New Notes for ECERS-R and ITERS-R

Additional Notes for Clarification for the ECERS-R and ITERS-R


These notes do not change any of the requirements in the printed scales, they merely add additional information to help in accurate scoring.

Be sure to replace older notes with newer notes.

Most recent changes are in orange:

10-09: Items 4 and 5 07-12: Bleach/water solution ratio, Item 12

06-10: Items 20 and 28 09-12: Item 11

11-10: Items 7 and 8 11-12: Bleach/water surface time

03-11: Item 2 01-13: General Notes (addition to handwashing)

07-11: Handwashing, Item 10, 12, 13, 27

09-11: Item 24

01-12: Item 22

04-12: General Notes, Item 6, 10, 12

01-13: General Notes (addition to handwashing)


General Notes:

In order to clarify the different but related functions of cleaning, sanitizing and disinfecting to remove germs, “Caring for Our Children" states that cleaning means physically removing dirt and contamination using soap, water and applying friction, thus exposing any remaining germs on the dry, clean surface. Sanitizing means reducing germs on an inanimate surface or object to a safe level. Disinfecting means destroying germs on an inanimate surface or object. A sanitizer should be used on food contact surfaces or any object that is mouthed. A disinfectant should be used only on diaper changing tables, toilets, counter tops, door and cabinet handles. Only EPA approved products are acceptable, and all sanitizers and disinfectants must be used according to the instructions on the container in order to be safe.

If a bleach/water solution is used as a sanitizer the solution is 1 tablespoon to 1 gallon of cool water.

If a bleach/water solution is used as a disinfectant, the solution is 1-3 tablespoons to 1 quart of cool water, or 1/4 to 3/4 cup of bleach to 1 gallon of cool water.

The bleach/water solutions used as a sanitizer or disinfectant must remain on the surface for at least 2 minutes to be given credit.

Explanation of Terms Used Throughout the Scale:

This note should be added to the "Explanation of Terms Used throughout the Scale" that begins on page 6 in the ECERS-R scale:

Handwashing and hand sanitizer use: The 2011 edition of Caring for Our Children (page 113) states that hand sanitizers can be used in place of handwashing unless hands are visibly soiled. Use can be by adults and children 2 years of age and older. Therefore the use of hand sanitizers is acceptable when scoring these indicators as long as the product contains 60-95% alcohol, manufacturer’s instructions are followed, and very close supervision of children is provided to ensure proper use and to avoid ingestion or contact with eyes and mucous membranes. Be sure to check to be sure that the manufacturer’s directions for use are followed exactly, because if not, do not give credit for any time when not followed. You should ask to see the original container with directions for use, if it is not observable. If children are not closely supervised when using the sanitizer, consider in supervision–related indicators for the item specifically, and also in Safety and Supervision.

If hands are visibly dirty, handwashing, according to the required procedure is still required, although the time for rubbing soapy hands together before rinsing is changed to 20 seconds rather than the original 10 seconds. Antibacterial soaps should not be used. Children using shared art or sensory materials must wash hands, or use hand sanitizer according to directions, both before and after use.

Handwashing or use of a hand sanitizer is required for all ERS observers upon entering the program.

The use of some shared art and sensory materials will not require hand washing before use. Moist or wet materials are more likely to spread germs than dry materials. For example, shared crayons would not require hand hygiene before or after use, while having two children share play dough, or finger paint on one surface, would require it. Similarly, hand hygiene would not be required before using shared dry sand (just after), but if water were shared, then hand hygiene would be required both before and after use.  

Why Preschool Shouldn't be Like School

New research shows that teaching kids more and more, at ever-younger ages, may backfire.



Ours is an age of pedagogy. Anxious parents instruct their children more and more, at younger and younger ages, until they're reading books to babies in the womb. They pressure teachers to make kindergartens and nurseries more like schools. So does the law—the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act explicitly urged more direct instruction in federally funded preschools.



There are skeptics, of course, including some parents, many preschool teachers, and even a few policy-makers. Shouldn't very young children be allowed to explore, inquire, play, and discover, they ask? Perhaps direct instruction can help children learn specific facts and skills, but what about curiosity and creativity—abilities that are even more important for learning in the long run? Two forthcoming studies in the journal Cognition—one from a lab at MIT and one from my lab at UC-Berkeley—suggest that the doubters are on to something. While learning from a teacher may help children get to a specific answer more quickly, it also makes them less likely to discover new information about a problem and to create a new and unexpected solution.



What do we already know about how teaching affects learning? Not as much as we would like, unfortunately, because it is a very difficult thing to study. You might try to compare different kinds of schools. But the children and the teachers at a Marin County preschool that encourages exploration will be very different from the children and teachers in a direct instruction program in South Side Chicago. And almost any new program with enthusiastic teachers will have good effects, at least to begin with, regardless of content. So comparisons are difficult. Besides, how do you measure learning, anyway? Almost by definition, directed teaching will make children do better on standardized tests, which the government uses to evaluate school performance. Curiosity and creativity are harder to measure.



Developmental scientists like me explore the basic science of learning by designing controlled experiments. We might start by saying: Suppose we gave a group of 4-year-olds exactly the same problems and only varied on whether we taught them directly or encouraged them to figure it out for themselves? Would they learn different things and develop different solutions? The two new studies in Cognition are the first to systematically show that they would.



In the first study, MIT professor Laura Schulz, her graduate student Elizabeth Bonawitz, and their colleagues looked at how 4-year-olds learned about a new toy with four tubes. Each tube could do something interesting: If you pulled on one tube it squeaked, if you looked inside another tube you found a hidden mirror, and so on. For one group of children, the experimenter said: "I just found this toy!" As she brought out the toy, she pulled the first tube, as if by accident, and it squeaked. She acted surprised ("Huh! Did you see that? Let me try to do that!") and pulled the tube again to make it squeak a second time. With the other children, the experimenter acted more like a teacher. She said, "I'm going to show you how my toy works. Watch this!" and deliberately made the tube squeak. Then she left both groups of children alone to play with the toy.



All of the children pulled the first tube to make it squeak. The question was whether they would also learn about the other things the toy could do. The children from the first group played with the toy longer and discovered more of its "hidden" features than those in the second group. In other words, direct instruction made the children less curious and less likely to discover new information.



Does direct teaching also make children less likely to draw new conclusions—or, put another way, does it make them less creative? To answer this question, Daphna Buchsbaum, Tom Griffiths, Patrick Shafto, and I gave another group of 4-year-old children a new toy. * This time, though, we demonstrated sequences of three actions on the toy, some of which caused the toy to play music, some of which did not. For example, Daphna might start by squishing the toy, then pressing a pad on its top, then pulling a ring on its side, at which point the toy would play music. Then she might try a different series of three actions, and it would play music again. Not every sequence she demonstrated worked, however: Only the ones that ended with the same two actions made the music play. After showing the children five successful sequences interspersed with four unsuccessful ones, she gave them the toy and told them to "make it go."



Daphna ran through the same nine sequences with all the children, but with one group, she acted as if she were clueless about the toy. ("Wow, look at this toy. I wonder how it works? Let's try this," she said.) With the other group, she acted like a teacher. ("Here's how my toy works.") When she acted clueless, many of the children figured out the most intelligent way of getting the toy to play music (performing just the two key actions, something Daphna had not demonstrated). But when Daphna acted like a teacher, the children imitated her exactly, rather than discovering the more intelligent and more novel two-action solution.



As so often happens in science, two studies from different labs, using different techniques, have simultaneously produced strikingly similar results. They provide scientific support for the intuitions many teachers have had all along: Direct instruction really can limit young children's learning. Teaching is a very effective way to get children to learn something specific—this tube squeaks, say, or a squish then a press then a pull causes the music to play. But it also makes children less likely to discover unexpected information and to draw unexpected conclusions.



Why might children behave this way? Adults often assume that most learning is the result of teaching and that exploratory, spontaneous learning is unusual. But actually, spontaneous learning is more fundamental. It's this kind of learning, in fact, that allows kids to learn from teachers in the first place. Patrick Shafto, a machine-learning specialist at the University of Louisville and a co-author of both these studies; Noah Goodman at Stanford; and their colleagues have explored how we could design computers that learn about the world as effectively as young children do. It's this work that inspired these experiments.



These experts in machine learning argue that learning from teachers first requires you to learn about teachers. For example, if you know how teachers work, you tend to assume that they are trying to be informative. When the teacher in the tube-toy experiment doesn't go looking for hidden features inside the tubes, the learner unconsciously thinks: "She's a teacher. If there were something interesting in there, she would have showed it to me." These assumptions lead children to narrow in, and to consider just the specific information a teacher provides. Without a teacher present, children look for a much wider range of information and consider a greater range of options.



Knowing what to expect from a teacher is a really good thing, of course: It lets you get the right answers more quickly than you would otherwise. Indeed, these studies show that 4-year-olds understand how teaching works and can learn from teachers. But there is an intrinsic trade-off between that kind of learning and the more wide-ranging learning that is so natural for young children. Knowing this, it's more important than ever to give children's remarkable, spontaneous learning abilities free rein. That means a rich, stable, and safe world, with affectionate and supportive grown-ups, and lots of opportunities for exploration and play. Not school for babies.

Question: Will heavy tape covering staples on a bulletin board be suficient?

Answer:

In the "All About ITERS-R" on p.49 we discuss this issue, and tape is listed as a potential hazard.


As you know, the main concern about staples or thumbtacks is the possibility that children could pick them off and scratch or puncture their skin, or put them in their mouths. Unfortunately, even very strong tape often does not adhere securely enough to the wall or display board, so that it cannot be picked off by the children. If the tape is picked off, it is also a choking hazard.



A better solution is to use a sturdy, transparent plastic covering or display case attached to the wall, behind which children's work can be safely displayed and touched, as we also suggest in the All About entry.



Thelma Harms

Media Screen Time

"Many kids use and understand media devices and platforms better than we do. But their technological abilities are often ahead of their emotional maturity and judgment," advises James Steyer, founder of Common Sense Media, in Work & Family Life (September 2012; workandfamilylife.com). Steyer shares research results the impact of screen time on preschool children:








A landmark study at the University of Washington showed that for every hour per day that preschool boys spent watching violent TV shows, they had three times the risk of developing behavioral problems at age 7. This was true even when they were watching cartoons on commercial channels, which often have more violence than adult shows.





For each hour of TV young kids watch, they have a 10 percent higher chance of attention problems at age 7, including restlessness, trouble concentrating, and impulsive behavior.





Visual images may over stimulate and rewire preschoolers' developing brains. Learning to read and write takes time and patience. Kids who are used to the fast pace and instant gratification of screen media may easily get bored.





More than two hours daily of screen time also increases the odds that kids will be overweight. They are exposed to a barrage of ads for high-caloric, sugary foods — and when they are sitting in front of a screen, they are not running, jumping, and moving around.

Shared from "Exchange EveryDay"

Invest in Quality

Quality: What It Looks Like




The quality of a child’s future depends on the quality of caregiving in the first five years.

This is particularly true of our most at-risk children. Benefits that can accrue from

a first-rate early learning experience come only if the setting is safe, healthy, stimulating,

thoughtful, organized and—perhaps most important—led by well-trained, attentive

teachers. Here’s what to look for in a successful early learning program.





Quality: What It Looks Like



The quality of a child’s future depends on the quality of caregiving in the first five years.

This is particularly true of our most at-risk children. Benefits that can accrue from

a first-rate early learning experience come only if the setting is safe, healthy, stimulating,

thoughtful, organized and—perhaps most important—led by well-trained, attentive

teachers. Here’s what to look for in a successful early learning program.



What you want to see:



Educated, attentive, and engaged teachers and staff



· Teachers with four-year degrees and specific training in

early childhood education.

· No more than eight infants and toddlers and no more than

20 preschoolers in a classroom.

· Teacher-to-child ratios of 1:3 for infants and 1:10 for

preschoolers.

· Teachers who crouch to eye level to speak to children.

· Teachers who hold, cuddle, show affection, and speak

directly to infants and toddlers.

· Families and teachers exchanging information about the

child’s development and learning progress.



A safe, healthy, and child-friendly environment



·

A room well-equipped with sufficient and appropriate

materials and toys.



·

Classrooms in which materials and activities are organized

logically and placed at eye level for the children.



·

Materials and toys accessible to children in an orderly display.



·

Centers that encourage safe, outdoor playtime.



·

Frequent hand-washing by children and adults.



·

Children offered breakfast, lunch, and a time to nap.



·

Visitors welcomed with appropriate parental consent.



Stimulating activities and appropriately structured

routines



·

Children receiving a variety of stimuli in their daily routine

using indoor and outdoor spaces and age-appropriate

language, literacy, math, science, art, music, movement,

and dramatic play experiences.



·

Children participating with teachers and each other in

individual, small-group, and large-group activities.



·

Children who are engaged in their activities.



·

Preschoolers who are allowed to play independently.



What you don’t want to see:



Inattentive, overwhelmed, or unengaged staff



·

Unengaged teachers sitting on the side of the classroom

not participating with children.



·

Shouting, swearing, or other displays of hostile discipline.



·

Infants and toddlers crying without being soothed and

supported.



·

Teachers speaking to children only to control or direct

behavior.





·

Teachers who are unresponsive to children’s needs or

attempts to communicate.





·

Children being asked closed-ended (“Yes or No”) questions

instead of “how” and “why” questions.





An unsafe, unhealthy, or uninspiring environment



· Small, cramped centers or homes without designated

appropriate spaces for different ages.

· A center or home that smells or looks unclean, or has

visible safety risks.

· Use of television or video to occupy children.

· Children easily distracted or frightened by visiting strangers.

· Disorganized or inaccessible play centers.

· Insufficient, damaged, or inappropriate materials or toys.



Activities and routines that are too chaotic or inflexible



·

Children wandering aimlessly, left unsupervised, or

displaying unchecked aggression.



·

Children restrained in car seats or in high chairs at times

other than meal time.



·

Children spending a lot of time waiting for turns or standing in lines.



·

Children expected to sit at desks or perform highly

structured tasks (worksheets), or other forms of

age-inappropriate expectations.



·

Lack of children’s self-directed creative/imaginative play.









Quality: What It Looks Like



Identifying Quality Programs



Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS)



Similar to rating systems for restaurants and hotels, a QRIS

awards quality ratings to early learning programs that meet a

set of defined program standards.



A QRIS should have five elements:



1. Standards ranging from basic licensing to higher

quality standards.



2. Accountability measures and monitoring processes

used to determine how well programs meet standards

and to assign ratings.



3. Program and practitioner outreach and support, such

as training, mentoring, and technical assistance.



4. Funding incentives awarded to programs when quality

levels are achieved.



5. Parent education efforts. Most QRIS award easily

recognizable symbols, such as stars, to programs

to indicate the levels of quality and to inform and

educate parents.



Currently, 19 States (CO, DE, DC, IN, IA, KY, LA, ME, MD, MS,

MT, NH, NM, NC, OH, OK, PA, TN, and VT) have a statewide

QRIS with all five elements.



Source: National Child Care Information and Technical Assistance Center



Program Accreditation



Accreditation is a voluntary process designed to improve the

quality of early learning programs. Accreditation systems

require programs to meet defined standards and engage in

extensive self-study and validation by outside professionals to

verify that quality standards are met. Research has

demonstrated that accreditation positively affects program

quality, including benefits to children, families, and staff.

Several organizations accredit early learning programs; the

National Association for the Education of Young Children

(NAEYC) is an example of one that is highly regarded as an

indicator of quality programs.



Program Quality Assessments



A range of assessment tools can evaluate an early learning

program using observations of practice and the environment,

and surveys or interviews of teachers or parents. Some

commonly used assessments include:



· The Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS), an

observational tool that measures the quality of teacher–child

interactions in pre-kindergarten classrooms.



· The Environmental Rating Scales, which are available for

infant and toddler settings (ITERS), pre-school settings

(ECERS), family child care settings (FCCERS), and

school-age programs (SACERS). They evaluate physical

environment, basic care, curriculum, interaction, schedule

and program structure, and parent and staff education.



Child Assessments



Parents, providers, and policymakers struggle to balance the

need for measures of children’s development and learning with

concerns about the proper role of assessment when dealing

with very young children. When chosen appropriately, child

assessments can provide information that helps programs

continuously improve. Common tools include:



·

Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, which

measures physical, motor, sensory, and cognitive

development in babies and young children.



·

Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA), a tool to

measure social-emotional strengths and behavioral

concerns.



·

Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), which measures

comprehension of English vocabulary.



·

Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS),

measures used to regularly monitor the development of

pre-reading and early reading skills.



·

Woodcock-Johnson, an assessment of cognitive and

language abilities.



·

Bracken Basic Concept Scale, which determines a child’s

school readiness and knowledge of English-language verbal

concepts.



·

Work Sampling System, an assessment that uses ongoing

teacher observations to document children’s skills,

knowledge, behavior, and accomplishments.

Racism article

www.tuscaroras.com/graydeer/pages/racism.htm

Click on the link for a well written article that explains well the reasons that the song "Ten Little Indians", and other common references to Native Americans are racist and inappropriate to use.

New website address

Please note, our website YRL has changed. You can find our information and forms at:

www.broward.org/humanservices/communitypartnerships

Then click on Child Care Licensing and Enforcement, and the link to the Quality Counts page.