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 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.

Brief Description of Evidence:

In the course 243 Cognitive Curriculum, for the Fall semester of 2014, I
prepared a lesson plan that incorporated food with math skills and
documented the children I worked with by taking pictures of them
participating in the activity and recording their reactions. In this activity the
children recreated dominos with sugar cookies and M&Ms. I used their
pictures and reactions to create a documentation panel in the form of a
newsletter to send home for parents and families to see and also to let the
children revisit the activity be looking at the panel.

Analysis of What I Learned:

I learned the importance of creating an activity that is developmentally
appropriate for the age group I was working with but also creating something
that will stimulate and challenge their thinking. I also learned the importance
of preparation and implementation of the skills the activity required before
presenting the actual activity to the children.

How This Artifact Demonstrates my Competence on the

NAEYC Standard:
This artifact demonstrates my competence on the NAEYC Standard because I
designed an activity by assessing the childrens previous knowledge and
implemented what I observed into my lesson plan. By evaluating the children

throughout the activity I was able to see what skills they gained while
creating their cookie. Even in the process of creating my documentation
panel I took into consideration that the panel has to prove that the children
learned something new about mathematics. From an YC article the author
Hilary Seitz states that an effective piece of documentation tells the story
and the purpose of an event, experience, or development.