The New Student Continued

I know I mentioned the new student a couple weeks ago and how interesting it was watching her transition to the classroom. She has continued to amaze me since then. Just in the past week the student has opened up so much, it is like she is a completely different child. Her mom told us that she has stopped crying in the morning when they get to the school. The student has also started walking in to the school rather than being held by her mother. It is so neat to see her come running into our classroom with a smile on her face. She looks so confident!

Another amazing thing we have seen is the student open up verbally. She is trying to talk to us now and repeat the different things we say. The other day she repeated me when I said "water," "on," and "off." She was actively taking part in the hand washing process and she was really overjoyed!

She has brought a smile to my face each day especially when we are changing her diaper. The past couple of days she has started laughing at the changing table after lunch time. She just starts laughing and can't stop, it is like someone told her this great joke. It is so funny!

Finally one interesting thing I have seen the student do is she will hold my hand. Up to this point whenever we would hold her hand she would not hold our hand back. Her hand would just sit there loosely in our hand. This past week she held my hand back. I didn't realize it at first, but I was so excited when I realized what she was doing.

It has been wonderful watching her grow!

Case 12- Question 1 and 2

1. In what ways does Kenji encourage the students to implement a developmentally appropriate literacy activity?

I like that Kenji first pointed out the positive aspects of the students planned activity: “You have nicely incorporated the classroom theme of transportation into your plan. I see you noticed that many preschool children are already interested in recognizing letters in their name. That might be a good reason to focus on letter recognition for your literacy activity.” He then encourages the students to try to find other ways to incorporate literacy development. Other areas that help with literacy development are alphabetic knowledge, print knowledge, and oral language. Kenji wanted the students to think in a broader sense in order to include children at different levels. There is a chance that not all the children know the alphabet, so it is important for the students to make the experience meaningful for the children. For example children will be more familiar with letters in their name or letters they see in their environment (ex: stop, exit, dog, cat, etc.). Kenji discouraged the students from using a model because it could be very limiting and frustrating for the children. They might feel pressure to duplicate the model and get upset when they are not able to do so. Allow the students to make their own unique train.

2. How does the second activity plan allow for the different developmental needs and interests of the children?

The students took the comments Kenji recommended and implemented them into their new activity plan. This activity encouraged independence among the children in the class. The children got to: choose letters, pick up and feel the letters, glue squares and letters to create a unique train. Once the children were down with their activity they got to present their train to their fellow classmates. The second activity plan was very effective. This was shown specifically with the child Mika who chose two M’s for her train and that was all. Mika is familiar with M since it is in her name, but she is not familiar with other letters. The teacher asked Mika if she would like to add more letters but Mika was happy with two. I like that the teacher did not make Mika add more letters. The teacher really let Mika create her own piece of artwork just the way she wanted it to be.