Inside-Out/Upside Down Lesson Planning

Every Early Childhood Professional know it is preferable that children learn through play. The environment is to be set up to help children to learn through exploration and discovery. Teacher directed learning is not only discouraged. It is developmentally inappropriate and not professional. So, the question becomes how do we create lesson plans which allow for proper classroom interactions? My session at the Online Quality Conference will answer this questions. Below is the description.

Every week thousands of Early Childhood Professionals sit down to write lesson plans. These plans are what teachers use to guide the development of the children in their care. This process is ideally about creating activities to allow Abby to explore dinosaurs, while also allowing Sammy to create lovely meals. However, many times it has been created for them by the corporation they are headed by, who have no idea what the interests of the children. In addition, Paul has trouble with his motor skills, and Sarah is working on her speech. These issues also need to be addressed, but the curriculum purchased and assigned use by the leadership, can be so broad it hinders a teacher's ability to narrow down the weekly activities to support these particular needs.

We all know the classroom is supposed to be a child centered environment developing their development, interests, and needs. However, the curriculum tends to be either too specific or to vague to really meet these needs. Though we all know the goal of Early Childhood is to allow the children to learn from the environment and their own interests most programs have difficulty in making that happen.

Inside-Out/Upside-Down Lesson Planning helps teachers to change their focus in lesson planning from the curriculum-focus to children-focused. Teachers learn observation techniques, use of child developmental domains, and tailoring of current curriculum to create lesson plans which will provide child directed classroom content. Teachers will be able to :

Use classroom observations to:

Create activities which support individual children's interests.

Provide challenging activities to support the development of all children in the classrooms

Use the understanding of Domain Development to promote growth and development of classroom environments which develops each child's understanding of their abilities and support weaknesses

Create lesson plans that are truly led by children's interests and developmental needs while staying within the framework of whatever curriculum is being used by their center.

Want to know more and enroll in the Online Quality Conference? Click here.