Monday, June 29, 2009

Progression Lists

At the end of every school year I get very enthusiastic about tweaking my record keeping methods. This year I have two summer projects related to this: one is the creation of lessons progression lists (click here!), and the second is a progressions list of developmental milestones for children ages 3-6 (in the works).

In order to keep a clearer "bigger picture" of all of the lessons and materials encompassed in the 3 years of learning at our school, I typed up a progressions list of the lessons and materials in each area. I have used a different format of this kind of time line during all my years of teaching, and have found it especially useful when creating my weekly work plan. I think the new format, a simplified spreadsheet, will help me keep in mind the relationship between what a child is doing and where that work can be guided to next in each of the areas. It may also help with presenting lessons that are inter-connected within the different areas.

These are my own progressions lists, created with the ages suggested in my training at MINW (for ages 3-6) and in Sweden (for ages 0-3). I merged some of the Practical Life from my A to I course into the Primary because none of the children at my school come from an A to I program. The children that come to our school could surely benefit from as much Practical Life work as possible, and A to I presentations are wonderfully simple and accessible for new children.

The lists are not meant to be followed in a strict sequential order. The materials are not all graded necessarily by difficulty (especially in Practical Life). And they are not meant to be used as a strict template of development. They are just suggestions of possible presentations to be given when a child shows readiness and interest in a material. Language was particularly tricky, because most reading works have written extensions and I tried to format the spreadsheet so that they match up. Also included are some of the extensions materials that we use in our school that are not in my albums, which I added just to remind me that I have those materials and can use them then! And I included as well the following exercises that were given in my training.

As a next step, I am intending on personalizing them as well in order to keep better track of every lesson given to each child.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you sooo much! I just finished my first year in the British Virgin Islands, and while I loved my AMI training (also with Ginni!), I felt like things such as record keeping and classroom pragmatics were a light topic. I find your notes incredibly helpful! -Julie R.

Super Fun Mama said...

I love this!

Anonymous said...

Thank you sooo much for this! I have been looking everywhere and asking questions everywhere about an approximate order for lessons, and keep getting shrugged shoulders. This will be immensely helpful!