Early Childhood Education Commons^™

Conceptual Development: How Do Early Educators And Teachers Support Children's Early Thinking In Stem?, Marilyn Fleer

2021-2030 ACER Research Conferences

As national and state-based reforms in early education roll-out across Australia, concern for building a well-qualified workforce to meet growing demand has intensified. In parallel with the reforms, teachers and educators are reminded by the recently released 2022 Early Years Learning Framework to design programs that support intentionality in play-based learning. However, the literature shows that despite the concept of intentional teaching being around since 2009, difficulties with how to do this remains. This presentation takes up this challenge, by 1) sharing the collective findings of 6 Australian Research Council-funded research projects into play and learning in STEM; and 2) …

Mathematical Mindsets: Fostering Student Engagement And Positive Mindsets Through The Use Of Challenging Tasks, Alison Hall

2021-2030 ACER Research Conferences

This paper explores the planned use of challenging mathematical tasks. These tasks provide the opportunity for students to improve mathematical thinking by working on problems that they do not yet know how to answer. This research involved a heterogeneous class of year 3 students from a Catholic parish primary school in the northern suburbs of Melbourne. A rubric was also developed to use in conjunction with these tasks, to support discussions with students, broaden their strategies in finding solutions and thereby improve their conceptual understanding. These pedagogical approaches were found to support the improvement of both students’ conceptual understanding in …

Bringing Learning Progressions Down To 2-Year-Olds In Reading And Mathematics, Prue Anderson

2021-2030 ACER Research Conferences

ACER’s learning progressions in reading and mathematics describe growth that is mainly focused on skills students demonstrate at and beyond school. These progressions have recently been extended down to describe earlier levels of growth so we now have seamless progressions from skills and understandings toddlers might demonstrate up to highly sophisticated skills and concepts. This presentation briefly outlines ACER’s work and identifies key implications for educators. The pathways that support early reading development were described in progressions for listening comprehension and sounds and letters. Along with an early mathematics progression, these were conceptualised as embedded in an oral language progression. …

Themes, Resources And Uptake Of Acer’S Science In The Early Years Suite, Gayl O'Connor

2021-2030 ACER Research Conferences

The Science in the early years series was developed to assist preschool and Foundation to year 2 primary educators to incorporate the latest research in science learning into their programs and teaching practice. This paper focuses on the educator resources developed to support early years educators implement activities to assist children to develop science concepts and inquiry skills. The activities are underpinned by evidence-based research that revealed 4 themes in the early years’ science literature.

Bringing Stem Resources To Underprivileged Students, Ethan Haque '21, Juan Chiu '21, Natalie Oliven '21, Delicia Chen '21

Student Leadership Exchange (SLX)

The Goal of our project is to address the lack of STEM education in lower-income communities caused by a lack of fun and easy to use resources. These centers will contain resources such as fun stem projects and workbooks that allow students to enjoy learning essential STEM-related topics. We intend to do this by implementing Little Stem Centers in school libraries and community centers. That benefit most of our potential partners as our solution provides a low-cost solution to stem materials that can be replenished and repaired easily using commonly found recyclables. The product will be sold to local school …

Hands Of The Future, Inc.: Connecting Youth With Nature, Amee Waltman, Rebecca Busse

Engagement & Service-Learning Summit

No abstract provided.

Learning To Think...Thinking To Learn, James C. Dean Mr., Julie Pfeiffer, Nancy Famulari, Julia Connett, Briana Kaparis

ICOT 18 - International Conference on Thinking - Cultivating Mindsets for Global Citizens

How do you create a systemic school culture of THINKING? In this interactive presentation learn how 3 Miami-Dade schools are using a set of consistent visual tools to teach critical, creative THINKING and communication to all learners. This session will capitalize on connecting the visuals to the latest brain research and its implications on the developmental needs of PreK-Adult learners. Examples of practice will be highlighted by these schools.

Sidewalk Math: An Innovative Approach For Engaging All Children In Mathematical Learning, Martha Barry Mckenna, Siobhan Dennis, Maureen Loony, Merideth Ekwall

Lesley University Community of Scholars Day

In kindergarten classrooms in six schools across Massachusetts young children are developing numbersense by walking, hopping, jumping, and skipping through colorful mathematical designs on carpets and sidewalks. The patterns and accompanying counting activities provide teachers with tools to engage young children in learning mathematics through movement and observation activities on colorful floor designs.

Lesley University’s Creativity Commons partnered with 20 kindergarten teachers and their 6 principals to form the Early Childhood Math Collaborative Inquiry Project in Fall 2017 to study the impact of the use of Sidewalk Math carpet patterns on children’s development of numbersense. Teachers from 3 urban schools …