(1) What is your essential question, and what are your answers? What is your best answer and why?
My essential question is "what is the most effective strategy for a preschool teacher to use to develop their students' social and emotional skills?".
My answers are:
1.) To teach the students' how to self-regulate emotionally so they could manage and understand theirs and others feelings.
2.) To have the students engage in play so they get hands on interaction with theirs and others emotions.
3.) To observe and get to know the child to see what they need to work on.
My best answer is sort of a combination of all of my answers. It is my answer 2, to have the students engage in play so they get hands on interaction with theirs and others emotions. My reason is because through my experience in my mentorship, all we do is do activities and play. All the children do is play, play, play. They learn through the activities and story books, but majority of how they learn is through play.
(2) What process did you take to arrive at this answer?
The process I took to get to this answer was through my mentorship. My interviews with my mentor and the other teachers at the Corona-Norco YMCA really helped me come up with my answers. Before, I thought the best answer was to get to know the child and observe them because all the children are different. They're all different ages and they understand things differently. My mentor and the other teachers helped me see that the best strategy to help a child develop their social and emotional skills is through play. They helped me see that the
(3) What problems did you face? How did you resolve them?
Problems I faced in finding these answers was finding a specific strategy because I found many techniques that could follow multiple strategies. For example, with teaching a child how to self-regulate, a technique is to have a child do some role play with their peers and that also falls under the play strategy. Also, with observing and getting to know a child, you need to observe them doing something like how they interact with their peers. Because some techniques could intertwine with other strategies, I saw that most of the techniques follow my answer of having the students play. Thus, helping me find my best answer.
(4) What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?
My first significant source is a book called, "Play: The Pathway from Theory to Practice." by Sandra Heidemann and Debbie Hewitt. The book was very informative with play in preschool. It explained the different kinds of plays 1 to 5 year olds experience and gave some tips in what to look for in seeing the child improvement in their social and emotional development.
My second significant source was an interview with one of the teachers at the Corona-Norco YMCA and mentoring. Lizbeth Barrera was really informative when I interview her. She went into detail with her answers and gave examples, like some of her experiences. It was also easier to understand her answers because I've also seen and experienced what she had.
Be prepared with evidence and specific examples to support any response. It is also significant to cite sources as you explain.
