APST Standard 1: Know students and how they learn
| 1.1 Physical, social and intellectual development and characteristics of students 1.2 Understand how students learn |
| During my final placement at an Early childhood centre, I identified an area for improvement in learning through a situational analysis of the early childhood facility. I planned and delivered learning experiences that were identified to fill in gaps in play, social and emotional regulation and aligned to the Early years Framework (EYLF) (ACECQA, 2012). These include providing a healthy balance between relaxing experiences and spaces for children to independently play and providing opportunities for children to self-regulate through a play. “Self- regulation is the ability to manage thoughts, feelings and behaviour through internal (biological) and external (behavioural) strategies (Sims and Hutchins, 2013). Before implementation of the learning experiences, I collaborated with my supervising teacher to gain constructive feedback (LINK) on my ideas and an understanding and ensured my learning experiences aligned to the EYLF “Learning Outcome 3: Children have a strong sense of wellbeing, Children become strong in their social and emotional wellbeing” (ACECQA, 2012). First, I first implemented areas with books, cushions and blankets for a relaxing space for children to self-regulate. These spaces also included an official Zone of regulation poster and an adapted version featuring simple colours and emotion faces as a more relatable visual cue to suit the developmental age of the children (LINK). The Zones of Regulation is a framework in which children can develop awareness of feelings (Kuypers, 2011). This allows children to express and learn about their feelings through connecting their feelings to a coloured zone. The learning experiences were first introduced through story books (LINK) and songs such as “If you’re happy and you know it” that explore and identify emotions and emotional language. Then the first age group of children engaged in colour recognition skills through flash cards, chalk drawing (LINK) and painting in Red, Blue, Green and Yellow. This this is a required skill to self-regulate using the Zone of regulation. Then older children explored emotion story books, and then engaged in a discussion of the emotions and further connected to the coloured zones of regulation posters and framework. The children then answered the question, ‘How are you feeling today?” through connecting to the Zones of regulation framework by painting with Red, Blue, Green or Yellow. The result from this learning were younger children who were able to start to identify and colours and participate in songs and readings with staff. The older children were able to start to identify their everyday emotions through using a daily check-in with their educators on how they were feeling that day. The staff also reported independent use of the implemented relaxing area, where children removed themselves, used the posters, self-regulated, read some books and then later joined the whole group again. The results of these implemented learning experiences indicates that my choices were developmentally appropriate and as the children successful learnt the content but continued to engage in it. The children also were able to successfully build independent self-regulation skills to assist their own social and emotional development. |
