Know

Just like adults, preschool-age children are affected by their environments. It is our job to ensure classrooms and other learning spaces for children make them feel welcome, secure, and ready to learn. Your classroom environment should be organized yet flexible and responsive to children's changing needs. This will help maximize children's engagement and learning.

正如您在第1课学到的那样，认知发展都是关于学习的。yabo电子游艺当孩子模仿你的行为时，这是认知发展;当他们假装成为一个商店守门员或妈妈时，这是认知发展;当他们在安静的时间读书时，这是一种认知发展;当他们绘制或练习写出他们的名字时，这是一种认知发展;当他们唱歌歌曲时，这是认知发展;当他们使用放大镜来探索冰，这是认知发展;当他们用他们的话语与同伴对他们的情绪交谈时，这是一种认知发展。

Environments and Materials that Promote Young Children's Cognitive Development

Children are natural explorers, but there is still a lot you can do to help them learn and grow. For example, you need to know what children explore. You also have to meaningfully design your environment and find materials to spark exploration. Finally, you can plan experiences that promote learning. This lesson will highlight the significance of purposefully creating environments and choosing materials that facilitate children's learning and growth. The final lesson in this course will discuss experiences and activities that promote cognitive development. Remember that children develop holistically and learn about the world around them in a variety of ways. Exploration and discovery are vital to young children's cognitive development. Your program should provide children with plenty of opportunities to engage in activities that promote exploration and learning in multiple areas: Math, Science, Social Studies, Language and Literacy, Art, and Technology.

How you facilitate and nurture this kind of learning is extremely important. In other words, the way you structure and organize your environments and materials for children can make a huge difference in their development. Your classroom environment should be organized in a way that it enables children to engage in meaningful learning. Think about your classroom interest areas. For example, when a child in your classroom enters a purposefully designed interest area, they know what materials they can find there, the type of play (loud, quiet, social, or solitary) that might happen there, the expectations for how to behave, and ways in which they can explore, learn, and have fun there.

As highlighted in Lesson 1, learning is both individual and social and it takes place within social and cultural contexts. Therefore you need to make sure your learning environment provides opportunities for children to engage in individual work, as well as meaningful interactions with peers and adults in your room throughout the day. Again, consider center work in your classroom. How are your interest areas set up? Are there interesting materials for children to manipulate, explore, and learn from? When thinking about interactions with peers, how are you setting up the environment for these interactions to take place? For example, do you consider providing fewer items (e.g., blocks, playdough, letter cut-outs, age-appropriate scissors) to encourage children to work with their peers, share, and learn from each other? When disagreements arise among children, do you encourage them to use their words and try to solve a situation on their own while making yourself available in case they cannot figure it out?

促进幼儿认知发展的课堂环境的特征

The National Center on Quality Teaching and Learning (2015) identifies features of the physical and social classroom environment that maximize young children's engagement and learning. These features refer to how the classroom space should be organized to facilitate children's meaningful participation in classroom experiences and include: well-designed physical spaces, relevant contexts, and intentional groupings.

精心设计的物理空间：想想你如何在教室中组织不同的兴趣区。大型团体工作以及小组或个人工作的区域是否有空间？是位于涉及响亮工作的不同地点的地区的相当工作的地区？用于创造界限的家具，并帮助直接或促进儿童在房间里的安全运动吗？你能看到房间里的所有区域能够监控孩子们始终在做什么吗？

Relevant Contexts:这些引用您为儿童提供的学习材料，玩具或yabo电子游艺物体与，学习和探索。所有这些材料都应有意义地选择，以支持儿童的发展和学习。yabo电子游艺当您对这些材料做出选择时，您应该问自己的问题，例如，这些材料支持您为孩子提供的学习目标吗？yabo电子游艺他们在文化上相关吗？他们有趣和有趣吗？他们是否促进了儿童之间的互动和交流？

Intentional Groupings:How you make decisions about grouping children in your classroom can impact their engagement and learning. How do you make decisions about grouping children? Do you consider the types of activities or children's ages, interests, or backgrounds? What are some other factors that you take into consideration?

In the参考资料本课程的部分您可以找到包含网站链接的引文国家质量教学中心中心yabo电子游艺(NCQTL). As you explore these resources, think about how you can incorporate some of these ideas to improve outcomes for all children in your classroom and program.

促进学龄前的探索和发现亚慱彩票

当孩子追求有趣的想法时，所有时间都会发生探索和发现。教师可以帮助孩子成为探险家。这看起来像什么？阅读以下环境和材料的探索。

发现中心：发现中心let children explore materials on their own. The best discovery centers are located near natural light. They include plenty of natural materials. Tools are available for children to explore materials. Children might use magnifying glasses, eye droppers, tweezers, screwdrivers, and balance scales. Children may also tinker with safe "take apart" objects (toasters, clocks, etc.). A class pet might live in the discovery center. Writing tools like paper, pencils, and clipboards are available for children to record their observations.

Investigations:当幼儿有机会探索他们的兴趣，幼儿茁壮成长。还称为项目或研究，调查给孩子们有机会使用研究来回答有趣的问题。例如，在家庭中的孩子们的利益之后，您可以促进关于不同类型的房屋的课堂调查，并参与儿童的活动，如阅读家庭的书籍，散步，看看不同类型的家庭，分享他们自己的信息家园，或在学校使用材料建造自己的房屋。

实验：实验can be a powerful way for children to explore their environments and objects. In experiments, children ask questions, make predictions, and test their hypotheses.An example of a common experiment is asking children whether objects will sink or float. Following children's interests, you can engage them in different kinds of experiments in your classroom environment.

Environments and Materials that Address the Needs of All Learners

您可以在您的学习环境中做很多事情，以帮助所有儿童满足重要的学习目标。yabo电子游艺第一个也是最重要的一步是收集有关您照顾中儿童的信息。你需要知道孩子能够做好什么，似乎很难。收集信息将有助于您了解可能帮助孩子的技能和策略。

学习通用设计（UDL;演员，2011）是您yabo电子游艺可以使用的一种策略。UDL帮助所有人在他们的环境中学习并取得成功。周围有普遍设计的例子：音频书籍，婴儿推车和轮椅的遏制切口，汽车无钥匙入口，电气可以开启。许多这些工具是为残疾人开发的，但他们为我们所有人提供了更轻松的生活。使用UDL的概念，一些教师在课堂上可以做些什么来支持具有特殊学习需求的儿童的示例是：使用图片计划，在阅读他们之前与儿童分享词汇单词。yabo电子游艺有关展示使用UDL的其他示例，请参阅本课程中的第5课，支持认知发展：经验和活动。

The Figure below shows three strategies for using UDL and offers examples of each.

Reflecting on Your Own Practices

It's important to recognize the messages you send in your classroom. Sometimes biases sneak into our environments, materials, or interactions。Awareness of your own bias is the first step in supporting development。Think about which of the following biases might be in your own classroom:

• Biased language。语言可以发送的性别信息。Adults might call children "baby girl," "big boy," or "cutie" rather than their given names. Staff might encourage girls to "be careful" while saying "boys will be boys." To fight this bias, youcould encourage peaceful solutions forall孩子们（避免不打击女孩或不击中戴眼镜的孩子）。一定要在女孩的外表和成就上平等评论。
• 陈规定型的游戏机会。Children are often encouraged to play in certain ways (e.g., girls with dolls and boys with trucks). Make sure boys and girls get equal access and encouragement for playing "house," woodworking, music, science, active play, and messy play.
• 偏见材料。有时，课堂的海报和材料存在陈规定型图像（例如，“战争涂料”，“全男性建筑机组人员”）。确保课堂上的图像同样地展示各种职业。确保残疾人的图纸或照片是尊重的图像。包括显示不同种族背景，社会阶层和家庭结构的书籍。

有很多方法可以提高课程，以提高儿童的理解和文化接受。以下是一些例子（Derman-Sparks＆Edwards，2010）：

• Classroom props or materials：Include props from a variety of cultures. Toy food, menus, books, dramatic play clothes, furniture, and musical instruments can all reflect experiences from around the world. Art materials should include a range of materials for representing skin tones and various artistic styles, fabrics of various patterns, and books about art around the world.
• 公告板和显示器：This space can be used to reflect and respect family traditions. Ask families to bring in pictures or other items for the board. Children can spend time researching their own or another culture and documenting what they have learned.
• Class books or biographies：关于班上儿童的书籍记录儿童和家庭的真正体验。鼓励孩子们创建关于他们的生命，想法和家庭的图片，图纸和文本。
• 家庭故事:为家庭提供材料和指示for creating a Family Book. Families and children can work together to talk about and record their family history and daily life. This can be a great way to introduce children and families to one another.
• Storytelling：Encourage grandparents or community elders to share stories of their childhoods with the class or group. These can be audio-recorded or transcribed to create keepsake books for the class.
• Messages from home：使用录音机，鼓励家庭成员在他们的家庭语言中录制简短的消息。当他或她心烦意乱或家庭时，这可以为孩子播放这一点。
• 音乐：Include music tapes or CDs and songs from different cultures during music time or circle time.
• Field trips：Visit community cultural landmarks. Go see a dance troupe, play, or musical performance that will broaden children's cultural perspectives.
• Collaborative work：Encourage children to work together in groups. This may minimize the pressure on a child who is learning English. It also exposes children to a variety of ideas and encourages creativity.
• 小吃和饭菜：邀请家庭分享与孩子们的传统餐或小吃。

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Explorations in Preschool

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There are many ways teachers can promote exploration and problem solving. Children need a balance of child-guided and adult-guided experiences. The Learning Environments course has more information on scheduling your day and designing meaningful environments.

First, and perhaps most important, teachers and staff in a classroom can adopt a general attitude of exploration (Dodge, Colker, & Heroman, 2002). When adults consider themselves fellow explorers in the discovery process, children benefit. Adults can model the creativity, thoughtfulness, and curiosity necessary for exploration. By showing their own interests in materials and experiences, adults can teach children about the value of exploration。

Explorations, discoveries, and investigations can be related to a wide variety of areas or concepts. Children can investigate science concepts, letters, sounds or numbers, music, the ways in which our bodies move, or the ways in which we can use art to express ourselves, our feelings, or ideas. You can set the stage so that children express their curiosities, have fun, and learn.

Modeling Curiosity

Perhaps the easiest thing adults can do to promote exploration is to hone their ability to ask meaningful questions. The best questions to spark scientific discovery are open-ended questions. Questions like, "Why do you think that happened?" and "What do you think will happen next?" start conversations and spark exploration.