What I Learned this Week as an ECE Major

Mikaela Campbell

McKay Student Ambassador

Early Childhood Education

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Hello! The weeks have flown by and all my classes are progressing quickly, but I would love to fill you all in on the new skills Early Childhood Education Majors are learning. I am still facing some generals this semester but I have begun my TESOL minor with the TELL 410 class and am also learning new teaching concepts through the MTHED 305 class.

I came into the TELL 410 class not really knowing what to expect but I always come out of the class learning something that I know will help my future classroom. For a couple of summers I tutored English online and I absolutely loved getting to know and tutor so many wonderful people from all around the world. This led to a new passion of wanting to do more in my future classroom for students whose first language is not English. The big focus of this week has been on cognitive theories and language. This class is designed to support and help those who are learning English as a second language. We have had multiple discussions on applications of these theories and have specifically talked about Vgotsky's sociocultural theory and how it relates to language learning. As an ECE major I have always been focused on Pre-K-3rd grade so recently with this class I have been thinking about how what I learn will help me in my specific major but have also been expanding my learning to thinking about and applying more to a wider range of K-12 which has been really insightful to ponder on and practice.

I’m currently exploring how children begin to learn math concepts in my MTHED 305 class. Recently, we studied 11 types of story problems and observed how young children approach solving them. It’s been fascinating to learn how to break down problems that seem simple to me, but are complex for elementary-aged kids. Watching children count from 1 to 10, or understand that Johnny has 5 apples and Mary has 3 blankets, has been eye-opening. These are such foundational concepts, yet they hold lifelong value, and I’m being taught how to teach them as a future early childhood education (ECE) teacher. Being new to this major I am only eager to take on that responsibility. This week, I had the opportunity to visit Foothill Elementary School and interview a first-grade student. It was such a valuable experience! My partner and I worked through several story problems with one child, asking her about her thought process and how she arrived at her answers. It was clear that every child thinks differently, and I realized that adapting my teaching to each learner will take practice and intention. This class continues to surprise me with just how much children's minds can be stretched, and how rewarding it is to be part of that growth.

As an ECE major I am always fascinated by the development of young children and something we've talked about is the strategies children develop as they learn to count. Kindergarteners rely mainly on modeling for counting with something like blocks or beads. However, over time, children learn counting strategies for counting forward or backward, to recall facts, and to derive from a recalled fact to get their answer. A lot of times children will do something very different than what you would do but are still able to achieve a correct solution. It is seriously so neat to see that all of us problem solve differently, but what I'm really enjoying about this class is how often we build off of previous concepts to gain the most well-rounded set of teaching tools.

It has been a full week for sure but I love diving deeper into what's happening with ECE. It always feels so good to be surrounded by so many future educators and it made me so happy to go to the elementary school and practice doing what I love. I already know that what I have learned so far is taking me in the direction I want to go.

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