This brief professional development video features Lisa Porter Kuh, Ph.D. and Iris Chin Ponte, Ph.D., authors of the book, Complementary Curriculum Approach: Transform Your Practice Through Intentional Teaching. The book encourages educators to support children’s play by cultivating classroom environments with rich, interesting learning experiences.
The 18-minute video highlights the benefits of avoiding clutter and leaving enough open space for children to freely move around and explore. It also shares the importance of creating multiple opportunities for children to learn, such as by offering individual project opportunities and by having enough space for larger-scale collaborative work.
The video also offers concrete ways for educators to evaluate their own classroom spaces, suggesting that they take a look around their program space and ask the following questions:
What is the first thing that you see? What items catch your attention as you walk into your learning space?
What feeling do you get from the room? Do you feel energized, calm, overwhelmed?
What areas are most inviting?
What areas feel busy and might need to be de-cluttered?
Is there room for children to move around? Is there too much open space?
The webinar hosts then draw inspiration from Reggio Emilia and Montessori philosophies to share a few tips for refreshing your space so that it is more unique, inviting, and engaging.
Click here to view the recording of this free, brief webinar.
Iris Chin Ponte, Ph.D. is an educator and director at the Henry Frost Children’s Program Inc. with an expertise in cross-cultural issues in education. She previously worked for Sesame Street Research at the Children’s Television Workshop in New York and has published in the areas of children and technology, behavior management, and children’s play, among others.
Lisa Porter Kuh, Ph.D. is an Instructional Coach for the Bezos Academy, with over thirty years of experience with young children as a classroom teacher, teacher educator, university professor and researcher, and professional developer. She has published and presented on a variety of ECE-related topics, including outdoor playspaces and classroom environments, classroom documentation, Montessori curriculum, and anti‐bias education, along with early literacy and foundational math skill development.
