ECE 315, Classroom Redesign

Courtney Gagné

ECE 315, Classroom Redesign

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This was a full-day head start classroom. Head start classrooms run in very different ways than other classrooms do, for example one rule is that the children have to brush their teeth after their breakfast when they come into school. There are seventeen children and four teachers; two of these teachers are assistants, another is the head teacher, and the last only comes in when she is performing observations, experiments, or if the head teacher steps out. Five of the children have individual education plans (IEP) and two have behavior modification plans. During my observations I was unable to individualize these particular children from the other children; they seemed to blend fairly well and were not taken out of the class at all. The children were between the ages of three and five and they all seemed to get along very well and were very welcoming to anyone who stepped into their classroom. As far as the layout of the classroom went originally; it was a very open design and centers seemed to be placed wherever they would best fit, as far as size, within the classroom.

When you walk into the classroom you see a fairly large classroom with open spaces and carpeting dividing the room into two separate halves. One of the first things I noticed in examining the room was that there was no area for children to get away. I decided to incorporate a loft into my redesign; with the upper floor being a get-away space as well as a listening and quiet writing area, and the lower floor being a science center. There would be a computer desk partitioning the science area from the other half of the classroom and small windows in the loft for children to look out of. There would be a window in the science center for children to look out of and explore their surroundings through. This would also create a great source of natural lighting, which we learned in our environments reading creates a positive influence on brain activity as well as other biological features. In order to help with ambience, the upper floor would have shaded reading lamps and flashlights. It would also be carpeted and have cozy beanbag chairs, pillows, and stuffed animals to read to or comfort the children. I think the addition of this area would be extremely beneficial because as we know from our environments reading; soft and warm environments lead to comfort, security, and a reduction of stress. The science center would be partitioned using a bookshelf that could store scientific puzzles and books on one side and on the other, math manipulatives and math games. This would lead to the math center; I added more chairs in order to have a more inclusive area for math. I also kept the math center and the blocks area in close proximity because these centers have a fairly similar noise level, and the activities done here can be fairly similar. I used a tapestry to visually partition these two areas from dramatic play. Dramatic play would be split between themed and non-themed. Themed would be partitioned from non-themed using a divider. Then the last area on the carpeted half of the room would be the circle area, which (outside of circle time) would be open for music, small storybook reading, reading large books, and acting out stories with other children. On the other half of the classroom, I kept the art center where it was originally because it was close to the sinks therefore it made for easy clean up. We talked in class and read in our Classroom Space Concepts article that it was logical to put messy spaces, like art and sensory, near the sinks. This is why I also incorporated the two sensory tables in this half of the room. I also took some thorough consideration into taking out the smaller of the two sensory tables since it seemed to not be in use and took up too much space for not much usage.

Classroom Center Materials

Art Center: incorporate a paint mixing tray with the two large easels, eye droppers for paint/water, unique mediums such as cotton swabs and different types of balls to try painting with, beads that the children can decorate and make bracelets with.

Water/Sensory Table: should include many different types of sensory mediums such as fake snow, water, soil, sand, seeds, and also different materials to explore with these mediums such as measuring cups, small eye droppers, shovels.

Blocks: small symbolic toys (people, cars, animals), various floor road maps, clipboards with paper and pencils, graphing paper, Lincoln logs

Dress-up: no hats, varying clothing for both genders, accessories (purses, watches, wallets, glasses), symbolic furniture.

Science Center: scientific books, scientific role-play clothing, clipboards, pencils, markers, class pets, light table with x-ray papers.

Math Center: number recognition games, paper & pencils.

Listening/Writing Center: large pocket board, small story books, stuffed animals, books on tape, tape players with many sets of headphones, notebooks, bean bag chairs.

Acting/Music/Library: large books, display board, small books behind curtain, small themed books, puppetry corner, many musical instruments.

Computers: include programs where children can work with artistic play (paint, interactive coloring pages), constructive play (games like tetris, roller coaster tycoon), and motor play (interactive movement games).

The art center was fairly equipped with almost everything that an art center should have for young children to explore with. I added a mixing tray to the easels because I think it is important in explorative play for children to be able to figure out that two colors mixed together make another color. I also added eye droppers and cotton swabs because these would help children master their fine motor skills, as well as learn new ways of exploring the world around them. Beads that children can decorate and make bracelets with is also a good example of graded challenges- which we learned about from Prescott’s balance powerpoint- because children may have more difficulty with stringing the beads onto a bracelet than they would simply decorating the beads.

The water/sensory table was not used while I was at the daycare so I am unsure as to whether they use it or not and also what is inside it. I think that children should have many different kinds of mediums to study within a sensory table. I think it is also important to make sure to ask them what they think of the mediums. It is also good to provide materials that give children a lot to do within a sensory table, if not they will wander and get bored with this toy. As Prescott noted in her balance powerpoint, the first key is to make sure there is enough for children to do. Especially in a classroom with children who have disabilities; these children need at least four choices available to them.

The blocks area also seemed fairly well equipped with all the materials it needed, but I thought it could use a couple more helpful things. I thought it would be good to incorporate a couple of floor mats that could be used to facilitate what children choose to build. For example, you could have one floor mat be a map of a zoo or a general layout of a zoo, that way this area would include for closed activity because the children could think of what normally goes in zoos. This also would incorporate the small symbolic objects because the children would most likely want to include animals in their zoo (or whatever they choose to construct) so that others know what they are trying to build. Graphing paper, clipboards, and pencils were added to this center because it offers the opportunity for practice of literacy in a center where literacy would normally be neglected. According to Gretchen Owocki it is important to include materials for literacy within every center so that children have more opportunities to practice and master their literacy skills.

I took out hats from the dress-up center because I thought it was a definite health hazard since hats can carry lice from child to child. I think a way to work around this would be if you had hats with the children’s names on them that they kept in their cubbies. I also said that there should be more of a variety of clothing, and that there should be clothing that is both gender-specific and not specific. We discussed in class that boys tend to dress up as girls and carry around their accessories because it is more interesting to them; I don’t think this type of play should be discouraged, but I do think it is important to include clothing for both genders and accessories for both genders since this type of play is fairly common. I also think that there should be some type of symbolic furniture because it seemed that the children tended to go to dress-up, get changed and then continue over to a different center having no idea what activity they could do that incorporated their change of clothes. This is also why I found it important to incorporate dress-up clothing into other centers around the room.

In the science center I thought there should be clothing that scientists may normally wear, or maybe even camouflage clothing that people would normally wear when exploring nature. I think this is important because it encourages children to role play or pretend play, and as we discussed in class pretend play is crucial to a child’s early development. I think that it would be great to include scientific books, paper, clipboards, and pencils because part of a science center is exploration and if children learn to write down what they’ve discovered they can also use that to help them develop their social skills by sharing what they discovered with their peers. Also as we learned in our play article, play must be facilitated through certain principles; these materials would help children to play actively. I think that the light-table with x-rays of animals or people would be a great example of Prescott’s hands-on/minds-on activity since children can decide which x-rays to look at and they can think about what they see and the possible similarities and differences between one x-ray and another.

The math center was another well-equipped area within my classroom. It seemed to have many of the needed materials like counting sheets with objects to use for counting, magnetic numbers that could be matched with the counting sheets for number recognition. I thought it was good, though, to add a couple of games that children could play mathematically. For example, a game where children have to spin a numbered spinner that tells them how many spaces to move, when they get to that space it has a number on it which they have to recognize and count up to. This would help with number recognition as well as counting. I think it is also good to include paper and pencils so that children have the option to practice writing their numbers.

The listening/writing center wasn’t well-equipped in my classroom. The original listening center only had two sets of headphones to one single book reader. There were no books on tape that I could see in reach of children. I think it’s important to have many tape players with many sets of headphones so that children don’t need to wait to use the materials that they want to. I also think it’s important to have well-labeled stories on tape, and doubles of those stories in books so that children have something to look at while they are listening to the story. As we learned in our environments article, soft and warm environments lead to feelings of security, warmth, and a reduction of stress. Since this area would also be useful as a get-away space there would need to be comfy furniture and the space would need to be warm, soft and comforting so that children would experience these feelings when they most need to. It is also good to include notebooks that would be labeled by the children’s names so that they could practice writing and name recognition.

When I went into the classroom they didn’t seem to have a music area. I thought this was a good area to incorporate with acting because children can use music to acting and play out stories. They can also incorporate musical instruments into their play in this area. I think it is important to put large books into this area so that children can look at the books and have the opportunity read them aloud to each other. This would help children to develop and practice their social skills. It would also be important to include smaller books that children can look at independently in this center because their play does not necessarily need to be cooperative. It would be great to include puppets or paper and pencils for children to make characters in their stories. This gives children many different choices within a fairly closed area.

As we read in our play article; computers are a fairly new technology and they can create an outlet for many different types of play. I think it’s important to get specific programs for children on computers; this way they don’t get bored. We can get programs like paint, or interactive artistic games where kids can choose colors of something that they’re creating. For constructive play we can get programs like tetris and games where children can construct and put things together through their own ideas. One example would be a game where children get to choose what buildings to put into a city, what color the buildings should be, how big or small the buildings should be, and how to put the buildings together. For motor play we can get programs where children can learn different types of exercises and practice them with the characters on the computer. I think it would be critical though to use a timer for computer activities so that children would get experience in other areas of play as well.

Original Class Schedule

8:15 Arrival/Cubbies/Mail

8:30 Breakfast/Bathroom/ Teeth Brushing

9:00 Reading/Puzzles

9:15 Morning Welcome Circle (class jobs, shared reading, and music) -Transition: musical names, motor movement/number recognition activity

9:30 Outdoor Time/Gross Motor Play

10:00 Language/Literacy Circle -Transition: plan for what center to go to

10:20 Centers

11:30 Lunch/Bathroom

12:00 Group Reading (on cots)

12:15 Nap/Quietly Resting

1:30 Snack/Table Activities/Lending Library

2:20 Music/Movement Circle

2:35 Outdoor/Gross Motor Play

2:55 Bus Dismissal

New Class Schedule

8:15 Arrival/Cubbies/Mail

8:30 Breakfast/Bathroom/Teeth-brushingtransition: quiet reading/journal writing

9:00 Morning Welcome Circletransition: musical names/motor movement/small group game

9:30 Outdoor/Gross Motor Play

10:00 Language and Literacy Circletransition: literacy plan for play

10:20 Centers/Cooperative groupstransition: motor movement/number recognition activity

11:30 Lunch/Bathroom

12:00 Quiet Reading/Puzzles (on cots)

12:15 Nap/Quietly Resting/Writing

1:30 Snack/Table Activities/Lending Library

2:20 Music/Movement Circletransition: reflection journal writing

2:35 Outdoor/Gross Motor Play

2:55 Bus Dismissal

I kept the class schedule fairly the same. I mostly just added transitions. The class seemed to have a fairly good schedule. From the morning until about naptime, the schedule followed an active-quiet-active plan. In class and from our Evidence-based scheduling article we learned that these classrooms tend to run more smoothly than classrooms that have long stretches of time where children simply sit and comprehend. I observed that even in long stretches of sitting, the teachers did well to incorporate active moments and movement. For example, as a transition during circle time a child was called up and rolled one die with numbers on it (for number recognition) and another die with pictures of movement on it, they were then asked to pick the number of friends that they rolled and to do that many trials of the movement that they rolled. I kept this transition because I thought it was a great way to get children back on task and to get them moving after a time of mostly sitting.

I added journal writing as part of a transition from breakfast to circle time so that children have a time to reflect on their weekend or the night before, also so that they can write about what they think they will do in circle time or throughout their day. In our scheduling article we read that pre-play planning time led to outstanding and long-lasting cognitive benefits. This journal writing transition offers a child-directed choice-based time for children to plan for play. It is also helpful for self-regulation, which we talked about thoroughly in class, because children get to choose to write in their journals or not and they also get to decide whether they will really do what they have said that they think they will do.

Another transition that I think is important to note is where I added a literacy plan for play during the language and literacy circle. I think it would be important to immerse children in literacy by having them write their name within a center on a whiteboard and then explain aloud what they plan to do there. This would support self-regulation, literacy, and cognitive development. I also thought it was important to include quietly reading and writing as options during naptime since it was a fairly short stretch of time for children to actually fall asleep. I think this is a good time for them to have the opportunity to read or look at books and to practice writing or drawing at their cots. The last transition that I added was at the end of the day just before the children went outside and were dismissed, at the end of the music/movement circle. I thought it was good to add a reflective journal time. This would give children the opportunity to reflect on what they did during the day, how they felt about anything that they did, what they learned throughout the day, etc. It would also give them the opportunity for self-regulation, again, because if they had previously planned in their journal what they were going to do, they could go back and reflect on if they actually did that or if they did something different.

Conclusion:

In summary, I felt that the classroom was fairly open and needed some closure and visual partitioning. I added tapestries as well as bookshelves as dividers between centers and I added a loft in order to incorporate more space for a larger science center and a cozy get-away space. In many of the centers there was little opportunity for inclusion; therefore I added chairs to many of the centers including math and computers. I thought that many of the centers were well equipped with novel materials but needed some more rare and innovative materials. I think that there should be more activities incorporated with the water/sensory table since it seemed to basically be used as a counter for other activities. I also think that the daily schedule should be made larger and posted somewhere within the classroom where children can see it and interpret it. This would make the schedule more child-friendly and more predictable. Overall, I thought that what had to be changed the most was the design of the classroom.