Overview
During this Performance Task, you will participate in a field experience in either an infant or a toddler setting. You will first meet with your Host Teacher to explain the Assessment and discuss considerations of developing a respectful, supportive, and challenging experience with a child or small group of children in her/his class.
You will then develop and implement these experiences and conclude the Assessment by gathering feedback from your Host Teacher on your experience with the child or children and engaging in your own reflection on these experiences.
Professional Skills: Written Communication and Applied and Collaborative Learning are assessed in this Competency.
This Assessment requires a submission of two files:
- Infant or Toddler Experience: Planning Template
- Infant or Toddler Experience: Student Reflection
Instructions
Before submitting your Assessment, carefully review the rubric. This is the same rubric the assessor will use to evaluate your submission and it provides detailed criteria describing how to achieve or master the Competency. Many students find that understanding the requirements of the Assessment and the rubric criteria help them direct their focus and use their time most productively.
Note: For this Written-Response Assessment, you are required to draw from not only the resources for the Topics but also your experiences, observations, and host teacher and other professionals who work in your field setting. Your conversations with these professionals and your observations in the setting are essential to the successful completion of the Assessment. As part of this assessment, after you have concluded your field activities, you will need to meet with you Host Teacher to fill out your final evaluation and submit it along with your assessment. For additional information regarding the field experience requirements and expectations, please review the BSECS Field Experience Handbook found on the BSECS Field Experience Website.
Access the following to complete this Assessment:
- Infant or Toddler Experience: Planning Template
- Infant or Toddler Experience: Student Reflection
- BSECS FE Verification and Evaluation
Developing Experiences with Infants and Toddlers
“The adult’s role is not to teach, but to observe and reflect on what infants/toddlers are experiencing and how they learn — and then to support the process through interactions, their relationship with the child, and provision of experiences in an environment that contributes to the child’s success”. (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2010)
What do you want to discover with infants or explore with toddlers? How do you want to participate in fostering their growth and development? How can you let children take the lead, building on their interests, and sometimes modifying your plans in order to truly partner in their development and learning? In this Competency Assessment, you will develop and implement a respectful, supportive, and challenging experience with very young children—in an infant setting or in a toddler setting.
Keep in mind for this Field Experience Competency Performance Assessment, your goal is to:
- Explain what the Competency Assessment entails to your Host Teacher, and then participate in a reflective conversation with the Host Teacher of the infant program or the toddler program. During the conversation, discuss how best you can participate in fostering the development and learning of a child or group of children in each age group. Ask for the teachers’ help not only to identify the children, but also to understand who they are as individuals – their interests, developmental levels, abilities, and cultural contexts. Also, discuss how best you can build on children’s interests, apply developmentally appropriate practice, and respect that all interactions with young children need to be based on relationships that involve observation, care, and individualization for strengths, needs, and interests.
- Complete the Infant or Toddler: Planning Template based on what you have learned from your Host Teacher and the resources for this Competency.
- Participate in the experiences you have planned with the infant(s) or toddler(s) identified.
- Complete the infant or Toddler Experience: Student Reflection portion.
- Complete the FE Verification and Evaluation with your Host Teacher. You can print this off or fill it in together electronically. This Evaluation needs to be submitted with your assessment.
