Supporting Children

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Supporting Children

Question

You are mentoring a college-age student (Francesca) who has just started taking child development classes and has never worked with children before. Please reflect on your readings on guiding behavior in the Program Guidelines Guiding Behavior/Family Engagement and in Chapter three, Teacher as Mediator, in our textbook.   

 

Read through the following scenarios and consider how Francesca is responding to the children. Pick three and discuss how you would talk to Francesca about her interactions with children.  

  • One two-year-old child grabs a toy from another child and the first child starts to cry.
    Francesca rushes over and consoles the crying child. She then turns to the other child and
    says, “That’s not nice, we don’t gab toys from our friends. Please say you’re sorry!”

 

  • Two four-year-old girls are throwing buckets of water on the slide. Francesca tells them
    to stop. The girls run back to the sink, fill up their buckets and, before Francesca can
    stop them, they throw more water onto the slide. Francesca takes their buckets and tells
    them to find something else to do.

 

  • Francesca asks a three-year-old to help her put out the chairs for snack time. The little girl
    looks down and her feet and say something quietly. Francesca repeats her request for
    help with the chairs, but the little girl continues to look at her feet. Francesca asks her to
    look up at her so she can hear her words. The girl continues to look at her feet; Francesca
    begins to put the chairs out by herself as the girl stands nearby with her eyes down.

 

  • Francesca is leading circle time for a group of five-year-olds. She is teaching them a
    new song. Several of the kids keep rolling around on the rug and Francesca keeps
    interrupting herself to tell them to sit still. One girl keeps playing with another girl’s hair
    and the girl yells about it every time. Eventually, Francesca has one of the girls switch
    seats. While she is doing that, two children get up and run out of the circle. Another
    teacher goes to get them while Francesca begins to teach the song again. One child yells
    loudly, “I hate this song!”. Francesca ignores her and continues to try to teach the song.

 

  • During snack time with three-year-olds, Francesca is passing the snack around and
    talking about the food. One girl loudly declares, “I really like this snack, who made it?”
    Francesca tells the girls that she prepared it and says thank you for the compliment. A boy
    says that he likes the strawberries, but thinks the carrots are gross. Francesca says, “you
    don’t like carrots?”
    “No I don’t!” says the boy.
    “Some people like carrots and some people don’t. Thanks for letting us know that you
    don’t like them,” responds Francesca and offers the boy another strawberry.

 

  • A kindergarten-age girl runs over and shows Francesca her drawing. “That’s beautiful!” she
    exclaims in a warm voice.

 

Then read through at least two classmates’ posts and ask questions/respond to their feedback for Francesca.

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This question is taken from Child Development 140 – Principles and Practices of Teaching » Spring 2022 » Discussion