Early Childhood Education Reflection Paper

This semester, I have many goals that I would like to achieve in relation to early childhood education. All of these goals that I have set for myself align with the UCM dispositions and the code of ethics for the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). Also, I wanted to make sure that my goals were based on "current knowledge and research in the field of early childhood education, child development, and related disciplines," an ideal found in the NAEYC Code of Ethics (2011, p. 2). That is why I either linked my goals directly to the NAEYC Code of Ethics or to the Bredekamp text, Effective practices in Early Childhood Education: Building a Foundation, that we are using this semester.

I have created several goals for this semester based on the

Two aspects of communication that I would like to improve upon this semester are providing specific feedback and asking open-ended questions. I want to provide more specific feedback because I find myself saying "good job" or "I like it" a lot. Specific feedback is "feedback in which teachers provide specific information on a child 's performance or respond to questions," and it "helps focus the child 's attention on the process of learning" (Bredekamp, 2017, p. 280). Specific feedback also "helps children expand their learning and understanding, rather than focusing on correct answers" (Bredekamp, 2017, p. 280). When I say, "good job," a child gets a sense of approval rather than a feeling of accomplishment. If I were to say, "You cut that paper all by yourself and now you have more pieces to color," that directly addresses the child 's accomplishments and illustrates how it benefited them. Another facet of verbal communication that I would like to improve upon is asking more open-ended questions. Research has shown that asking "open-ended questions - those that require children to analyze