Overview

Semester I 2007 - 2008

Curriculum Goals-UWSP/HRG-UCLCC

from Creative Curriculum: For Pre-School, Diane T. Dodge;Laura Colker; Kate Heroman; Teaching Strategies, Washington, DC. 2002, Fourth Edition, direct quotes from pages 19-22 & 530.

• Social/Emotion Development Goals
  • There are three goals for social/emotion development:
    • Achieving a sense of self: knowing oneself and relating to other people-both children and adults.
    • Taking responsibility for self and other: following rules and routines, respecting others, and taking initiative.
    • Behaving in a pro-social way: showing empathy and getting alone in the world for example, by sharing and taking turns.
  • Goals/Objectives to Meet for "Sense of Self":
    • Shows ability to adjust to new situation
    • Demonstrates appropriate trust in adults
    • Recognizes own feelings and manages them appropriately
    • Stands up for rights
  • Goals/Objectives to Meet for "Responsibility for Self and Others":
    • Demonstrates self-direction and independence
    • Takes responsibility for own well-being
    • Respects and cares for classroom environment and materials
    • Follows classroom routines
    • Follows classroom rules
  • Goals/Objectives to Meet for "Pro-Social Behavior":
    • Plays well with other children
    • Recognizes the feelings of others and responds appropriately
    • Shares and respects the rights of others
    • Uses thinking skills to resolve conflicts
• Goals for Physical Development
  • There are two goals for physical development:
    • Achieving gross motor control: moving the large muscles in the body, especially the arms and legs, consciously and deliberately. Gross motor control includes balance and stability; movements such as running, jumping, hopping, galloping, and skipping; and physical manipulations such as throwing, kicking, and catching.
    • Achieving fine motor control: using and coordinating the small muscles in the hands and wrists with dexterity. As these fine muscles develop, children are able to perform self-help skills and manipulate small objects such as scissors and writing tools. The achievement of fine motor skills generally lags behind gross motor development.
  • Goals/Objectives to Achieve for "Gross Motor":
    • Demonstrates basic locomotors skills (running, jumping, hopping, galloping)
    • Shows balance while moving
    • Climbs up and down
    • Pedals and steers a tricycle(or other wheeled vehicle)
    • Demonstrates throwing, kicking, and catching skills
  • Goals/Objectives to Achieve for "Fine Motor":
    • Controls small muscles in hands
    • Coordinates eye-hand movement
    • Uses tools for writing and drawing
• Goals for Cognitive Development
  • There are three goals for cognitive development:
    • Learning and problem solving: being purposeful about acquiring and using information, resources, and materials. As children observe events around them, ask questions, make predictions, and test possible solutions, learning reaches beyond just acquiring facts. Persistence and knowing how to apply knowledge expands their learning even further.
    • Thinking logically: gathering and making sense of the information by comparing, contrasting, sorting, classifying, counting, measuring, and recognizing patterns. As children use logical thinking, they organize their world conceptually and gain a better understanding of how it works.
    • Representing and thinking symbolically: using objects in a unique way, for instance, a cup to represent a telephone, a broom to represent a horse, pretending, for instance, to be mommy or a firefighter; portraying the world through charts or pictures, for instance, making a graph to show changes in the weather over time a drawing to show what happened to a character in a story. Representations and symbols free children from the word of literal meaning and allow them to use materials and their imagination to explore abstract ideas.
  • Goals/Objectives to Meet for "Learning and Problem Solving":
    • Observes objects and events with curiosity
    • Approaches problems flexibly
    • Shows persistence in approaching tasks
    • Explores cause and effect
    • Applies knowledge or experience to a new context
  • Goals/Objectives to Meet for "Logical Thinking":
    • classifies objects
    • compares/measures
    • Arranges objects in a serious manner
    • Recognizes patterns and can repeat them
    • Shows awareness of time concepts and sequence
    • Shows awareness of position in space
    • Uses one-to-one correspondence
    • Uses numbers and counting
  • Goals/Objectives to Meet for "Representation and Symbolic Thinking":
    • takes on pretend roles and situations
    • Makes believe with objects
    • Makes and interprets representations
• Goals for Language Development
  • There are two goals for language development:
    • Listening and speaking: using spoken language to communicate with other, enlarging one’s vocabulary, expressing oneself, understanding the oral speech of others, participating in a conversation, and using language to solve problems. As children learn to listen and speak, they gain control of themselves and their world, relate effectively to other, and gather and store more and more information.
    • Reading and writing: making sense of written language, understanding the purpose of print and how it works, gaining knowledge of the alphabet, writing letters and words. When children begin to read they gain access to new worlds of information and faraway places, including the world of imagination. Writing things down expands memory, communication, and understand.
  • Goals/Objectives to Meet for "Listening and Speaking":
    • Hears and discriminates the sounds of language
    • Expresses self using words and expanded sentences
    • Understand and follows oral directions
    • Answers questions
    • Asks questions
    • Actively participates in conversations
  • Goals/Objectives to Meet for "Reading and Writing":
    • Enjoys and values reading
    • Demonstrates understanding of print concepts
    • Demonstrates knowledge of the alphabet
    • Uses emerging reading skills to make meaning from print
    • Comprehends and interprets meaning from books and other texts
    • Understands the purpose of writing
    • Writes letters and words