"Guidance for implementing play-based emergent curriculum in preschool classrooms, gaining teachers' and families' support, and using emergent curriculum to build school readiness"--

Helps providers implement proven child-centered curricular practices while meeting early learning standards.

Learn how to connect your curriculum planning to children's interests and thinking. With this book, educators will discover a systematic way for using documentation to design curriculum that emerges from children's inquiries, what they wonder, and what they want to understand. Get strategies for designing a classroom environment at the start of the year to facilitate emergent inquiry curriculum. Each chapter guides teachers to document and reflect on their thinking through each of the five phases of a cycle of inquiry process, including observing, interpreting the meaning of the play they see, and developing questions to engage children.

Pre-K Stories offers a lively exploration of how one classroom community played with and collaboratively engaged in authorship. Through everyday stories, readers are invited to witness and engage with classroom practices that honor young children’s brilliance and build on their questions, interests, and strengths. Weaving together literacy, language arts, social studies, science, mathematics, and more, the authors illustrate how curriculum can be authentically and meaningfully integrated. They also offer a unique perspective on the development of language and literacy practices by framing children’s play narratives as the foundation from which rich curricula can grow. Pre-K Stories allows readers to experience the rich cadence of a classroom, while also coming to understand important theories that undergird early childhood teaching and young children’s learning. Book Features: Rich descriptions and examples of 4-year-old children’s authoring and writing processes. Engaging narratives from the perspective of an early childhood teacher and students. A unique perspective on the development of language and literacy practices through children’s play. A view of young children as powerful and capable of co-constructing curriculum with teachers. A dynamic approach that has broad implications for literacy and integrative curriculum practices in early childhood.

Vignettes focusing on emergent curriculum

Develop a curriculum inspired by children's emerging interests. Create an environment where children learn through play, inquiry, and exploration. This book explores the components of emergent curriculum and how its practices can improve the educational culture of early childhood programs. The updated edition includes new information on exploration of inquiry-based practice; reexamination of circle time and scripts for routines; expansion of invitations, including invitations for children learning a second language; new photos and documentation, and inclusion of Reggio Emilia. Susan Stacey has worked in the field of early childhood for over thirty-five years, as an early childhood educator, director, and practicum advisor. She obtained her Master's degree at Pacific Oaks College, Pasadena, California. Stacey frequently presents across North America about emergent curriculum, reflective and responsive practices, inquiry, documentation, and the role of the arts in early childhood education. She teaches adult early childhood education students at the Nova Scotia College of Early Childhood Education, and belongs to several professional organizations such as National Association for the Education of Young Children and the Canadian Childcare Federation. Stacey has presented frequently at NAEYC conferences, and has been published in Young Children, Young Exceptional Children, and Exchange. Her books with Redleaf include Emergent Curriculum in Early Childhood Settings, The Unscripted Classroom, and Pedagogical Documentation in Early Childhood.

Child-centered lesson planning provides a system to strengthen teaching. Great lesson planning helps teachers to choose a range of strategies that match what children are learning and doing-- from directed mini-lessons to facilitated group activities.