CAAEYC Conference 2019

 

This year six Bing teachers were among the presenters at the 2019 annual conference for the California Association for the Education of Young Children, offering four workshops on a variety of topics. The conference was held April 11–13 in San Jose. Following are synopses of the Bing teachers’ talks. 

 

 

Music is a natural way to extend stories, build strong literacy skills and deeply engage children in the classroom. Combining music with stories offers children an opportunity to learn about tempo and rhythm, verses and rhyme, repetition, and story structure in a way that unites and motivates children to develop both music and literacy skills.

 

This interactive workshop explored the value of music and literacy and the natural connections between them using music, stories, activities and songs. Associate Director Beth Wise, Head Teacher Nandini Bhattacharjya and former Bing Music Specialist Leslie Hart shared ideas, classroom experiences and examples of how they have created materials to extend literature through music. Participants learned how to enhance musicality in their classrooms while extending children’s experiences with story and print. The presenters used current research and understanding of how children learn to illustrate how music is connected to literacy development. They shared many examples of ways in which a musically rich environment invites all learners to be more deeply engaged in literacy, as well as offering techniques for educators to try in their classrooms. The workshop encouraged teachers to become comfortable and creative with designing and presenting material that is engaging for children—and to be more confident in their ability to do so. The participants experienced step-by-step examples, using instruments, songs, posters and video analysis. 

 

 

This interactive presentation shared our guidelines for interactions with children at Bing. The workshop included video analysis and discussion focusing on the teacher’s emotional awareness of the child, and on ways to model positive interactions that children can draw upon in their own lives. The presentation provided communication strategies for teachers to use related to:

 

Effective communication is a powerful tool in supporting young children’s development, but it’s not the only tool. In the presentation, we addressed some other approaches teachers can use to maintain a high quality of interactions in support of children’s development, including being authentic and sincere, teaching by modeling and, most importantly, enjoying their interactions with children.

 

—Lev Vygotsky, Mind in Society

 

Vygotsky’s quote supports our work with children and the focus on the deep value of effective communication strategies used by teachers in their classroom.  

 

 

Teacher-child interactions are the foundation of high-quality early education programs. Led by a skilled, reflective teacher, educational interactions can occur in any environment, with any materials, at any time. Early childhood educators make choices in each moment throughout the day about how best to support children’s play. Should I get involved? What do I say or ask? The answers to such questions vary, depending on how one views the teacher’s role in play. 

 

This workshop highlighted three research perspectives on how teachers can best support children’s play: improvisation, the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), and good-fit interactions. Participants used these views as lenses to examine videos that highlighted the interplay between teachers and children in various play-based activities. Education scholar Gert Biesta highlights the important role theoretical frameworks play in advancing teachers’ practices. As he points out, “By looking through a different theoretical lens, we may also be able to understand problems where we did not understand them before, or even to see problems where we did not see them before [...]. As a result, we may be able to envisage opportunities for action where we did not envisage them before.” These three approaches to studying teacher-child interaction vary in their goals for interaction, role of the teacher and intended outcomes for children. 

 

Participants reflected on how these approaches relate to their own practice and pedagogical choices. In addition, they gained awareness of different, valid ways of engaging in responsive interactions with the children in their care. The video examples of high-quality teacher-child interactions included teachers’ pedagogical choices that are relevant to working with children across all ages. Through analyses of these videos, participants identified key characteristics of responsive interactions that can translate to any educational context.

 

 

This presentation highlighted how the outdoor environment, when thoughtfully designed and realized, can influence how children use the space to enhance their development. The Bing yards, designed by Edith Dowley, founding director of Bing Nursery School, have a history of attracting children’s attention as a place for inquiry, exploration, discovery and collaboration.  

 

Participants were taken back to the early 1960s to learn about Dowley’s vision of developing the outdoor space as an important part of the learning environment. Dowley recognized the importance of curating a natural outdoor space where children could meander through the yard at their leisure, explore, and feel independent. The variety of natural life such as trees and bugs, and movable equipment such as boards and A-frames, created a space that encouraged freedom of movement, curiosity and investigation.  

 

The presentation also made a connection between the past and present through three current stories, told via video and slides, about the meaningful learning that continues to take place in the yards. The stories highlighted how teachers continue to set up the environment with relevant materials that draw children’s interest, which leads to focused learning investigations.