Question about "accessible materials"

Question:
Good Morning Anita,
Jennifer asked me to e-mail you with my question on the discovery area.
We have an unique school. Our classrooms are very small and so we have our centers set up in an open area called the bay in front of the classrooms. My question is, do we need to have live items in both areas, the room and the bay, in order for them to be counted?

Answer:
Thanks for your question. I hope you don’t mind if I post it on the blog for others to see.
There are two issues at play with this. One is access to and the opportunity to interact with living things. The other is having materials available for a “substantial portion of the day”.

In the ITERS-R, item 22 Nature/Science, indicator 5.2 states: “Some daily experiences with living plants or animals indoors (Ex. Plant in the room to look at,; staff point out trees, flowers, or birds from a window; children visit an aquarium).” (in the school). The key here is that it is evident that there is some interaction with nature while indoors, and it must take place during the observation to receive credit. It should be obvious that it is a daily occurrence. It can be in the classroom, your bay area, or anywhere inside your building.

In the ECERS-R, item 25 Nature/Science there are two things to consider. One is that “living things” are one of the nature/science categories referred to in the scales (see p. 51 in the ECERS-R scale). To receive credit in 3.1, items from 2 categories must be accessible. In 3.2 they must be accessible to the children for at least one hour during the day. To receive credit for 5.1 there must be 3-5 examples from three categories accessible, and 5.2 requires that they be accessible for at least 1/3 of the hours your program is open.

To score this item, the assessor will observe where the items are located and will record the times that the items in all locations are accessible to children, meaning that the children are free to use the items and can access them on their own. Therefore if the time that the children use the centers in the bay area is restricted, it may not be possible for the children to have long enough access to receive credit. You’ll need to assess the daily schedule and how that area is used. Also, the assessor will interview the teacher at the end of the observation. The teacher will have the opportunity to state other times during the day that these materials are accessible. Also, the posted schedule should list all the times during the day that materials are freely accessible.

I know this was a long answer, I hope it helps.

Online training opportunity - playground safety

In-service credit hour
Online opportunity –Playground Supervision for Child Care Providers
1-hour course (2 weeks to complete)
$15.00 ($20.00 after October 1) –cost includes course and certificate
www.playgroundsafety.org/training/online/childcare/course_supervision.htm

Broward Early Childhood Educators Conference

We need you! Presenters, volunteers, we need you all!

• Date: Saturday October 16, 2010
• Location: Piper High School 8000 NW 44th St. Sunrise

Please contact Anita Platt for more information.

Updates from Assessor Training w/ Authors' reps.

Home your summer is going well. We have also updated the Pitfalls a bit. We hand them out at our QC Workshops.

ALL SCALES:
- Ample space is “a challenge in Florida”, due to licensing standards for 20/35 sq. feet and no group size limits.

- The children should be “bathed in language” throughout the day (during play and routine care, small group and whole group, etc). Teachers should use a variety of descriptive words, about a variety of topics, including what the children are currently doing and asking questions about / discussing what the families did at home, over the weekend, etc.

- Group activities are when teachers “strongly encourage the children”, verbally or with placement of furniture, the children to participate in the same activity at the same time in the same location (place restrictions on free choice, such as circle, story, standing in line, eating meals, restroom down the hall, teacher-directed, formal group activity, etc.)

Activities where the teacher is doing something enticing and the children gravitate over to it and stay are typically not considered whole group activities, if they are taking place during free play time, indoors or outdoors. This would be an example of an informal group activity.

If the children are completely free to leave an activity (come and go as they wish) and have a choice of at least 2 alternative activities, then time spent in a group activity would probably not be counted toward the total group time observed.

When children choose to join an activity during free play, it is not counted as group time UNLESS the staff discourages the children from leaving the activity, if they so choose, OR they are restricted physically in some way (such as unable to remove themselves from the chair).

Whole group activities such as story, circle time, waiting times, meal times, teacher-directed activities ARE whole group times.

ECERS: After the observation has ended, the times the children spent restricted to whole group activities are added together. Then this number is divided by the total observation time, to calculate the percentage of time children spent restricted to whole group activities during an observation. The aim is for the children to spend less than 50%, or half of the observation, restricted to whole group activities.

ITERS: If any child is restricted to whole group activities for 20 minutes or more (total combined during a 3+ hour observation) credit will not be received.


Much Of the Day appears in 11 Items. Each Item is considered individually, so credit could be given in one item but not in others.

If even ONE child has limited access to enough of an item (some materials have amounts required), then credit will not be received. Also, if ANY child is denied access to an item for 20 minutes or more (total combined during a 3+ hour observation) credit will not be received. If any child is restricted to whole group activities for 20 minutes or more (total combined during a 3+ hour observation) credit will not be received.

Item 2-5.2, 7.2 Child-sized chairs are easily used/moved by the children. Child-sized tables fit the children and the chairs.

Item 5-5.2 At least 2 items on display MUST be fully 3-D to receive credit (move in space, have height, width and depth).

Item 9-1.3 Remind caregivers to remove the soiled gloves, use wipes on teacher’s and child’s hands BEFORE touching the clean diaper.


ECERS:
To give credit, outdoor time/access to gross motor space and outdoor equipment must total AT LEAST 60 minutes per day, weather permitting. Time spent standing in line to come inside, etc., as observed, does not count toward this 60 minutes of access. (ECERS 7, 8, 34, 35).

Item 16-3.3 and 28-3.3: We are hearing “Ooo wah, ooo wah shoot the arrow” again (a verse in the song “Ten Little Indians”).This phrase is an example of “stereotyping and bias”.

Item 18-5.1 Informal conversations are not didactic / for learning content. They are more for social interaction.
5.3 “Expanding” means restating what the child said and then adding more information.

Item 20-7.3 Art activities over several days means that the project has several stages (like drying over night and then additional steps….)

Item 30-3.1 Children who close the bathroom door are not being adequately supervised.

Vote for "The Parenting Village"on Oprah Network

Watch the video and you will agree that this program would be worth watching!
Enter your vote for BAEYC’s founding President, and then pass it on….
(Renew your BAEYC membership at www.naeyc.org)

From: Karen Deerwester [mailto:karen@familytimeinc.com] Sent: Monday, June 21, 2010 5:42 PMSubject: A friend has shared a link from Oprah.com

Feel free to send to your personal network, everyone at work and anyone else who’d help The Parenting Village – LOL!!!

Here’s a new link - http://myown.oprah.com/audition/index.html?request=video_details&response_id=9702&promo_id=1

We can vote as often as we like through July 3rd. Though I think it’s a good idea to “view” and “vote” so we don’t look like we’re stacking the votes. Also, I’d love it if you can leave a comment about what a good host I’d be & how much you like the conceptJ

Thanks sooo much!!!

Karen


Karen Deerwester, Ed.S.
Family Time Coaching & Consulting
www.FamilyTimeInc.com
Karen@FamilyTimeInc.com
561-212-3278

7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Life Lessons (from a workshop I attended, and the book by Steven R. Covey):
1) Be Proactive (self-awareness, take responsibility, consider '"Circle of Concern" and "Circle of Infulence')
2) Begin with the End in Mind (Sounds like good advice for Quality Counts participants!) personal vision, mission, mental and physical, benchmarks, goals, outcomes
3) Put First things First (prioritize, make To Do lists, clarify values, preserve and enhance relationships, make Deposits and Withdrawls from your "People Bank"
4) Think Win-Win ( mutually beneficial resolutions, consider other points of view and alternative strategies)
5) Seek first to Understand, then Be Understood (empathy, be genuine)
6) Synergize (value differences, create NEW solutions, 1+1 can = 3!)
7) Sharpen the Saw (Renewal, Avoid Burn-Out,Take care of yourself: physical, mental, spiritual, social)

VPK Kindergarten Readiness Test Results

For the ELC System Meeting, Lisa Feeney collated a report stating: For the past three years, analyses of the FLORIDA and BROWARD COUNTY kindergarten screening data indicate that "children who complete the VPK program out perform their peers who have not completed the program on each of the kindergarten screening measures."

Congratulate your VPK Providers and their VPK Staff!!!!