KSS1: Demonstrates knowledge of scientific content, concepts, and skills in the areas of development of children's scientific thinking; the scientific inquiry process; life sciences; physical sciences; Earth, environmental, and atmospheric sciences; and living and non-living systems, as delineated in current national professional standards and in Vermont's Framework of Standards and Learning Opportunities
Evidence 1: Mother Goose Cares About Math and Science, Workshop
Description: The course introduces child care providers to excellent emergent literacy practice for 3 to 7 year olds, centering in the content areas of science process skills and mathematics concepts. Students will learn how to choose and use the best age-appropriate children's literature and to incorporate mathematics and science into everyday activities and conversations with children.
Analysis: This workshop taught me how to use science in my daily practice. Through the use of picture books and hands-on investigations, children learn conversation skills, language skills and thinking skills that lead to real learning. I also learned how to refer to standards and skills for science that inform my work with children, which is done through the use of individual and small group observation.
Evidence 2: Everyday Literacy: Science, Teacher's Guide
Description: This book introduces students to basic science concepts covering earth, life and physical sciences, while developing important oral language skills. This book includes 20 week long lesson themes as well as a skills chart and assessment tools, and home-school connections.
Analysis: This text presents topics within three scientific categories including earth, life and physical science. As I study the concepts within each lesson plan, and then adjust the lesson to meet the interests and abilities of my students, I help children to learn about their bodies and the bodies of other living creatures, the world in which they live, and the objects within that world. This text also assists in planning activities that include the gathering of information through the use of one or more senses through simple observations and investigations, recording that information in various ways, and the exploration of physical properties of objects and materials.
Evidence 3: Introduction to Early Childhood Education, ECE 105, Community College of Vermont, Fall 2001, Transcript
Description: This course was an overview of early childhood education . We examined historical, philosophical, and practical issues related to the education of children from birth to age eight. Topics included early childhood learning, behavior, and motivation; curriculum models and materials; observation techniques; and instructional issues.
Analysis: In this class we learned that science involves a growing sense of self, other living things and the environment through the senses and through exploration. For young children, science is not so much a body of specific knowledge, but a way of thinking and acting and an approach to problem solving. Because of this science concepts must be presented in a way that is concrete and observable.
