The Early Childhood Series

Promotes effective mentoring by highlighting the practices of accomplished mentors as they guide and support early childhood teachers in developing the environment and instructional practices that scaffold social, emotional, physical, and cognitive development of children. Online modules include:

• Mentoring
  Focuses on the work of two mentors as they build relationships, set goals, and prioritize student learning with new and more experienced teachers. This module stresses understanding and addressing the individual interests and concerns that inform the work of teachers.

• Phonological Awareness
  Explores mentoring strategies that guide and support teachers in developing phonological awareness, a key skill shared by competent readers. This module stresses understanding how to help children move along the continuum of phonological awareness, from simple to more complex skills.

• Classroom Management
  Promotes mentoring techniques to guide teachers in developing, managing, and maintaining effective and appropriate environments for children. This module focuses on understanding and valuing the differences children bring to classrooms.

Focuses on all four components of literacy (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) by promoting the implementation of language-rich environments, thematic learning experiences, effective read alouds, and activities that support phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and vocabulary development. The online resources include:

• Setting the Stage for Children’s Talk
  Promotes modeling, supporting, and teaching effective oral communication and providing environments that foster sharing and risk taking. This module stresses developing language-rich environments that create contexts for oral communication.

• Read Alouds
  Offers guidance on the “nuts and bolts” of planning purposeful read alouds—from selecting books that connect with existing centers and ongoing learning to following up with activities to reinforce the content of the read alouds. Emphasis is placed on planning and practicing the read aloud.

• Building Vocabulary
  Focuses on using thematic units to develop vocabulary through authentic and varied learning experiences that are seamlessly woven through all the centers. This module stresses the use of thematic units to promote deep understanding of the vocabulary.

• Phonological Awareness
  Presents the key ideas in promoting phonological awareness along a continuum of skills that begins with listening and ends with blending and manipulating sounds—all in a purposeful, yet playful and developmentally appropriate way. This module stresses listening, rhyming, and using alliteration in enjoyable ways to develop love of language among children.

• Letter Knowledge
  Supports teachers in offering learning activities that focus on letter names, letter sounds, what letters look like, and how letters are written and in creating language-rich environments to support early reading and writing. This module stresses the critical role of letter knowledge in early literacy.

• Written Expression
  Focuses on the importance of writing to communicate ideas through individual and shared writing and by creating meaningful contexts that promote exchange of ideas. This module emphasizes the importance of planning writing activities to promote early literacy.

Helps teachers leverage children’s natural curiosity about math concepts as an impetus to plan and implement focused, yet developmentally appropriate, math learning experiences. The included online module is:

• Early Childhood Mathematics
  Explores how teachers can provide centers, read alouds, manipulative materials, and focused learning activities that promote development of early math concepts, such as shapes, patterns, size, ordering, and others. This module stresses using literature to support mathematical development.

Provides insights on developing, managing, and maintaining the structures, routines, procedures, and relationships that foster learning, independence, self-regulation, and love for learning. The online modules include:

• Classroom Management
  Focuses on understanding the importance of setting up a room to support instructional goals and minimize conflicts, on establishing familiar routines and procedures to support transition from home to school and promote positive interaction in the classroom, and on developing and maintaining positive and supportive relationships that promote respect for the individuality of each child and support learning. This module stresses the critical need for positive relationships in the classroom community.

• Pre-Kindergarten Response to Intervention
  Focuses on an initiative that aims to meet the needs of all children through a tiered instruction and assessment framework. This module stresses targeted and intentional instruction to meet the needs of all students.

• Social Emotional Learning
  Focuses on evidence-based instructional practices that support the development of important skills—skills that help young children as they establish a sense of self and begin to forge relationships with peers. This module emphasizes that preschool children with strong social skills and emotional self-regulation are more likely to enjoy success both interpersonally and academically in their future schooling experiences.

• Understanding Special Needs
  Focuses on understanding and supporting special needs children who struggle with regulating their behavior and attention, social and emotional responses, and receptive and expressive language. This module is not intended to provide diagnostic tools to teachers, but rather emphasizes information about these children and the kinds of teaching strategies that can help them in the pre-kindergarten classroom.

• English Language Learners: Culture, Language, Instruction
  Helps early childhood teachers understand and meet the needs of English language learners in their classrooms. This course explores the sociocultural issues that face English language learners in school and introduces teachers to the stages of language development.