Level 3 Core Competencies

Includes the knowledge and skills of Levels 1 and 2 plus knowledge and skills commensurate with an associate’s degree in early childhood education or child development, or equivalent training, education, and relevant experience.

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 3

• Understands that culture and family have a critical impact on children’s development and that children are best understood in the contexts of family, culture, and society.
• Uses a variety of strategies to encourage children’s physical, social, emotional, cognitive, and language development.
• Identifies and describes age-typical physical, social, emotional, cognitive, and language characteristics of children.
• Demonstrates knowledge of the inter-relatedness of children’s physical, language, literacy, cognitive, personal/social, and creative development.
• Employs teaching practices inclusive of children with variations in learning styles, cultural perspectives, ability, and special needs.
• Demonstrates understanding of protective factors, resilience, the development of mental health, and the importance of supportive relationships with adults and peers.
• Demonstrates understanding of the developmental consequences of stress and trauma related to loss, neglect, and abuse.

Content Area II: Level 3

A: Creating the Learning Environment and General Curriculum

• Provides an environment that facilitates the development of a sense of trust in infants and a sense of autonomy in toddlers.
• Provides an environment that supports children's physiological needs for activity, sensory stimulation, fresh air, rest, hygiene, elimination, and nourishment.
• Creates environments and experiences that respect and affirm cultural and linguistic diversity.
• Creates environments and experiences that respect and affirm children’s ties to their families.
• Adapts curriculum to meet individual needs of children.
• Understands and implements principles for designing curriculum goals in response to developmental characteristics of children.
• Provides and uses materials that demonstrate acceptance of all children’s gender, family, race, language, culture, and special needs.
• Designs and offers learning opportunities that reflect a wide variety of cultures, including those represented in the program’s community.
• Uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage children’s development of critical thinking, problem solving, and competence.
• Revisits learning activities with children so they can reflect and build on previous interests.
• Encourages and offers simple parent-child learning activities for use at home.
• Maintains ongoing communication with families about children’s education and care.

B: Promoting Physical Development

• Provides space and equipment for formal and informal large motor activities that are fun and challenging.
• Provides safe structures and experiences for infants and toddlers to move and explore the environment, with special attention to their current developmental challenges, such as crawling, standing, walking, climbing, pushing, and pulling.
• Provides safe structures and experiences for young children to move and explore the environment, with special attention to their current developmental challenges, such as running, jumping, hopping, throwing, and catching.
• Provides adequate time and appropriate materials for small motor development (e.g., drawing, assembling puzzles, stringing beads, writing, etc.).
• Uses music, dance, and movement with children informally and frequently.
• Understands and implements frequent opportunities for movement and physical exercise as a way to reduce or prevent many of children’s health and behavioral issues.

C: Promoting Language Development and Literacy

• Responds to preverbal and English Language Learner children’s behaviors with understanding of their possible meanings, e.g., tries to comfort children and find causes for and solutions to their problems.
• Responds to preverbal and English Language Learner children’s attempts at language by extending their words without correcting them (e.g., when the child says “doggy”, say “Yes, the little black dog is wagging his tail”; when the child says “big truck”, say “Yes, here comes a big grey truck with a stripe on its side”).
• Applies a variety of infant and toddler teaching techniques, e.g., prompting, turn-taking, elaborating, using puppets to communicate and elicit language, and facilitating self-directed learning.
• Uses concrete experiences and play to enhance and extend young children’s language development and emerging literacy.
• Builds on children’s interests to introduce new vocabulary and ideas.
• Helps children learn about beginning concepts of literacy (e.g., print conveys a story; print is read from top to bottom; books have sequences such as beginning, middle, and end).
• Provides writing materials and models of writing throughout the learning environment.
• Encourages and offers simple parent-child language and literacy activities.

D: Promoting Cognitive Development: Mathematics

• Provides opportunities for children to use simple strategies to solve mathematical problems.
• Encourages beginning understanding of number and quantity (e.g., counting footsteps, jumps, or repetitions of exercises; commenting there are more girls than boys at the table).
• Facilitates children’s recognition and description of shapes (e.g., identifying a triangle and counting its sides; identifying and labeling shapes found in the environment).
• Encourages children’s interest in measuring activities (e.g., measuring the length of a block road or height of a block tower; noting that they can fill a large bowl in the sand table with three small cups of sand).
• Provides sensory experiences that encourage children to practice changes in structure, shape, and size of substances (e.g., building structures with blocks or Lego toys).
• Encourages and offers simple parent-child activities with number and quantity.

D: Promoting Cognitive Development: Science

• Observes nature and natural phenomena and makes predictions about natural events (e.g., growing seeds, caring for animals, charting weather).
• Asks questions to facilitate children’s reflection on what they are learning (e.g., why a snowball melts into water when inside a warm room; why some objects float and others sink).
• Provides more information to extend areas of children’s observations and interest (e.g., pictures and discussion of animals who hibernate in the winter or who live in the ocean).
• Models and discusses importance of reusing and recycling and caring for the environment.
• Provides materials and experiences that encourage curiosity and promote a sense of wonder in children.
• Encourages and offers simple parent-child science activities.

D: Promoting Cognitive Development: Social Studies

• Supports children’s understanding of recent and past events.
• Creates maps of the school, local area, or neighborhood.
• Incorporates photos, art, music, food, clothing, etc. from a wide variety of cultures into the curriculum.
• Acknowledges and discusses differences in family and community member roles, jobs, and rules in various cultures.

E: Promoting Personal and Social Development

• Works to create a community in the program or home setting and encourages children to include others who may be isolated.
• Guides children in understanding and expressing their feelings and those of others.
• Guides children in asserting themselves in positive ways and helping others.
• Helps children learn and practice empathy and respect for the feelings and rights of others.
• Encourages shy or quiet children to interact with others while respecting their personality style and temperament.
• Learns the individual eating and sleeping rhythms of infants and toddlers and their preferences for comforting and approaching new people and experiences.
• When possible, offers toddlers and young children two acceptable choices to promote autonomy and reduce oppositional behavior.
• Develops positive relations with families and recognizes the child is an integral part and extension of the family.

F: Promoting Creativity and the Arts

• Ensures that all children have access to opportunities that allow for individual creative expression.
• Supports development and acceptance of personal preferences by giving children choices and supporting discussions of likes and dislikes.
• Shows respect for creative expression though appropriate documentation and display of children’s work.
• Uses art, music, and dramatic play as a springboard for language and conversation.

Content Area III: Assessment and Planning for Individual Needs: Level 3

• Maintains appropriate records of children’s development and behavior that safeguard confidentiality and privacy.
• Works cooperatively with assessment and health care teams for children with special needs or suspected developmental delays or disabilities.
• Understands the use and limitations of both formal and informal screening and assessment of young children.
• Involves the family and other team members in assessing children’s development, strengths, and needs to set individual goals for children.
• Uses observational techniques to learn about individual infants, toddlers, young children, and their families’ needs, interests, preferences, and particular ways of responding to people and events.
• Plans for and includes non-verbal demonstrations of skills with preverbal or English Language Learner children.
• Engages families in positive dialogue about assessment processes, results, and implications.

Content Area IV: Interactions with Children: Level 3

• Adapts the learning environment and curriculum to minimize potential for challenging behaviors, especially in multi-age settings.
• Actively communicates with children and provides opportunities and support for children to understand, acquire, and use verbal and nonverbal means of communicating thoughts and feelings.
• Uses strategies to assist children in learning to express emotions in positive ways, solve problems, and make decisions.
• Gives, tells, and shows children acceptable alternatives to unacceptable or undesirable behaviors.
• Encourages children to take initiative in generating ideas, problems, questions, and relationships.
• Facilitates smooth transitions of individuals and groups from activity to activity.
• Alerts children to changes in activities or routines well in advance.
• Builds relationships with parents that allow for constructive communication about children’s behavior.

Content Area V: Families and Communities: Level 3

• Invites family involvement in the program and provides opportunities for families to share skills and talents.
• Maintains a safe and welcoming environment for families and community members.
• Effectively and positively communicates verbal and written information to families.
• Shares knowledge of general child development with families.
• Demonstrates knowledge of and respect for variations across cultures and family structures, in terms of family expectations, values, and childrearing practices.
• Demonstrates understanding of the complexity and dynamics of family systems.
• Exhibits understanding of the effects of family stress on the behavior of children and other family members.
• Incorporates the families’ desires and goals for their children into program and/or intervention strategies.
• Works cooperatively with families on mutually agreed upon practices (e.g., infant feeding, toddler toilet learning).

Content Area VI: Health, Safety, and Nutrition: Level 3

Health

• Models and provides direction on sanitation procedures.
• Demonstrates basic knowledge of health issues common to infants, toddlers, and young children.
• Identifies, documents, and reports suspected emotional distress, abuse, and neglect of children in an immediate and appropriate way.
• Uses appropriate health appraisal and management procedures and makes referrals when necessary.
• Assists young children in establishing health-promoting behaviors and making healthy choices.
• Informs families when child has been exposed to communicable disease or illness.

Safety

• Maintains and assesses safe environments inside and outside.
• Recognizes and responds to each child’s safety needs.

Nutrition

• Demonstrates basic knowledge of the nutrition and feeding needs specific to infants, toddlers, and young children, including those with physical impairments.
• Teaches children about nutrition and healthy food choices.
• Bases educational activities on nutritional information responsive to multiple cultures.

Content Area VII: Program Planning and Evaluation: Level 3

• Possesses and uses functional computer skills.
• Participates in strategic planning and goal setting for the program.
• Recognizes the importance of evaluation, assisting in evaluating the program’s effectiveness.
• Uses both self and collaborative staff evaluations as part of ongoing program evaluation.
• Verbalizes the relationship between the program’s philosophy and daily practice.
• Understands and articulates agency policies related to legal and safety issues of children and families.

Content Area VIII: Professional Development and Leadership: Level 3

• Demonstrates early education and care practices that support inclusion and cultural and linguistic diversity.
• Routinely reflects on teaching practices and behavior of children.
• Plans and implements routine tasks to maximize the amount of time spent interacting with children.
• Participates in professional organizations and on-going professional development to enhance knowledge and skills.
• Consistently adheres to NAEYC code of ethics.
• Demonstrates understanding of the early childhood profession and historical, social, and political influences on its current practices.
• Is aware of other professions providing related services for young children and their families.
• Exhibits knowledge of child and family advocacy issues.
• Demonstrates knowledge of federal, state, and local regulation of programs and services for children birth through eight years of age.
• Demonstrates awareness of own culture and begins to articulate how cultural heritage influences values, decisions, and behavior.
• Seeks out professional relationships to enhance professional growth (e.g., identifies a mentor).