All candidates complete two interviews, which asses their developmental knowledge, education, experience, passion, and dedication. To learn more about our screening procedures, click here.
Teachers can engage your child in play-based experiences by practicing and refining the
following areas, activities, and skills. The experiences can happen both through pre-planned
curriculum, as well as through spontaneous learning moments throughout the day, and can
gently contribute to the foundation of your child’s future.
School-Age Child Developmental Goals, Activities & Skills
Emotional Development
• Security & Trust (responding to needs promptly/appropriately, specialized
interactions pertaining to seperation anxiety, cuddle and talk time, creating a
secure and loving emotional environment, consistent, meaningful interactions)
• Building and reinforcing self-esteem, self-understanding, self-concept
• Emotion identification
• Appropriate emotional expression (using words, not fist, etc…)
• Recognizing and respecting child’s individual emotional style
• Supporting child’s regulation of emotion by responding to child’s emotions,
modeling, guiding, and reinforcing positive emotional expressions)
• Connecting child’s learning with positive emotions
• Encouraging self-regulation
• Responsibity (telling the truth, completing tasks, putting toys away)
• Connecting to the world and community
• Initiation of activities
• Co-construction (children engage in conflict-resolution activities in collaboration
with the teacher, who models and structures ways to solve potential problems)
Language Development
• Verbalizing needs and desires
• Vocabulary
• Object identification
• Communication
• Articulation
• Encouraging curious questions and verbal exploration
• Supporting literacy skills (identification of verbal and written letters and numbers)
• Understanding symbolic representations (written words and illustrations)
• Encouraging child to write notes and letters
• Care and respect of books
• Rhyme and repetition
• Independent exploration of sturdy books
• Consistent interaction (modeling, talking, listening, dialogic reading: child and
teacher tell the story)
• Following simple directions
• Phonics
Creative Thinking
• Open-ended activities
• Arts (clay, painting, gluing, cutting, etc)
• Crafts (corn husk dolls, walnut shell fairy boats, wool sheep, etc)
• Puzzles
• Music (listening to and creating)
• Movement
• Role-playing ( pretending to be mom, dad, baby, teacher)
• Dramatic play (dress up, puppets, theater)
• Oral storytelling
• Child-created stories and songs
• Baking
• Construction
Cognitive Thinking
• Decision-making skills
• Learning using strategies (experimentation, thinking games, investigation, selfdirected
learning, play)
• Exploring learning strategies (experimentation, investigation)
• Memory skills
• Focus and concentration
• Attention span
• Symbolic Abilities (play, imitation, role-playing, drawing)
• Sensory activities
• Mental tools (abstract reasoning, developing analogies, problem-solving strategies)
• Recognition of objects and shapes, people, self (body parts)
• Pre-math skills (sequencing, matching & pairing, classification, measurement,
counting, number recognition, basic adding and subtracting quantities)
• Science and nature (cause and effect, animate vs. inanimate discrimination,
speed, motion, colors, balance, and weight, plant growth, gardening, weather,
natural material collections, animals, dinosaurs, bugs, etc., seasonal cycles of the
year)
Physical Development
• Nutrition
• Indoor/outdoor safety
• Large motor skills (coordination & dexterity, walking, running, climbing, throwing,
catching, and kicking a ball, jumping, hopping, skipping, galloping, movement and
dance, sports)
• Fine motor skills (eye-hand coordination, cutting, drawing & tracing, using a pencil,
pen, paintbrush, silverware correctly, manipulatives, stacking, lacing
• Self-reliance skills (self-initiated activities and play, hygiene and dressing)
that there are many teachers who are equipped to becoming the best caregivers that families could hire to care for their children. NYC, NY
Making sure every child reaches their full potential is a critical component to successful teaching. Working with students with different learning styles and abilities makes this profession very difficult. Ensuring that I will always provide additional support for students
who need extra help and challenging students who need harder work leaves all my students reaching their maximum capabilities.
I have been very influenced by my teachers throughout my school years, and this has had a huge impact on my desire to learn.
Attending SUNY Cortland has given me many wonderful opportunities to better myself as a student and a teacher. The role of teachers is so incredible because you can touch a person’s life, all while educating them.