Blog 21: Exit Interview

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 important skill a child develops in preschool that helps them best excel academically in kindergarten? My three answers to this question are:
     o Fine motor skills
     o Executive function skills
     o Social-emotional skills
After much research and investigating I came to the conclusion that the answer which best suits my essential question, and the kids in their development, is fine motor skills. Fine motor skills are the foundation for many of the activities, lessons, and daily functions of a child's life. They allow a child to explore and understand the world around them because they can manipulate objects around them and communicate with their movements.

2. What process did you take to arrive at this answer?

When I first came across fine motor skills and learnt what they meant and how they had a strong influence on how children continued to progress in school I thought that it was important but  I had to know more before settling on it. So I continued to look at different skills that had a major role in a child's academic achievements and it all came back to a  child knowing how to work with their hands; mentoring at a Montessori school where a lot of their activities are hands-on, I realized just how much they affected a child. At this point I knew it was a very strong answer and it had lots of information to back it up on why it was so essential for a child to have, so I decided that this would be my best answer.

3. What problems did you face?  How did you resolve them?

I think the most problematic problem I had was finding good research on how fine motor skills, or any of my skills for that matter, really affected a child's academics. I had to learn how to search very specific phrases so that my research wouldn't repeat; a lot of the articles/websites I would find would basically state the same thing: what the skill was, what it does, how teachers can help strengthen them. While this information was great and everything it didn't tell me how it would affect a child's education if they weren't developed properly or how a child would succeed if they had that particular skill. But like I said by looking up specific terms and phrases my research then became much more specific and really helped me understand the skill.

4. What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?

Gibbs, Jeanne. "4: A Perspective on Children's Development." Reaching All by Creating Tribes Learning Communities. Windsor, CA: CenterSource Systems, LLC, 2006. 36-46. Print.
     o This was one of the very first books I ever used to actually understand how exactly children
        learn. This particular section in the book talks about the stages of development in children and
youth and has charts supporting evidence.The author herself has The author has spent her career
studying and implementing systemic processes and programs to support children's 
development.

"Fine Motor Development and Early School Performance." Fine Motor Development and Early School Performance (n.d.): n. pag. Fingergym. Fingergym Fine Motor Skills | School Readiness Program. Web. 14 Jan. 2015. <http://www.fingergym.info/downloads/Finemotordevpp1-4.pdf>.
     o The article I found helped me realize how important and impactful fine motor development is

        for a child. It talks about what fine motor skills are, how they develop and what specific motor
        skills children should develop to get ready for formal school.