Chapter 2: Mindwork

Explore Trial Questions

-Teaching Practices

1) Does having the same tutor facilitate Welcome and Reading segments of the curriculum with a set group of children for all sessions lead to more vocabulary exposure and conversation opportunities for each child?

2) Does having a consistent cluster of children grouped together for Welcome and Reading segments of the curriculum for all sessions lead to more vocabulary exposure and conversation opportunities for each child?

3) Could drawing/journals be included as part of the planning process before students move into the Centers element of sessions?

-Student Learning or Outcomes

1) Would progressive photo documentation and/or student drawings of student activity/learning serve a similar function as the recall part of the curriculum?  Would this allow for a longer recall narrative for the students to interact with?  Would students be able to construct such a narrative if provided with the proper materials?

School Policies or Outcomes

1) Would teachers, schools, and our program benefit from including teachers in our training process?

2) Could a classroom evaluation and curricular modification phase be considered prior to the start of the school year to fine tune our sessions to more closely match the pre-existing classroom/teacher culture and curriculum?

-Curriculum

1) Would students be more engaged by non self-directed elements (circle time, small group, welcome, reading) if they were intermingled with self-directed elements, rather than having the non self-directed elements clumped together and followed a long self-directed element?

2) Could opportunities for choice and planning be incorporated into the non self-directed elements and would this improve student engagement?

3) Could a targeted visual vocabulary curriculum be developed and integrated alongside our verbal vocabulary curriculum?

4) Could visual literacy training be included in our training session/materials so that tutors can incorporate visual literacy strategies in their readings and throughout session?

Position Yourself in Relation to the Question

-Who am I in relation to this idea?

Over the past year and a half, I’ve had the opportunity to implement my program’s curriculum in two very different classrooms.  The students in my classroom last year were very accustomed to a consistent classroom schedule and clearly defined expectations/roles.  These students were polite and attentive throughout our long periods of teacher-directed activities, but they were also often distracted even though it only became apparent when they were prompted to answer a question, predict, or recall events.  In this classroom setting, the difficulty in applying the curriculum was the danger of complacency and passivity—hitting the required curricular goals but not extending them to meet the interests/needs of the particular group of children.  This year, my students are more unruly.  Their restlessness displays itself in noncompliance and acting out.  It’s my belief that the same curricular shortcomings underlie the problems that I encountered in both classrooms.

-How does my position affect the way I approach and/or understand it?

As the facilitator of this program in the two classrooms, I am responsible for presenting the non self-directed materials in an engaging way.  Therefore, if students are not engaged by these materials, the fault is either with the materials or with my facilitation of them.  It’s possible that my facilitation skills are to blame for the shortcomings that I’ve noted and that my ideas for improving the curriculum are really just to make up for faults in my teaching skills.  However, from feedback I’ve observed in the weekly meetings that I’ve had with my fellow facilitators over the past year and a half, I’m under the impression that these problems are general to the program.

-What ethical issues might I raise?

There are not any immediately obvious ethical issues.  It is always tricky to compare the outcomes for students from differing backgrounds but my idea is that these changes would improve our curriculum regardless of background.

-Who will be best served by this study?

Students, teachers and facilitators involved with my program.

-Who might be affected or hurt by it, and how?

Again, this is not readily apparent.

-What are my hidden biases and assumptions?

That the shortcomings in my instruction are with the curriculum; that students would find self-directed activities more engaging (especially with an established routine for planning and reflecting on self-directed activities); that a general population of children (from a variety of backgrounds and at differing developmental levels) will experience improvements in their learning from a single set of curricular modifications.

Refine Your Question

Would incorporating visual planning/precorrects increase student engagement in all elements of our existing preschool curriculum (Welcome, Reading, Circle, Small Group, Centers)?

-Potentially unclear terms

+incorporating

+visual planning/precorrects

+student engagement

-Insider/Outsider

My insider is unsure of what I mean by “visual planning/precorrects” and rightly so—I’m not entirely sure what these tools will look like yet.  My outsider is also unsure of that term and asked for further explanation about what student engagement looks like in relation to the different parts of our curriculum.

-Theory

I’m merging at least two theories in this question:

1)      Clear expectations and routines are the foundations of classroom management and early childhood learning.

2)      Visual materials will reinforce the verbal instruction already provided.

And potentially a third (if I can incorporate a tool that gives students the opportunity to create their own visual plan):

3)      Self-directed learners will be more deeply engaged in the learning experience than extrinsically-directed learners.

-What’s bothering you?

I’m having a hard time committing to an exact research course, partly because I don’t expect to be allowed to change the curriculum as extensively as I am inclined to.  Ideally, I would like students to visualize and plan in a hand-on manner before all aspects of our curriculum, but I suspect that the best I can hope for is to include teacher directed visual aids before the teacher-directed elements and have students create their own visual plan before the self-directed Centers part of the curriculum.

-Subquestions

-Does a self-directed motor activity (drawing/writing) increase student engagement?

-Does a visualization process (student imagining their upcoming role) increase student engagement?

-…Still working on these…