Reflective Analysis of Portfolio Artifact Rationale/Reflection NAEYC Standard: Standard 5.

Using Content Knowledge To Build

Meaningful Curriculum. Candidates prepared in early childhood degree programs use their
knowledge of academic disciplines to design, implement, and evaluate experiences that promote positive domains and academic (or content) disciplines in early childhood curriculum. They know the essential concepts, inquiry tools, and structure of content areas, including academic subjects, and can identify resources to deepen their understanding. Candidates use their own knowledge and other resources to design, implement, and evaluate meaningful, challenging curriculum that promotes comprehensive developmental and learning outcomes for every young child. (National Association for the Education of Young Children, 2011)

Brief Description of Evidence: During the spring of 2013 as part of my ECED235

course,I wrote a weekly lesson plan and then implemented it. I use a variety of resources when I planned my activities. These resources include but are not limited to other educators, websites, other teaching books such as Mailbox, I then observed the children as they went from area and to area. I was then able to see what activities they enjoyed and what ones they had little or no interest in. I then used this information to make the centers that was not as appealing to the children more appealing to them by adding different materials. For the centers that was appealing I added duplicates of the items that appealed to the children.

Analysis of what I learned: Through completion of the this lesson plan I am able to
see what type of developmentally appropriate activities that the children enjoy and this enables me to create other activities that they may enjoy as well. I reflected on the activities after completing each one, I looked at what worked, what didn't work and what I could do next time to change it so it would work in the future or eliminate it all together.

How This Artifact Demonstrates my Competence on the NAEYC Standard: I was able to use the knowledge that I had gained over the course of the semester
to write and implement a weekly lesson plan. These lesson plans contained hands on, interactive developmentally appropriate activities based on the Indiana Foundations which covered all academic areas and developmental domains. I also used my knowledge of children to write and implement individualized activities for every child in the class. Every activity that I developed meet a specific objective from the objectives listed in Teaching Strategies so they met a specific goal.