Community of Practice Guidelines
Community of Practice Guidelines Do you want to nurture the growth of your community, foster innovation, and support and share quality practice? A Community of Practice is a great way to network with like-minded professionals who share a concern or common passion. Communicating and collaborating within a Community of Practice supports everyone in the community to be the best version...
Less can be more when documenting children’s learning
There are two schools of thought around the aesthetics of documenting children’s learning. Some educators prefer to create colourful borders and backgrounds using various programmes and apps, which they then upload as an image to a child’s Storypark profile. Others believe the beautifying of stories in this way takes time and focus away from the photos and actual content of...
Stop the cobwebs and ghouls
Is it time to stop the cobwebs and ghouls? Tessa McStravick asks this question and offers some non-spooky alternatives for Halloween. One October, walking into a department store, my friend Ani came across a human skeleton seated on a bench at the entrance. She had her two small children with her and she wasn’t too pleased to find that the...
Planning and documentation in nature-based settings
Planning and documentation in nature-based settings Planning and documentation in nature-based settings are crucial if you want to embrace and support an emergent curriculum. But for many, the idea can bring up perceived barriers and challenges that can prevent you from moving forward with bringing nature and technology together. Dr. Claire Warden recently presented an online workshop that explored planning...
Reflective Practice in Early Childhood Education
Reflective practice in early childhood education – growing as educators and learners Reflective practice in early childhood education has been described as a process of turning experience into learning. That is, of exploring experience in order to learn new things from it. Reflection involves taking the unprocessed, raw material of experience and engaging with it to make sense of what...
Back to school! Tips for starting your teaching year organized
Do you ever feel at the end of your teaching year that your entire life is in complete and utter chaos? Are you a new teacher who is wondering “how on earth do I stay organized amongst all of the small jobs I need to stay on top of?” All of those little things that you had put off or...
Why are child care and early years programs in Nova Scotia shifting to Storypark?
Storypark is Canada’s leading online platform for family engagement, pedagogical documentation, and professional development. It is used by quality focused ECE services across the Provinces, including the Nova Scotia College of Early Childhood Education (NSCECE) in Halifax who are using Storypark in their child care centres. NSCECE decided to begin using Storypark in June 2020 based on the variety of...
Giving children authentic and specific praise and feedback
Do you often find yourself giving children feedback and hearing yourself use the same phrases many times a day? Do you often think your praise and acknowledgement sounds rehearsed, and non authentic? How does this make children feel about their work? Can you ever master the art of giving authentic and specific praise? Picture this…You have been working hard on...
Evaluation and compliance in New Zealand ECE services
New tools to help with evaluation and compliance for New Zealand learning services We regularly hear from educators and educational leaders that you wish you had more time! You spend a lot of your time reading regulatory documents and guides and figuring out ways to implement the requirements that ensure you provide a quality early learning environment for your children...
The planning feature on Storypark – so many possibilities
The planning feature on Storypark – what’s possible? More than you may think! After listening to educators around the world, we realised that everyone plans differently and that there could be no one-size-fits-all solution. Based on this feedback we developed a tool that enables educators to create and manage their own planning templates, and plan the way they want. The...