Exploring Early Childhood COMPLETE UNIT: Child Growth & Development

In the Stage 6 Australian/NSW curriculum, Exploring Early Childhood acknowledges childhood as a unique and intense period for growth, development and learning. When members of society are provided with knowledge about childhood development they will then be able to support and encourage this development when interacting with children. Students develop understanding, skills and strategies to support and foster positive growth and development in the young children with whom they interact through the provision of safe, nurturing and challenging environments, whether this is through a child-related career or as parents in the future.

The Child Growth and Development unit within the Exploring Early Childhood subject, students explore child growth and development, from birth through to the end of the early childhood years. The main developmental themes and trends within this time are considered, as are the implications for interacting with, and caring for, children at different points in their development. Throughout this component, the importance and diversity of children, families and culture is stressed.

This is a complete unit of work and includes:

• a Teaching & Learning Program outlining the outcomes students aim to achieve, teaching and learning activities matched to the student workbook and including all website links and YouTube video links used, resources needed as well as space for teacher registration
• Student Workbook which provides all the learning materials identified within the teaching program
• Associated handouts for Student Workbook tasks
• Teacher PPT which provides all learning materials and answers for the student workbook
• TWO effective communication practical activities to help students understand the barriers to communication
• Instructions and recipes on how to make a Sensory Bottle, Flubber and Playdough
• Reflection tasks for the Flubber and Playdough lessons
• A Cognitive Development research lesson on the theorists who have contributed important information, theories and techniques associated with early childhood brain development and learning
• Assessment Task to provide the teacher with a summative mark and evaluation of student learning at the end of the unit. This assessment task is a research task to be presented in a report style format
• Assessment Task Register so teachers know which students have been given the assessment task and who was away/need to catch up

*The Teaching & Learning Program, Assessment Task, Assessment Task Register, Sensory Bottle Instructions, Flubber Recipe, Flubber & Playdough Reflection Questions, and Student Workbook are provided in an editable MS Word/Google Docs format

*The Playdough Recipe, Communication Handouts and Cognitive Development Research Task are provided in PDF format

These resources are provided in a zipped folder. To access them, you will need to unzip the folder once it has been downloaded to your computer.