Reflective Analysis of Portfolio Artifact

Rationale/Reflection

NAEYC Standard: STANDARD 5. USI NG CONTENT KNOWLEDGE TO BUI LD
MEANI NGFUL CURRICULUM

Candidates prepared in early childhood degree programs use their knowledge of
academic disciplines to design, implement, and evaluate experiences that promote positive
development and learning for each and every young child. Candidates understand the importance
of developmental 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. (NAEYC, 2010)

Brief Description of Evidence:
As part of my 243 Cognitive Curriculum course during the spring semester I developed a
unit framework. The unit framework was made from Gardners multiple intelligences and one
overall theme. Each activity was based off one of his intelligences, like musical, spatial, etc. For
each activity I coordinated a measurable objective and two Indiana Foundations.
Analysis of What I Learned:
Through the completion of this assignment I learned that children learn different. Each
one of Gardners multiple intelligences can be used to promote an individual childs learning. I
learned that these intelligences can be used to enhance learning by tailoring to each childs
learning style. After implementing the activities, I would self-evaluate how the activity went.
This allowed me to see what worked, what I could do differently, and how the children
responded to the activity.
How This Artifact Demonstrates my Competence on the NAEYC Standard:
This artifact demonstrates my competence in the using content knowledge to build
meaningful curriculum standard because I was able to create activities based on my knowledge
of Gardners eight intelligences that can be used to benefit individual children. Understanding
that not all children have the same learning style is important to give all children the highest
opportunity to excel. I was also able to implement some of these activities and was able to see
that children tend to gravitate to what interested them. Seeing this allowed me to see that having
activities available in different learning styles will get the children more interested, knowing that
they will be learning in a way that they feel most confident and helps them retain the
information.