently, like children with Schizophrenia, Alzheimer. They need completely different types of education system in their learning process. There are many educational institutions and agencies, which help these disabled children in perusing their education. The agencies, teachers and the volunteers organize various activities through which the children can learn and develop their skills, as they cannot concentrate on any memorizing things. The organizers also arrange for separate activities based on extracurricular activities, like summer camp. These children can develop their social, behavioral, and communicative skills through these supportive programs (Follari, 2014).

After assessing the community, many professionals and agencies are found, which support the disabled children in education. These support systems are described below:

This support system is a website, where the parents of the disabled children can get the support for their children staring from the baby stage. This agency helps the children with various disabilities. In order to provide the best quality of their service, they get the support from various authorized sponsors, like Australian Government, the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne.

Contact details:

https://raisingchildren.net.au/

Children and Young People with Disability Australia:

Children and Young People with Disability Australia (CYDA) deals with the disabled young people along with children (aged 0-25). This agency responds and listens to the problems of the children, advocate and educate them. After reviewing the children, the agency informs their problems to their families. At the end of the program, they also celebrate the achievements and success of the disabled children.

Contact details:

20 Derby Street, Collingwood VIC 3066
PO Box 172 Clifton Hill VIC 3068

Phone: 03 9417 1025 or 1800 222 660 (regional or interstate calls)
Email: [email protected]

Conclusion:

Children are the future generation in the society. Their education is the most important topic in the society. Sometimes the children learning process may appear as challenging. After reviewing the above text, in the conclusion, it can be said that if the children learning process can be made in different way, then the children can learn easily.

References:

Ashdown, D. M., & Bernard, M. E. (2012). Can explicit instruction in social and emotional learning skills benefit the social-emotional development, well-being, and academic achievement of young children?. Early Childhood Education Journal, 39(6), 397-405.

Australia’s largest national education charity – The Smith Family. (2016).

Bacon, E. C., Dufek, S., Schreibman, L., Stahmer, A. C., Pierce, K., & Courchesne, E. (2014). Measuring outcome in an early intervention program for toddlers with autism spectrum disorder: use of a curriculum-based assessment. Autism research and treatment, 2014.

Bers, M. U., Flannery, L., Kazakoff, E. R., & Sullivan, A. (2014). Computational thinking and tinkering: Exploration of an early childhood robotics curriculum. Computers & Education, 72, 145-157.

Booth, T., Masterton, M., Potts, P., & Swann, W. (2013). Curricula for diversity in education. Routledge.

Cremin, T., & Arthur, J. (2014). Learning to teach in the primary school. Routledge.

Flannery, L. P., Silverman, B., Kazakoff, E. R., Bers, M. U., Bontá, P., & Resnick, M. (2013, June). Designing ScratchJr: support for early childhood learning through computer programming. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (pp. 1-10). ACM.

Follari, L. (2014). Foundations and best practices in early childhood education: History, theories, and approaches to learning. Pearson Higher Ed.

Haywood, H. C., & Brooks, P. H. (2013). Bright start: a cognitive curriculum for young children. Clinical Psychology & Special Education/Kliniceska I Special’naa Psihologia, (3).

Isenberg, J. P., & Jalongo, M. R. (2013). Creative thinking and arts-based learning: Preschool through fourth grade. Pearson Higher Ed.

Kimble, G. (2014). Children learning about biodiversity at an environment centre, a museum and at live animal shows. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 41, 48-57.

Lewis Presser, A., Clements, M., Ginsburg, H., & Ertle, B. (2015). Big Math for Little Kids: The effectiveness of a preschool and kindergarten mathematics curriculum. Early education and development, 26(3), 399-426.

Lonigan, C. J., Phillips, B. M., Clancy, J. L., Landry, S. H., Swank, P. R., Assel, M., … & Eisenberg, N. (2015). Impacts of a comprehensive school readiness curriculum for preschool children at risk for educational difficulties.Child development, 86(6), 1773-1793.

Mayer, R. E. (2013). Teaching and learning computer programming: Multiple research perspectives. Routledge.

Mayesky, M. (2014). Creative Activities and Curriculum for Young Children. Cengage Learning.

Raising Children Network. (2016). Raisingchildren.net.au.

Van Oers, B., & Duijkers, D. (2013). Teaching in a play-based curriculum: Theory, practice and evidence of developmental education for young children. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 45(4), 511-534.

Yeung, S. S., & Chan, C. K. (2013). Phonological awareness and oral language proficiency in learning to read English among Chinese kindergarten children in Hong Kong. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 83(4), 550-568.