SILA KARPAT

DENZ AKYEL

REFLECTION

We chose the Shapes concept from the National Curriculum of Early Childhood Education.
We thought that we can make children practice many skills at the same time while learning
shapes. Some of these skills are matching, grouping and forming patterns. Also, while
choosing the unit, we thought the concepts we prepared activities for and we realized that
most of our activities about shapes were effective during our practice we did last semester so
we decided to prepare three different activities for the Shapes concept and we chose three
shapes which are triangle, circle and square. While preparing our unit plan and lesson plans,
we had difficulty in Select Strategies, Technology, Media, and Materials step. We prepared
the activities as if children meet these shapes for the first time. Therefore, we thought how we
can use prepare and these materials so that they will be effective during the activity and these
information will be permanent for the children. We considered the skills children practice
during the activity and prepared the materials. For instance, we thought we can use
infographic when children are expected to make comparison between two shapes since they
can see the characteristics of these shapes at the same time. Also, we thought about the
Require Learner Participation part since we should make children active during the
activities. Because they meet the shapes for the first time, we have to give information about
these shapes by using materials but they also need exploration during this process to
internalize the shapes better. Thus, we both focused on teacher directed and child centered
strategies while writing our activities. We stated some prerequisite skills for the children in
our unit plan. While doing activities about shapes, they had to know some skills and we did
not write these skills randomly. Our audience is 4 5 year olds. We considered their
developmental level and the experiences we had during our practice. Thanks to our practice,
we got knowledgeable about childrens developmental levels and areas. Therefore, we
assumed that 4 5 year olds who know matching and grouping. Also, they are familiar with
forming patterns by using 2 different shapes. For the time allocation, we focused on one shape
per lesson. We think that they will know about the circle when we cover it for an hour but to
make children internalize it, we should remind them while doing activities about the other
shapes. Thus, when we do an activity about the square shape, we covered square and gave
information about the triangle shape so that children remember them and practice the
knowledge they had before. Also, we thought of the elements of the ABCD model which are
audience, behavior, condition and degree. We have our condition and the audience so we
focused on the behavior and the degree parts. We considered the behavior part as the skills we
SILA KARPAT
DENZ AKYEL

want to give to the children during the activity. According to our opinion, children can have
difficulty in remembering the all information we covered so we did not write the degree as
%100. If we want them to remember all the information about each shape, we have to prepare
more activities about them in the future. As we mentioned above, while we were writing our
activities, we assumed that children will meet the shapes for the first time. Thus, we had to
give information about them. Here, we used one of the teacher directed methods which is
direct instruction. Then, we wanted children to explore these shapes and to be part of the
activity so we integrated art and play to the math activity. We wrote that teacher brings some
materials to the class. In this way, children can do hands-on experiences. They see the picture
of the shapes but the important point is exploring the shapes and identifying the edges by
touching them. Moreover, we prepared the materials by considering the skills and the
information we want to give them. For example, we wanted to revise circle, square and
triangle so we should have a material that includes information about these shapes. Thus, we
chose Prezi as a material. Another example is that we wanted to do evaluation to see whether
children internalized the shapes and their characteristics so we prepared a quiz by using
Google Forms. We preferred to use an eclectic theory to prepare our activities. Our activities
aim to show children the concept of shapes. Since children have just started to learn the
shapes which are circle, square, and triangle, we had to use teacher-directed activities.
However, we did not want to limit our activities to only teacher instruction and we tried to
include children-directed parts in our activities. We firstly wanted to give children the square
shape, the next week triangle and square shapes and the last week circle, triangle and square
shapes. We were affected by the Zone of Proximal Development of Vygotsky. Children start
from the easy task which is learning about square and then they move on to harder tasks such
as differentiating square from other shapes which are circle and triangle. We did not focus on
only one philosophy because each of them has parts to contribute to the teaching process. To
help our students achieve the learning objectives, we designed some materials by using the
technology. After setting our objectives and prepare teacher-directed and child-directed
balanced activities around these objectives, we thought about which material would help the
children achieve the objectives. We prepared presentations, concept maps, videos and quizzes
to help us, the teachers and the students during the teaching process. We planned to utilize
these because each child learns in a different way so the teaching process should provide
children with many different learning opportunities. The visuals in the presentations can help
the student who is a visual learner or the video we prepared can help the student learn who is
a musical learner. We planned the learner participating as to make children active learner
SILA KARPAT
DENZ AKYEL

during the process. Since we want them to internalize the shapes, we prepared some art
activities where they form their favorite animals by using squares. We prepared games about
shapes where children work as a group. The three activities we prepared focus on making
children engaged in the process. We tried to support their engagement in the process by using
technology and preparing many materials such as videos for presentations and quizzes for
performance assessment. Since formal assessment is not appropriate in early childhood
education, we planned performance assessment for the third week. To do this, we designed a
quiz by using Google Forms. In this quiz, we used many pictures and asked questions such as
Which one is not a square, which one is different than the others? etc. Since children do not
know how to read, the teacher will read the questions and children will answer. We included
these kinds of questions because our objectives are designed to help children identify the
shapes and know their characteristics. With the help of the quiz, we will be able to assess their
learning and also the effectiveness of our teaching and the materials we used. According to the
evaluation and the success of the children, we will able to revise our plan and instruction
methods.