Week 4

2 DISCUSSIONS ATTACHED. PLEASE HAVE SEPARATE REFERENCES.

Health and Wellness Appraisals    
You are a teacher in a 4-year-old classroom and begin each day with your daily health and wellness check.  You notice that a child who is dropped off looks very tired and is uncommonly quiet as she walks into the classroom.  She was dropped off by bus so you have no additional information.   
Given the above scenario, choose one of the following possible causes for the change in the child.  Please indicate the cause you selected in the subject line of your discussion post.

Sickness/Illness
Trauma
Abuse
Oral Health Issue: Tooth ache, poor oral health
Nutritional Concern: Inadequate nutritional intake, food allergy, food intolerance
Hearing Concern: Ear Infection, ear ache
Vision Concern: Eye infection
Social-Emotional Issue

Examples of some of these common situations are described further in Chapter 7.  After you select one of these as a possible cause for the child’s change in demeanor, use your imagination to develop it further discussing what you may see when you conduct your observation of the child.  Be mindful to detail what you might look for and how you will document your observations.  Based on your fictitious observation, create a plan of action for how to proceed.  This plan should include both immediate and long-term actions that you will take.  
Address the following points in your discussion:

Fictitious elaboration of what you observe in the child including the possible cause.  Include enough so that you can make a plan of action
Short-term plan of action detailing the procedure of how you will address the issue immediately or by the end of the day
Long-term plan of action detailing the procedure of how you will follow-up your short-term plan of action
Specific discussion regarding how you will support the child during this time

week 4 discussion 2

Safe Environments    
For this discussion, think about the information presented in Chapter 8 regarding safe and supportive indoor and outdoor environments.  In addition, think about your personal philosophy of learning and choose one developmental level (e.g. infants, toddlers, preschoolers).  When thinking about developmental levels, consider your future career aspirations.  Some of you may want be to be an infant and toddler home daycare provider, a family specialist for Head Start, or you may want to be a kindergarten classroom teacher.  Please use the subject line of your discussion post to state what you wish to be in your future role.  Then for your discussion, attach four pictures that you feel show elements of safe and supportive physical environments that you wish to create in your future role.  Two of the pictures should be indoor environments and two of the pictures should be outdoor environments.  These pictures can be from environments that you have access to, Microsoft clip art, or they may be from the Internet.

For each picture, your discussion should address the following questions:

What specifically do you like about the features of the environment?
What specific elements make this a safe environment?
What specific elements make this a supportive environment for the developmental level and future role you have identified?

You may attach the pictures directly to your discussion, or you may attach a Word document in which you compile your pictures and reflections.  Be sure to include a reference to the textbook and at least one outside resource to support your ideas with justification.