A Story Evolves – Documentation of a Long-term Project in a Preschool Classroom
Presenter
Eva Kovacs, NY Early Childhood Professional Development Institute
Session / Time
- Breakout Session II
- Friday, April 27, 1:15 - 2:30 p.m.
- Amersfort Room
Description
This presentation is a documentation of a long-term project with 3 and 4 year olds, which was developed based on the children's interests and by making their learning visible through photographs, work/language/ conversation samples and recordings over the 7 months period.
Goals / Content / Intentionality
We will look at an example of emergent curriculum in action, and discuss how teachers observed children to inform their ongoing curriculum planning. Participants will learn about the role of observation and how to analyze collected evidence to develop a curriculum, which is relevant, meaningful and responsive to the interest of the children and context of their own classrooms.
Participants will realize while analyzing and reflecting on the documentation how important is to develop a curriculum based on children's interest to nurture their curiosity, sense of wonder, play. Indeed, these same elements are essential for teacher development as well, in order to support our own creativity, experimentation and understanding of child development. The presentation also demonstrates how can we utilize the environment, and provide a variety of materials/opportunities for explorations to provoke children's thinking to extend their learning.
Eva Kovacs, NY Early Childhood Professional Development Institute
Presenter Bio
Eva Kovacs, NY Early Childhood Professional Development Institute
Eva Kovacs has been working with children, families and early childhood educators for over 25 years in the USA and Hungary. She has taught in public and private settings, worked as a preschool curriculum specialist, mentor teacher and coach/trainer. Eva was a mentor teacher in a state funded, Abbott program in Plainfield, NJ for 11 years where she supervised student teachers from local universities and collaborated with their professors. She coached them how to develop long-term projects with 3 and 4 year olds – based on the principles of the Project Approach & Reggio Inspired practices, - and how to involve children’s parents in the process. Eva applied and secured grants to fund the gardening program at the school to help young children in urban setting connect science with real life, hands-on experiences. She initiated and collaborated with colleagues to exhibit children’s work in the program to “make learning visible” for parents and visitors. This has resulted in a shift towards documenting children’s learning at the school.
Since 2015 Eva works as an Early Childhood Coach/Trainer at the NY Early Childhood Professional Development Institute (PDI). She has provided training and technical assistance to Pre-K for All programs and works closely with ECE teachers and directors in NYC to support/guide them in implementing developmentally appropriate, culturally, linguistically and emotionally responsive practices in their setting. Eva received her BA in ECE/Elementary Ed. from Hungary and an MA in Curriculum, Instruction and Supervision from Rider University, NJ.
