Curriculum and educational program: Infinite possibilities!
In every child care educator’s day, there are a significant number of tasks to be completed: engaging in meaningful interactions with the children in our care, completing a myriad of routine tasks, observing the learning of children, and programming the curriculum for the interests and skills observed.
“Curriculum: in the early childhood setting curriculum means ‘all the interactions, experiences, activities, routines and events, planned and unplanned, that occur in an environment designed to foster children’s learning and development’. [adapted from Te Whariki].” Early Years Learning Framework.
In many educational settings, the term curriculum and educational program are used interchangeably. All decisions made in the development and ongoing analysis of the educational program may be influenced by the knowledge that educators gain from observing, analysing and assessing the learning, development and interests of the children in their care.
from “Educators’ Guide to the Early Years Learning Framework for Australia”
How each centre and educator presents their observations, planning cycle and curriculum can vary as much as the children attending our centres and will be influenced by the educators’ philosophies.
How educators have planned for the learning of children has evolved from boxes with learning areas with activities changed daily, to mind maps following interests, to child-focused discussion groups to plan the learning environment and foster engagement.
With the emergence of digital documentation methods, gathering the data required for planning an educational program has never been easier (link to obs post). With your centre’s own private Kinderloop, all observations are available to educators to observe and build into the educational program; encompassing the learning environment, intentional teaching moments and projects planned to extend upon interests and skills observed.
Representing the educational program is easy with Kinderloop. There are an abundance of ways to display the program being provided at your centre. Below are just a few ideas on how to display, document and review your curriculum.
Creating Specific Groups
The wonderful thing about Kinderloop is how easy it is to customise using groups and tags. It is possible to create a group for each room’s curriculum. Here educators can post photos of learning environments and add analysis and assessment either through editing the description on the photo or by adding a comment to the photo. Educators are able to add data to the comments if they see a child engaging with an educational area or add links made to observation posts made to individual children’s Kinderloops.
Creating Mind Maps
Expressing the curriculum as a mind map is another popular option for documenting and assessing the educational program. To keep things simple, there are now apps for your iPad or Tablet which mean that brain storming can be completed on the run on your device!
(Created using SimpleMind)
The mind map can then be saved to your photos and quickly posted to your Kinderloop as either a public or private post. Evaluation can then happen in the comments section. It is also possible to upload documents to your private Kinderloop meaning that supporting documents can be added to your planning documentation.
It is the task of educators to ensure that all children are represented within the curriculum and planning cycle. This is done through observation, analysis and assessment of learning and engagement within the educational environment. How you document your learning program is completely up to you! The tools now available to educators mean that these tasks are getting simpler and the possibilities are only limited by your imagination!
For many the process of moving from a paper based system of observing and recording children’s development is a daunting one. When examining the differences and similarities between paper based and digital documentation systems, the similarities far outweigh the differences and moving over is just a matter of a few simple clicks.
The National Quality Standard regarding observation documentation, programming and planning states that “Each child's learning and development is assessed as part of an ongoing cycle of planning, documenting and evaluation." How this is done is entirely up to the centre and educator. Paper based documentation has many formats (see picture for example) and these are often personalised depending on the organisation and centre requirements.
from “Observations and Reflections in Childhood” by Diane Szarkowicz (2006) Thompson Social Science Press
Within paper based documentation systems there a few boxes that must be ticked:
child’s name
date
observational data (jotting, running record or anecdotal record are generally used most frequently)
educators’ assessment of learning
analysis and future planning.
When making the move over to a digital documentation system, the format may be slightly different but the content remains the same.
Using an app like Kinderloop makes observation recording and analysis simple and quick, with links possible right in the recording stage. It also makes observational records searchable and follow-up possible with the click of a button.
There are two types of posts possible within Kinderloop: public (white shading and viewable by families and educators); and private (yellow shading and is viewable only by educators). Depending on the policies and procedures at your centre you may be able to post your observation and analysis on a public post for parents to see, or you utilise the private posts for recording analysis and assessment of learning.
Recording an observation is simple:
• take a photo (if you desire) of the event being observed, log into Kinderloop and link the photo
• select the type of post you would like to create (send to parents or private),
• select the child you are observing and any relevant groups
• type in your observation, either at the time for a running record or later for a jotting or anecdotal record (sometimes paper notes are still handy to jog your memory),
• assign the appropriate tags for your observation (learning outcomes, developmental areas, child interest, intentional teaching etc)
• record your assessment of the learning (this can be done within the post or within the comments section after the post has been saved)
• record your ideas for follow up and addition to the learning program
• save your observation by selecting Post and your observational record is saved to the centre’s Kinderloop.
The great thing about this observational record is that it can be quickly reviewed by all educators and is fully editable if you forgot something! Developmental records may be recorded and viewed on a device with the Kinderloop app or on a desktop or laptop computer using a web browser. Developmental records are securely stored within each centre’s private Kinderloop and easily archived for storage in line with regulatory requirements.
In the ever-changing world of Early Childhood Education and Care, there are so many things that educators must adapt to on a daily basis. Moving from a paper based system to digital documentation can be an exciting adventure; reducing the time spent programming and planning for children, sharing children’s explorations with families in real time and significantly reducing the environmental impact of documenting children’s learning.
When the National Quality Standard was released, I read the support guide cover to cover. The term “each child” jumped out at me. I began to ponder how we were ever going to provide evidence to assessment and compliance officers that we appropriately observed and assessed each child’s learning and development as well as providing an educational program that considered “each” child.
Quality Area 1
“An approved learning framework informs the development of a curriculum that enhances each child’s learning and development”
“Educators and co-ordinators are focused, active and reflective in designing and delivering the program for each child”
Ensuring that each child was considered when developing the educational program became a significant challenge and one that appealed to the list maker in me. I love a good checklist, spreadsheet or form that needs to be filled out so I quickly set about developing a range of tools that would ensure that each child was being observed across all developmental domains and that these observations were being used in the development and planning of learning areas and structured times within the learning environment.
With traditional observation and documentation methods, there was constant need for cross-referencing to ensure that all learning areas were observed and reported upon for each child. Analysis of the observations entailed examining data across a folder’s worth of paper and at times seemed never-ending and incredibly complicated. More than once I have found myself confused at my own checklist and spreadsheet and wondering where on earth I had put an observation that has been recorded but is now missing! Documenting learning links in traditional documentation is also complex and requires linking across a variety of document types in various locations.
With Kinderloop, all of these complex links, analysis and consideration in programming and planning became so simple. With all the data in one place and searchable, I found myself no longer missing observations and not even really needing my spreadsheet to ensure equality across the children in my care! Linking observations to the program and learning outcomes became as simple as adding a tag to a post. Developing the educational program with consideration for each child became a matter of simply looking up a specific group and the tags within.
The best part about this new form of documentation is that it is completely customisable, each educator within the learning environment can use it in a way that makes the most sense to them, altering and adding new tags, creating different groups and adjusting analysis and assessment of learning within the comments section.
Then came the ultimate checklist: Kinderloop health! This amazing feature is a statistic loving educator’s dream come true. This feature gives you a run down of how many posts have been made per child, who may need a few more posts, which learning outcomes are the most popular and which need to be examined a bit more. It is possible to see at a glance the number of posts for children within the entire centre and within an individual educator’s observational group - no more spread sheet, no more checklist; everything you need in one place for ease of assessment, analysis and linking!
As everything is located centrally, for assessment and rating or spot check it is easy to share information with assessment and compliance officers. It couldn’t be more simple to ensure that “each” child is being considered in the development of the learning program and that it this achievement is documented for assessment.
