Agrilife Extension Resources

To grow and excel as an early childhood professional, you must reflect on your teaching practices and child observation to make changes and adjustments to your teaching approach. Intentional early childhood professionals engage in reflective practices and create a professional development plan that builds upon their strengths and enhances their teaching.

After completing this 4-hour course, the learner will be able to describe what an intentional early childhood professional is, explain what reflective practices are and how to implement this information effectively to improve their teaching, explain why being intentional and reflective promotes the development and learning in the children they are teaching, and create a professional development plan based upon their strengthens.

Intentionality is one of the hallmarks of a high-quality learning program. This involves not only using a curriculum that aligns with child development and guidelines, but also ensuring instruction is targeted to the needs of each child in your classroom.

This 4-hour course for early learning educators discusses how to use the cycle of curriculum learning to plan whole group, small group, and individual level to appropriately meet the needs of all learners.

A major component of completing the process for the Child Development Associate (CDA) Credential is building your CDA Professional Portfolio. This portfolio contains all the documentation needed to meet the requirements of the CDA credential and will be part of your CDA Verification visit. This resource binder should be built to be used by you as you work with the children and families you serve.

In this four-hour course, the learner will be able to identify the essential components that must be included in the CDA Professional Portfolio, including the family questionnaires, the Reflective Dialogue Worksheet, the resource collection items, and the accompanying competency statement for each of the six areas required and the Professional Philosophy Statement. This binder will be part of the resources examined by the CDA Professional Development Specialist and used as a reflection tool during the CDA Verification Visit.

Knowing what children can do and what they know is powerful information that can guide early learning teachers to create appropriate learning experiences for their children. The purposes and types of assessments are examined.

This 4-hour course for early learning educators is designed to review the purposes of assessment, how to evaluate and interpret the results, and create a plan to share results with families.

Collaboration is an integrated part of how we build successful relationships, make connections, create support systems, and involve the community in the field of early childhood. Professionalism plays a critical role in how early childhood educators foster their collaborative efforts. Learning how to collaborate creatively and effectively is essential to being an early childhood professional.

After completing this 3-hour course, the participants will be able to explain what collaboration is, describe elements of professionalism, and list ways to collaborate in the early childhood profession.

As early childhood educators, you are not only keeping children safe and healthy through the environment you have in place but also teaching children about safety and modeling safe, healthy practices.

After completing this 2-hour course, the learner will be able to describe ways to keep children physically safe, explain how to teach children about safety and modeling safe practices, support wellness during routines, describe how to respond to injuries and emergencies, and engage families in safe practices.

Engaging families to become involved in their child’s early care and education sets the foundation for that involvement to continue throughout the child’s schooling. Helping families understand the importance of this involvement is critical. Families may not always understand how important they are in the education process, from early care onwards.

In this two-hour course, the learner will describe strategies for conducting orientations, holding formal meetings with families, discussing ways to support child development at home, encouraging parent involvement, and determining community resources available to help families and their children.

Children are born curious about the world in which they live. In this course, we discuss how to use a variety of dresearch-based learning materials to promote and enhance their natural curiosity, reasoning, and problem-solving in the areas of social studies and nature.

After completing this 2-hour course, the learner will be able to describe how social studies and using nature support children’s cognitive development. Social studies experiences should reflect the range of the children’s cultural groups. The learner will be able to give activity examples from these two areas.

Each of us comes from a unique place in the world. No one else has shared the same experiences in the same way. These unique experiences and where we come from have an impact on how we teach and how we interact with our children. It is critical to be aware of how these experiences impact us. Awareness of its influence and ensuring we are providing opportunities for children to gain a positive sense of self and pro-social skill development is crucial.

After completing this 2.5-hour course, the learner will be able to describe the importance of adults modeling prosocial behaviors, describe the importance of self-esteem and self-regulation, and explain the impact of our cultural identity on our actions and interactions.