Level 4 Core Competencies

Includes the knowledge and skills of Levels 1, 2, and 3 plus knowledge and skills commensurate with a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education or child development and experience working with young children.

On this page:
Content Area I
Content Area II
Content Area III
Content Area IV
Content Area V
Content Area VI
Content Area VII
Content Area VIII

Content Area I: Child Growth and Development: Level 4

• Understands and applies current child development theory, information, and practice.
• Explains how developmental variations and family culture, language, and environment influence a child’s growth and development.
• Describes individual children relative to developmental characteristics typical of their age.
• Understands and describes various personality and learning styles of children.
• Identifies and uses appropriate resources and services for children with risk factors, delays, or disabilities.
• Shares information with families about general principles of child growth and development.

Content Area II: Level 4

A: Creating the Learning Environment and General Curriculum

• Uses space, materials, relationships, activities, and routines to provide an interesting and safe environment that encourages play, exploration, and learning.
• Designs, creates, and maintains a predictable, yet flexible environment that reflects the backgrounds and experiences the children bring to the program.
• Plans, implements, and adapts an environment that is balanced between active and quiet, child-directed and adult-directed, individual and group, indoor and outdoor activities.
• Plans activities and provides materials appropriate to the developmental levels of all children served.
• Plans, implements, and adapts an integrated curriculum that includes literacy, language arts, math, science, social studies, health, safety, nutrition, art, music, drama, and movement.
• Takes advantage of opportunities to modify curriculum to build on children’s interests.
• Demonstrates developmentally appropriate use of media and technology with young children (including English language learners).
• Uses appropriate assistive technology for children with disabilities.
• Uses and explains the rationale for developmentally appropriate teaching methods that include play, small group projects, open-ended questioning, group discussion, problem solving, cooperative learning, and inquiry experiences.
• Understands and applies the major theories of teaching and learning and uses a variety of teaching strategies to correspond to multiple learning styles and linguistic abilities.
• Involves families in ongoing learning activities with children at home and school.

B: Promoting Physical Development

• Includes movement as a teaching strategy for a variety of skills (e.g., jump four times to teach the quantity of four).
• Plans activities that integrate physical development with the arts and all curriculum areas.
• Plans indoor and outdoor activities for both large and small motor skills.
• Adapts activities for children with special needs.
• Works with families to encourage and reinforce parent-child activities that involve physical activity and movement, both inside and outdoors, and in natural settings and parks when possible.

C: Promoting Language Development and Literacy

• Communicates with children and families using home language with interpreters when necessary.
• Talks about a variety of topics and uses language to ask questions, give answers, make statements, share ideas, or use pretend, fantasy, or word play.
• Uses a variety of songs, books, stories, and games from many cultures.
• Facilitates language development by respectfully expanding, extending, and elaborating upon children’s communication attempts.
• Recognizes and responds to the general warning signs of communication/language delays or disorders for children of various ages, making referrals as needed.
• Provides materials such as puppets, flannel board sets, and other props to act out and tell stories.
• Provides many types of children’s books, references, pictures, and posters in the environment.
• Immerses children in a print-rich environment including languages represented in the community and facilitates the relationship between spoken and printed words.
• Promotes literacy-related play activities that encourage children’s attempts at writing and storytelling.
• Offers ongoing information to family and community members on simple ways to promote language development and early literacy at home.
• Responds to language differences and literacy abilities of families in printed materials sent home with children.

D: Promoting Cognitive Development: Mathematics

• Provides opportunities for children to sort objects into subgroups that vary by one or two attributes (e.g., sorting markers from crayons; sorting buttons and pegs into egg cartons; sorting pattern blocks according to shape and color).
• Provides opportunities for children to recognize simple patterns and duplicate them (e.g., copying a sound pattern of two claps and a pause, then one clap and a pause; stringing beads in a repeating pattern according to color, shape, or size).
• Facilitates children’s understanding and use of several positional words (e.g., putting a block on top of or underneath another block; going in front of or behind another child; standing inside or outside of a playhouse).
• Provides opportunities for children to order, compare, and describe objects according to a single attribute (e.g., figuring out who of two children has the smaller piece of sandwich; arranging three blocks from shortest to longest).

D: Promoting Cognitive Development: Science

• Plans activities and provides materials for a variety of sensory experiences (e.g., focusing on sight, smell, hearing, taste, and/or touch).
• Creates simple charts and graphs to document information observed in science activities.
• Provides opportunities for enhancing the ability to observe, see, and perceive and to pay attention to natural phenomena.
• Arranges field trips to nature centers, parks, and farms, with related preparation for and reflection on the experience.

D: Promoting Cognitive Development: Social Studies

• Involves children in service and social action projects.
• Explores and talks about land, water, and other features in the community.
• Invites workers and community leaders to come to the program and talk about their work.
• Invites parents and family members to come to the program and talk about their interests, culture, and country of origin.
• Encourages children to see themselves as part of a larger community.
• Discusses appropriate use of technology (e.g., television, videos, DVDs, computers, etc.) with children and families.
• Facilitates children and families learning to become critical and thoughtful users of technology.

E: Promoting Personal and Social Development

• Provides physical environments, schedules, and routines that promote self-control and self-regulation.
• Designs and provides a curriculum that emphasizes and enhances development of social skills, relationships, and friendships.
• Guides children through problem solving and conflict resolution interactions.
• Serves as a constant and reliable listener and supporter for each child as a loveable person, even when his/her behavior seems to push adults away.
• Creates environments that offer an appropriate amount of stimulation and opportunities to choose new as well as familiar activities.
• Provides sufficient time for children to engage in sustained activities.
• Provides an environment of psychological safety where children are encouraged to experiment without fear of making mistakes.
• Recognizes atypical personal and social development and initiates appropriate referral strategies.
• Works to support and reinforce families for their primary role in children’s personal and social development.

F: Promoting Creativity and the Arts

• Provides time, materials, and space to explore and experiment with creative expression in multiple media (e.g., problem solving, visual arts, construction, music, movement, drama).
• Exposes children to and helps develop their appreciation for creative and aesthetic experiences in their community.
• Encourages awareness and appreciation of the arts and creative expression from a variety of cultures.
• Challenges children to extend their creative thinking and problem solving by asking open-ended questions.

Content Area III: Assessment and Planning for Individual Needs: Level 4

• Objectively observes and records children's patterns of development, behavior, and preferred learning style.
• Analyzes findings of observations and uses the information to plan for and guide curriculum, instruction, and interaction with children.
• Exhibits understanding of the influences of environmental factors, cultural/linguistic differences, and diverse ways of learning on assessment outcomes.
• Uses authentic, performance-based assessments of children's learning to assist in planning and to communicate with children and parents.
• Communicates assessment results to families in a clear, supportive, and collaborative manner.
• Involves families in assessing and planning for individual children, including children with disabilities, developmental delays, or special abilities.
• Develops, implements, and evaluates a curriculum and environment that focuses on children’s developmental needs and interests and incorporates their home experiences and cultural and societal values.
• Fully understands and uses local process for initiating referrals for young children with health and developmental concerns.
• Integrates comments and recommendations from families about child needs and strengths into education program.

Content Area IV: Interactions with Children: Level 4

• Demonstrates realistic expectations about children’s attention spans, interests, social abilities, and physical needs.
• Understands the influence of the physical setting, schedule, routines, and transitions on children and uses these experiences to promote children’s development and learning.
• Communicates with families regarding areas of concern, developing cooperative strategies to manage problems.
• Facilitates group membership and decision-making among children.
• Involves children in establishing guidelines and limits for behavior.
• Facilitates smooth transitions of children from one age group to another age group.
• Relates guidance practices to knowledge of children’s personalities, developmental levels, and developmental or environmental stressors.
• Uses the learning methods of open-ended questioning, group discussion, problem solving, cooperative play, and guided experiments.
• Demonstrates knowledge of instructional and guidance practices for integrating children with disabilities.
• Proactively encourages and reinforces positive adult-child interactions within the family.

Content Area V: Families and Communities: Level 4

• Seeks and maintains a collaborative relationship with parents, guardians, families, community agencies, and other professionals to meet the needs of each child.
• Establishes frequent contact with families through a variety of communication strategies, including information in children’s home language and use of interpreters, to provide information to families about child growth, development, and learning.
• Supports parents in meeting the challenges of their family goals and lifestyles.
• Acknowledges and builds on strengths of each family.
• Helps parents assess educational and parenting options.
• Works effectively with families from a variety of cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic backgrounds.
• Implements effective conflict resolution techniques with families when needed.
• Plans and conducts family conferences.
• Supports families in development of Individual Education Plans (IEPs), Individual Family Service Plans (IFSPs), and Interagency Individual Intervention Plans (IIIPs).
• Works as member of a child’s team to help families obtain clear and understandable information about their children’s disabilities and about the family’s legal right to services within the special education and interagency service system.
• Develops relationships with community resources, provides families with resource information, and makes appropriate referrals.
• Promotes public awareness about early education and care by educating consumers.

Content Area VI: Health, Safety, and Nutrition: Level 4

Health

• Provides a consistent daily routine for rest/sleep and physical exercise as developmentally appropriate.
• Recognizes and responds to each child’s needs for physical health and emotional well-being.
• Talks with and provides resource information to families about health in a culturally responsive manner.
• Designs and implements curriculum activities emphasizing healthy bodies, lifestyles, and environment.
• Recognizes signs of emotional distress, physical illness, child abuse, and neglect and acts appropriately to the situation, e.g., initiates discussions with families, refers to appropriate professionals, and/or reports to designated authorities.

Safety

• Plans and implements safe field trips.
• Designs and facilitates indoor and outdoor learning environments to promote each child’s physical and emotional well-being.
• Keeps informed about and shares safety information and resources with families.
• Demonstrates and informs others about emergency, illness, and injury procedures.

Nutrition

• Recognizes and responds to each child’s nutritional needs.
• Communicates with families about the foods children need and prefer.
• Plans and evaluates menus.
• Includes foods from diverse cultures.
• Plans and implements cooking experiences with children.
• Provides opportunities and reinforcement for children’s practice of healthy nutritional choices.

Content Area VII: Program Planning and Evaluation: Level 4

• Plans and implements parent orientation and parent education programs.
• Demonstrates knowledge of valid and appropriate assessment and evaluation practices.
• Uses a variety of techniques and procedures to evaluate and modify program goals for young children and their families.
• Develops curriculum for program.
• Provides effective lines of communication among staff and administrators.
• Conducts and maintains the inventory of supplies, materials, and equipment.
• Assists in planning budget.
• Supervises student teachers and practicum students.
• Encourages and supports staff in meeting professional development goals.
• Clearly articulates developmentally appropriate practices to colleagues, parents, and others.

Content Area VIII: Professional Development and Leadership: Level 4

• Demonstrates critical reflection on own professional and educational practices from community, state, national, and global perspectives.
• Articulates and uses NAEYC code of ethics for making professional decisions.
• Participates in group problem solving of ethical dilemmas.
• Articulates personal philosophy of early childhood education based on knowledge of child development and best practices.
• Evaluates current trends in early childhood education and revises practices as appropriate.
• Demonstrates knowledge of basic principles of administration, organization, and operation of early childhood programs, including supervision of staff and volunteers.
• Uses professional resources to continually improve practice.
• Actively participates in career development.
• Acknowledges and assesses personal values and own cultural biases.
• Serves as a mentor to others working with young children and families.
• Advocates for excellence in programs and services for young children and families.
• Communicates and interacts with parents/guardians, families, colleagues, and the community to support children’s learning and well-being.
• Establishes effective working relationships with early elementary education practitioners to promote continuity in children’s development and learning.