ECE 495 – CAPSTONE PROJECT DRAFT PROPOSAL

Name: Capstone Student

Proposed Topic: Dealing with Children’s Challenging Behaviors in the Early Childhood Classroom

Overview: The idea for this project came about because of a work-related situation that I have to deal with on a recurring basis. I am a classroom teacher in a community-based early childhood program in an urban community. Although I love my work, I tend to experience frustration at times when I am unable to control children’s behaviors. This year, the behaviors have been increasingly more difficult to deal with when compared to other years. In September, I had one child enrolled that had a diagnosis of Autism. I had two other children that had very difficult behaviors that seemed to develop over time. These three difficult situations have required me to attend to negative behaviors and what has happened is that other children, who previously did not misbehave, have started to misbehave as well. My classroom co-teacher and I are extremely frustrated. We feel that there are too many children (we have a total of 20 enrolled) and not enough teachers; and, we are not trained to deal with these challenging behaviors. However, we are both committed to our children and want to find a solution to our current dilemma so that we can get our classroom back in control.

Goal: My goal is to better understand children’s behaviors. My desired outcome for this project is to get my classroom back into control. I recognize that I need to develop stronger classroom management skills and believe that in reviewing the literature pertaining to classroom management, as well as my prior coursework, that I will equip myself with the tools that I need to accomplish these goals.

Objectives. In completing this project, I will:

Analyze the children’s difficult behaviors against current literature pertaining to challenging behaviors in children;

Meet with parents and my program leadership to take a proactive stance in addressing the behaviors, based on what I find in the literature;

Develop and implement three-five interventions to use in the classroom to modify children’s behaviors;

Evaluate whether or not the interventions are successful and make changes if required.

Production Activities: In order to achieve my project goal, I will engage in the following activities;

Write narrative explaining in detail the current problem in my classroom (5-7 pages)

Complete a review of the literature to help me to understand the underlying causes of children’s behaviors and produce a research paper on the findings (10-15 pages)

Create an intervention plan based on information acquired during the literature review (1-3 pages)

Implement the plan and report on results (10-12 pages) by including narrative, photos and a synopsis of conversations with students and parents, etc…

Evaluate whether my project objective was met (2-3 pages)

Evaluation: To determine the success of this project, I will complete the project evaluation form.