My Final Thoughts on Research to Practice

Hi again! Welcome back to my blog for my final blog post! I have had a lot of fun writing these blog posts and I hope you all have enjoyed reading them. I have definitely grown in the areas of  observation, question, research, reflection, and technology use. The first area that I have grown in is technology. I have never written blog posts before so it definitely took some time to get used to at first. I had to learn about what a blog was and what blogs consisted of. When I wrote my first blog, I didn’t really take my audience into consideration. I didn’t make it personal at first and I didn’t engage with my audience. For example my first post, Engagement During Circle Time, started off with “For my first blog post, I wanted to first give a introduction about my field placement.”  Then after we met in class and talked about engaging with our audience, I tried to incorporate that for my second post. I started off my second post, Movement in Preschool Classrooms, with “Hi everyone, welcome back to my blog! I had a lot of fun writing my first blog and I hope you enjoyed reading it!” Therefore, I tried to make it more personal and really engage with my audience by welcoming them back to my blog.

Another area that I have grown in is making my blog a cohesive story. I did this by putting all of the different elements like observation, question, research, and reflection together rather than keeping them separated. In my first blog post, these elements were separated in their own paragraphs which made the blog not flow as well. For example in my first blog post I wrote “This observation lead me to thinking about a question that I could research. After coming up with a couple different questions, I finally came up with the question that I wanted to research.”  This did not really make it a cohesive story. I worked harder on making the blog flow better for my other blog posts. For my fourth blog post, the blog flowed better because I didn’t state “This is my observation” or “The question I came up with is…” Overall, I definitely have grown in this area by making my blog posts flow better.

I have definitely learned a lot through this process. However, If there was one thing I could do differently, it would be to make my observations more detailed. I would do this by taking notes while observing. I never wrote anything down about my observations, I just tried to remember what I observed. This was hard at times because I would forget small details about what had happened. I would also recommend this to future ERCH 496 students. Even if you just take about 10 minutes to sit and take notes while observing, it will definitely help a lot. The notes don’t have to be super detailed either, they can just be points to remember for when you write your blog post. That is definitely something that I would do differently.

I am taking a lot away from this research to practice project that I will use as a future teacher. I definitely think I would use blogs as a future teacher. I think it’s a really unique way to write down what you have observed in the classroom and incorporate research into it. I also think a big take away from this is to reflect on your practices. No one is perfect and being able to reflect on your teaching styles is very important. Not only that but reflecting on how lessons went is also really important. It allows you to grow as a person and as a teacher. Overall, I have learned a lot from this experience. Thank you all again for reading my blogs! I hope to continue to write blogs in my future! 

Self-Regulation and Music in a Preschool Classroom

Hello again! I had another great week at my field placement. It was actually my last week there, and I will definitely miss all of the kids! Throughout my time at this placement, I have noticed that a lot of the children struggle with self-regulation. This includes following rules and directions and making good choices. I have noticed that in this classroom, they tend to use punishment rather than positive reinforcement when a child is not following the rules. For example if a student is not listening during circle time, the child will be excluded from the circle and will go sit by his/herself until circle time is over. In order to help students work on their self-regulation, I found an article titled Moving to the Beat: Using Music, Rhythm,
and Movement to Enhance Self-Regulation in Early
Childhood Classrooms, which was written by Kate E. Williams, that goes into depth about this topic.

Kate Williams talks about the connection between the use of music in a classroom and self-regulation. She talks a lot about how Early Childhood Educators play a huge role in “helping young children to regulate their emotions, thinking, and behavior that are the bases of self regulation” (Williams, 2018). Self-regulation plays a huge part in the classroom and educators do play a huge role in helping children learn to manage their emotions and behaviors. Williams also talks a lot about how self regulation growth is related to rapid brain development. This is where music comes in to play. Research has shown that music influences neurological brain development. Music also helps regulate emotions because certain types of music can be very relaxing for students. If students are having a hard time and are getting very frustrated, music could be very relaxing and calm them down.

Music is very easy to incorporate into a classroom and I think this is a really unique idea. I never thought about music being related to self-regulation before. Overall, I think incorporating music into a classroom can be very beneficial for multiple different reasons. This definitely is one way that can be used to work on self-regulation in a classroom.

 

References

Williams, K. E. 1. k15. williams@qut. edu. a. (2018). Moving to the Beat: Using Music, Rhythm, and Movement to Enhance Self-Regulation in Early Childhood Classrooms. International Journal of Early Childhood, 50(1), 85–100. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13158-018-0215-y

Movement in Preschool Classrooms

Hi everyone, welcome back to my blog! I had a lot of fun writing my first blog and I hope you enjoyed reading it! I’m very excited to write my second blog because the topic that I am going to be writing about is very important in education today.

For my second blog, I am going to be writing about movement in preschool classrooms. Movement is so important to incorporate not only in preschool, but all other grades as well. I chose to write about this topic because I noticed in the preschool room that I am in, there is not much movement incorporated into the classroom. Part of their daily schedule is to go outside and play for a half hour however, since I have been in this preschool class, they only went outside once out of the six times I was there. Some of you might be wondering if the reason they did not go outside was because of the weather, however that was not the case. The weather was perfect for most of the days they did not go outside so the only reason they did not go outside was because the teachers decided they did not want to go out. Even if the children didn’t get to go outside one day, there should be some other activity that gets all of the children up and moving so they aren’t sitting all day. The question that I wanted to focus on for this blog is “What are the benefits of incorporating movement into a classroom?”

The article titled Teachers’ Perceptions of Using Movement in the Classroom, provides a lot of benefits to using movement in the classroom. One fact that the article stated was “Evidence from multiple studies and research reviews suggests that physical activity improves many academic outcomes, including overall academic success, cognitive performance, reading and math skills, increased on-task classroom behavior, creation of positive learning experiences for students, and improved levels of concentration” (Benes, Finn, Sullivan, & Yon, 2016). I have noticed that many of the children in the preschool classroom start to lose focus later on in the day and I believe that this relates to the fact that there is not much movement incorporated into the classroom. It could be as simple as playing music and having the children dance around the classroom or even having the children stand up and stretch for a couple of minutes. If movement was incorporated into the classroom, the children would be more focused and engaged during other activities and lessons. Children, especially at this age, have so much energy and sometimes they just need to shake their wiggles out, and then they’re ready to learn! Movement in the classroom is so important and should be incorporated into the daily routine as much as possible.

Overall, I gained a lot of insight from this article that I plan to use in my future classroom. I definitely plan to incorporate movement into my classroom as much as possible. It not only will help the children focus more but it also will make them more engaged throughout lessons and activities.

 

References

Benes, S. ssparrow@bu. ed., Finn, K. E. ., Sullivan, E. C. ., & Yon, Z. (2016). Teachers’ Perceptions of Using Movement in the Classroom. Physical Educator, 73(1), 110–135. https://doi.org/10.18666/TPE-2016-V73-I1-5316

Engagement During Circle Time

For my first blog post, I wanted to first give a introduction about my field placement. My field placement is at a Kinder Care and I am placed in a Pre-K classroom. The children in this classroom are ages 4 to 5. The very first day of my field placement, I made so many observations. However there was one particular observation that I made that I really wanted to research. The observation that I made was that any time the children were on the rug, whether it was during circle time or during another activity, one little girl would not sit on the rug with the rest of the children. She would grab a chair and sit on the outside of the circle. Occasionally, I heard her ask to sit on the rug and sometimes the teachers in the classroom would let her but if she was talking or calling out, the teachers would tell her to go sit in her chair. I noticed this clearly wasn’t new to the little girl because when they would tell her to sit in her chair, she would stand up and go grab a chair and pull it over to the rug. As I observed this, I wondered if there was a better way to include this student during circle time rather than excluding her by having her sit by herself.

This observation lead me to thinking about a question that I could research. After coming up with a couple different questions, I finally came up with the question that I wanted to research. The question was “what is one way to incorporate all students in a preschool classroom during circle time?”

After doing some research I found the article titled “The Effects of Inflated Seating Cushions on Engagement in Preschool Circle Time” which is written by Anna M. Seifert and  Alexia E. Metz. I realized that this student would have a hard time focusing when she sat on the rug with the other students. However I think this student should be included with her peers on the rug. Therefore, when I found this article I thought it related to the observation that I made. This article states that these inflated seating cushions could “provide alternatives to sitting on the floor or classroom chairs” (Seifert and Metz, 2017). Research was conducted in a preschool to see if these cushions actually helped keep students engaged during circle time.  After research was conducted, they concluded that “during the weeks when children sat on wiggle cushions, their attention to activities and effort in participation was higher than the weeks during which the children sat on the floor” (Seifert and Metz, 2017).

After reading this article, I have gained a lot more information that relates to the observation that I made. I was curious to see if there was a way to include the student that I observed but also keep her engaged so she wasn’t distracting other students that were sitting around her. After looking at this article, I think this definitely could be one of the ways to keep her engaged and included during circle time. These cushion seats would keep her focused and also allow her to sit with the rest of her peers on the rug.

 

References

Seifert, A., & Metz, A. alexia. metz@utoledo. ed. (2017). The Effects of Inflated Seating Cushions on Engagement in Preschool Circle Time. Early Childhood Education Journal, 45(3), 411–418. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-016-0797-7