Learning to Write

I am on spring break this week and have had the wonderful opportunity to relax a bit and take some time to reflect on my classroom.  I've been reviewing student achievement data, evaluating their progress toward  goals, and making plans for the remainder of the school year.  As part of this process, I have also spent some time looking over my students' portfolios.  Each child's portfolio is divided into four domains (social/emotional, physical, cognitive, and language) and contains artifacts (work samples, pictures, and notes) that demonstrate their development in that domain.  I use the materials in each child's portfolios as a way to assess their progress and determine individualized goals.  I also share the portfolios with families during parent-teacher conferences, and send them home with students at the end of the year.

 

I absolutely love looking back through my students' portfolios! Not only is it an authentic way to gauge their progress, but it also reminds me of just how much they have learned in school.  I'll walk you through some pieces of Julia's writing as an example.

 

August, 2008. Julia drew this self-portrait on the first day of school.  She added some details such as feet and hair, but neglected to add arms and a nose.  Julia spent several minutes laboring over her first name; several of the letters were crowded, but they were all legible (her name has since been removed for privacy purposes). 

 

November, 2008. Julia was very interested in the presidential election this year!  We talked about what elections were, learned a bit about each candidate, and then held a mock election in our classroom.   Julia wrote this piece the day after the election.  She included many more details than in her August portrait, and also demonstrated an understanding of perspective – she explained to me that she drew Barack Obama significantly larger than John McCain because he had won.  Julia writes letter strings for each word in her sentence, but does not yet associate specific letters with the sounds that she hears in words. 

 

December, 2008. Julia wrote this piece completely independently.  She demonstrated an increasing attention to detail by using a different color crayon to make the snow, and she drew simple figures to represent herself and her mother.  Julia devoted the majority of her paper to writing, which displays an increased understanding that she can use writing to convey her ideas.  She still uses letter strings and does not associate letter shapes with the sounds in words. 

 

January, 2009. In January, Julia began using inventive spelling to write unfamiliar words.  I helped her “stretch out” the words to hear all of the sounds, and she wrote what she heard.  She knew how to read the word “is” and was able to recall that knowledge for her writing.  Julia's ability to correctly identify all the sounds – including the vowel – in “big” was a tremendous accomplishment. 

 

March, 2009. Prior to writing this piece, Julia found a picture of Barack Obama with his arms folded across his desk and announced that it looked like he was “hugging himself.”  From there, she decided to draw a picture of the entire Obama family hugging themselves.  She was careful to draw their arms wrapped around their bodies, and drew a line for the desk under each of them.   Julia was extremely interested in writing about her story; she spent over 20 minutes writing Barack Obama’s name and sounding out the rest of the words in her sentence.  I sat with her the whole time, but did not give her any assistance with stretching out the words or identifying letter sounds (as a side note, when she was stretching out “hugging,” she pronounced it “hucking”, hence the “HC” that she wrote).  Julia started to lose patience by the last few words in the sentence, but overall did a wonderful job and was extremely proud of her work. 

Julia has worked hard on her writing this year and has made tremendous progress.  For the last two months of school, Julia will focus on writing a beginning, middle, and ending sound for each word, as well as continuing to learn and use sight words in her writing.  We will continue to add work to her portfolio to document and celebrate her progress!

A Time for Time Out?

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I have been having a debate with myself recently. I have been thinking about the role and importance of time out in my classroom management. I have been asking myself some tough questions. Do I ask too much of my students by expecting them to keep their hands to themselves at four years old? Am I too harsh when a student has refused to participate in a classroom activity after repeated attempts to reengage and redirect their behavior? Are my circle times too long? What if we do alternating locomotive and non-locomotive activities?  Am I using materials and activities that will engage them? Am I making it easier or harder for them to be successful?

I have always subscribed to the following quote from Dr. Haim Ginott.

“I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It's my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or de-humanized.”

It is this quote that has provided the most consistent moral compass to my decisions in the classroom. It has helped me to feel the full weight of the responsibility for my 19 four-year-old students. I have always felt that many of my students want to know that there are boundaries and consequences. They want to know that I will hold them accountable for their learning and how they treat each other. I think they know that, because I care for them, I must say "no" sometimes.

At the same time, I wonder if my actions may set up situations where some of my students will definitely fail.

It has always been my opinion that the child who hits wants to know that I won't let them hit and the child that refuses wants to know that I won't let them not participate. My answer to these students is that they should have a time out.

What is your answer? Below is a poll in which you can answer this question but please leave a comment and let me know about what you are thinking. When, if, why, and how is time out appropriate in your home or early childhood setting?

Parent Teacher Conferences

Parent teacher conferences are not always something parents or teachers look forward to.  I have an advantage: I see parents every day when they drop off or pick up their child.  This allows me to get to know each family and check in when a child might be struggling with something or to let them know a funny anecdote from the day. 

 

I just completed our round of spring conferences.  Now that our program is specifically for four and five-year-olds, most of our time is spent discussing whether or not their child is ready for kindergarten.  My colleagues and I have come up with a very comprehensive assessment form that allows us to really help parents see where their child excels and also where additional support throughout the summer and at home would be helpful. 

 

In accordance with our state standards, these areas are divided into language and literacy, mathematical reasoning, science and sensory, reading and writing, large and fine motor skills and social/emotional development. 

 

Most parents have a pretty good idea of how their child is doing in all of these areas and are also working on these skills at home.  Unfortunately, our conferences, like our programming, are voluntary.  Consequently, I don’t often to get to spend those twenty minutes face to face with those that potentially need more assistance before kindergarten.  Either the parent doesn’t show up or they are working multiple jobs and cannot take the time off.  I am wondering if any of our readers might have suggestions for encouraging parents to participate?

Setting Goals with Students

During center time, Jose was in the library reading The Three Bears by Byron Barton quietly to himself. He was totally engrossed in the book when Julia came over and asked, “Can I read with you?” “When I’m done,” Jose replied, implying that he did not want to read with Julia at that moment, but that she could have the book when he was finished. Julia stepped back and her eyes started to well up with tears. Just as she was about to start crying, I approached her and said, “Julia, I can tell that you’re upset that you can’t read The Three Bears right now. What are you learning to do when you get upset?” Without missing a beat, Julia replied, “Calm down all by myself.” And with that, she took a deep breath and smiled. “Like this! I’m going to read this book [she picked up The Little Red Hen by Byron Barton] while I wait.”

 

Each month I set approximately eight individual goals for each of my students; two goals each in reading, writing, math, and social/emotional development.  I share these goals with my students in child-friendly language, and we talk explicitly about what it will look like for them to work hard at and ultimately master these skills.  I also share the goals with each student’s family along with ideas on how to reinforce the targeted skills at home.  When my students achieve a goal, their classmates cheer for them and we talk briefly about what they have learned.   

 

I have found repeatedly that explaining to my students what they are learning and why they are learning it has increased their motivation and helped them take ownership over their own learning.  In the above anecdote, Julia knows that one of her goals for this month is to learn how to “calm down all by myself,” and she understands how to do this.  She also knows that this is a difficult skill, and that it will take practice to be able to do it independently. Julia is working hard at her goal, and has already made tremendous progress.  It has been amazing to watch her and my other students take control of their own learning and support one another in reaching their goals.  I’m excited to see how much more they will accomplish before the end of the school year!

Pre-K Painted Yellow

John Stossel's recent attack on voluntary public preschool has all the indicators of Yellow Journalism. I almost feel like I shouldn't respond to Stossel's arguments against publicly funded pre-k, but I feel that, just in case you were sucked in by the shrill discourse in his recent story, I should give you a handrail to hold on to as you climb out of the muck Mr. Stossel has raked.

Here are the major challenges mentioned in Stossel's piece and grounded policy responses to them:

The movement for universal pre-k is another example of government intrusion into private matters; parents are responsible for early education of children. Comprehensive government reform in K-12 failed so this will fail too.

• Universal pre-k is not an  instruction into private matters at the family level because it is entirely voluntary. On a financial level, the cost of paying for public pre-k is far outweighed  by its benefits to the family and the community.

• The public pre-k movement is grounded in the push for higher quality care for young children, especially for the almost 75% of children already enrolled in early childhood settings.

This country needs more businesses succeeding, not fewer of them, and government-funded pre-k takes private providers out of business.

• The libertarian argument against public pre-k is most soundly beaten by the argument that the benefit to the country is greater than the benefit to the family. The public education system was founded because individuals would never invest in their own children's education at a rate that would benefit the nation.  It is also a financial nightmare for parents to try to pay for the type of education they would choose. Also, expanding the pre-k market will increase public awareness of pre-k's importance, thereby helping all kinds of programs, both public and private.

• The market based approach assumes that privately owned pre-k would create better experiences. However, over the past thirty years that has yet to happen. In fact, the poor and middle class are priced out of what would be the basic level of service offered in public settings.  By increasing access to public pre-k states would force private pre-k to increase quality or lose money. Many states have measures that would allow private pre-k providers to receive state money after meeting certain quality indicators.

Pre-k advocates talk as if it is the solution to all education ills – you are over-selling the benefits. Comprehensive government reform in K-12 failed so this will fail too.

• Public pre-k should be part of an overall effort at improving quality in education. There are numerous quality indicators discussed in public pre-k circles. If these indicators were a part of the K-12 debate, we would have much different discussions about accountability and what constitutes a quality education.

• Pre-k research is not only made up of these three studies. The Perry, ABC, and Chicago studies are seminal works in a broad and deep world of research on the benefits of pre-k that have taken place over the course of 40 years. Some other studies include studies by the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER), the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS) conducted by the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES), as well as studies conducted by states of their implementation of universal preschool including Georgia and Oklahoma.

• This argument is just silly but here is a little quote from the ASCD blog Inservice , "The place to fix the 9th grade problem is in preschool, he reiterated. 'The hill gets higher as we climb it . . . It is time to see the problem as the moral and ethical issue it is.' This is not a new argument. If you want to "fix" public education start by providing high quality experiences from the beginning and follow those with effective instruction all the way through.

Parents are responsible for early education of children.

• Parents are the first and most important teachers. Every public pre-k teacher in the country would likely tell you the same thing. In fact, we communicate more with parents than any other grade level often conducting home visits as well as parent conferences in order to better meet the needs of every student.

You may remember the inflammatory Besharov and Call op-ed in the New York Times I wrote about recently. Ideological politics does not offer a valid argument against pre-k when it comes to the pragmatic need to help kids. At no time in these arguments are alternatives offered to what organizations like Pre-K Now propose. These types of attacks do not aim to help kids, they aim to help an argument. I challenge the Reason Foundation or any other organization to come up with a better way for parents to prepare kids for their future than the option of preschool. Libertarian organizations like the Reason Foundation believe parents should raise their own kids and not expect the government to do it. I agree in theory, but this is an ideological view point. If both parents didn't need to work to feed their family and provide them health care, it might be a great preschool solution. I challenge them to offer something, anything, besides suggesting parents should stay home and not work to support their families, because this argument is not grounded in reality.

False Alarm: It's Only John Stossel

There have always been those we love to hate. As a teacher and advocate for children, that person for me has become John Stossel. He loves to say, or actually, have his interviewees say, the most provocative, jarring, obnoxious thing possible – as long as it circumvents the facts. In 2006, Stossel set off on his campaign of revenge on his childhood teachers with the 20/20 show, "Stupid inAmerica." In the story he described how America was failing its kids and it that it was mostly teachers' fault. Even he "admitted" the title was intentionally off putting when he wrote...

"Stupid in America" is a nasty title for a program about public education, but some nasty things are going on in America's public schools and it's about time we face up to it.”

The story provoked an outcry from people who actually work in public schools, and big surprise, he didn't stop there.

ABC News must be joking to legitimize this as “reporting”. Or maybe the joke is working for them. John Stossel has produced a show in cooperation with the Reason Foundation. Drew Carey is the mouth piece for Reason.TV that has been producing short documentaries on the triumph of libertarian thinking in America. With the help of Reason.TV Stossel is back to, (serious music here) "Take on Preschool." 

Sometimes I actually wonder if Stossel is a secret advocate for the causes he is bashing, hoping to stir up feelings so that advocates for the targeted topic du jour will step up and make their voices heard. His penchant for obscuring the facts for good TV actually gets folks who know what they are talking about to start writing blogs and OpEd's that push the argument forward and bury the type of shallow arguments he presents. So, in a way, thanks Mr. Stossel. 

 

I learned about the Reason Foundation when I watched an inspiring segment on a Green Dot charter school in L.A. on the blog This Week in Education. After watching the piece on Locke High in the L.A. unified school district, I knew I needed to keep an eye on the Reason Foundation. I really don't have a problem with Reason.TV creating an anti preschool video. I don't care if they hire people to make fun of little kids improving their chances at a good education and releasing it on their website, Reason.TV. I think that is what an advocacy organization on either side of an issue should be doing these days; making viral videos that put their cause out there. What makes this Stossel piece so ugly is that it pretends to be news.

So, if we take this as serious news then I owe you, and Mr. Stossel, a rebuttal. I will put together my policy rebuttal this weekend but until then, I wanted you to have a chance to hear your own voices. Especially since you won't hear them reflected on Stossel's segment tonight.

You see, we at Inside Pre-K actually tried to get your voice into the 20/20 "news story" by asking you to submit your stories and share your child's pre-k experiences with ABC. My mistake for thinking that ABC news wanted to hear more than one side of the issue.

In the spirit of balanced journalism, here are some of your quotes. I can't include them all, but please know that we are listening.

Nan said,

I work for Head Start in WV as an Education Specialist. In our state, we collaborate with the county school systems to provide pre-K to as many children as we can. By 2012 it must be available to all who are age eligible.

 

Debbie said,

The number of children born with sensory and/or developmental problems are increasing due to substance abuse. In addition, working parents or stay-at-home parents seem to interact less frequently or less effectively with their children, than parents did in the past. Therefore, these children need pre-k to give them a "fighting chance" to succeed in kindergarten and future grades.

T. Hyatt said,

I can't really express how much my son grew socially from going, amongst other things. Starting out, he cried for a couple weeks until he finally got used to being around a group of other children, interacting with them. etc. From being there, he excelled faster than some other kids I knew of, whose parents didn't have theirs in Pre-K. He's in 3rd grade now and I'm proud to say that his teacher tells me he's one of the top in his class with his grades & reading skills. I do believe it had a lot to do with him starting out in Pre-k. The earlier they learn, the better.

My daughter, who attends now, absolutely loves it! She doesn't want to miss a day even when she's sick. She has a great teacher that she loves & I'm amazed by how much she has learned already from being there. So, in my honest opinion, I believe Pre-K to be a very beneficial experience for children.

Carolyn said,

 I am a firm believer in the Head Start Program, because of their "whole family approach", I myself am a Head Start success story (at least I feel that way) Head Start not only worked with my children they worked with me. When my youngest daughter started Head Start, I started as well. I was first employed as an assistant teacher, with in a year to a year and half, I received my CDA (child development) and was working as center teacher, next I completed an apprenticeship program through the Dept. of Labor, and then I completed an Associates degree in Childhood Education and Development, then a B.S. in Pre-k, K, and Preschool Special. I am currently working on my Masters in Special Education k-12 at GCU. I feel this may have not been possible without the encouragement of Head Start, because when my first daughter started I was a cashier at a local grocery store making minimum wage. I worked with Head Start almost ten years and this is my second school year with BOE. These young children need these services, and we need the funding in order to make them available. Young children are our future. One thing I often say is “it takes but one small pebble to create a ripple in the pond, that moves outward in a circular motion." What pre-k teachers do for these young students, affects every thing around them. I believe that pre-k programs should be on the top of everyone’s list. They are our future.

Jo said,

I have spent a lifetime wondering about education and achievement based on "forcing" children to start learning early, but every day I see positive changes from my youngest from being in this classroom group. Given what I have seen I would recommend early childhood group situations for every child that can attend.

Finally Nanci said,

It seems that Kindergarten is no longer the year of learning to learn in a social setting, rather it is learning reading and writing… what WE did in first grade. Learning to learn in a social setting is now the province of pre-K. For those children raised without the benefit of books, reading and conversations and the stimulation of exploration, starting Kindergarten without the boost provided by Pre-K is too often the start of no success in school and often in life as well.

School Readiness Art Museum

Our school readiness classes are spending time learning about museums this month.  I started this activity a few years ago when we did not have the funding to take any field trips.  Instead of traveling to a museum, we would create an art museum in our classroom! I am so impressed with my students' imaginative creations.  They take a box full of random collage materials and transform the items into actual works of art complete with a title and artist description. 

 

This week, we are talking about color.  One of our books is "Mouse Paint" by Ellen Stoll Walsh.  This book is a great introduction to primary and secondary colors.  After reading through it, we do a colored water experiment to test out color mixing.  Each child records the results in their own take-home book.  I was pleased to witness almost all of my students following directions, staying on task and participating in our discussion.  I hope they will use their book to practice their colors at home and recall the “Mouse Paint” story for their family. 

 

In addition their creation making, we spend time talking about art appreciation (how to comment on art, how to describe what you see and how to respect art that you might not like or understand).  We also talk about other types of museums, including children’s museums, history museums and science museums.  My students have enjoyed finding dinosaur bones in our archeological dig site (our sensory table filled with sand, sifters, shovels, brushes and plastic bones). 

 

At the end of our unit, we open our doors to the public for a Museum Gallery Show.  We invite family, friends, other classes, teachers and administrators to come see our fabulous creations.  It is a great culminating activity that everyone enjoys!  

Explanation Provided?

Liz Willen of EarlyStories asked for an explanation of how pre-k students will be tracked in the Maryland P-12 education system. I am not sure I can find the answers she is looking for but I thought I would give it a try.

I think that Willen may have really wanted to know what types of data would be used to track students and if the data would be collected through standardized testing. I did a little research and found this on Maryland's accountability system from the National Child Care Information and Technical Assistance Center website (NCCIC).

Each fall, all kindergarten teachers assess children using a modified version of the Work Sampling System and report this data to the Department of Education. The Department of Education submits a report based on this and other data to the General Assembly each November about the level of school readiness statewide.

This was really intriguing to me because our system currently uses a combination of the HighScope Child Observation Record (COR) and the Phonemic Awareness Literacy Screening (PALS). Both of these assessments are teacher intensive. In some areas, they overlap. The COR uses teacher observations that are scored on a developmental scale from 1-5 with five meaning the child is roughly at a five year old level. This data is reported to Head Start but not the state. The state funded program uses a pre-test post-test system based on Virginia's Foundation Blocks (pdf). The PALS is an excellent assessment tool that provides detailed information on students reading skills including letter identification, begining sound awareness, rhyming, and print and word awareness. This data is then used to develop individual learning plans for every student.

The Maryland Model for School Readiness has been touted as an outstanding example of effective early childhood intervention and accountability system that incorporates instruction, assessment, communication, programmatic collaboration, and professional development. On closer inspection, the Work Sampling System acually seems to be the strongest accountability tool I have ever seen. I can't do it justice by describing it myself so here is a paragraph from FairTest.org the National Center for Fair and Open Testing.

The system is based on seven domains or categories, each with performance indicators: Personal and Social Development (focusing on self identity, the self as a learner, and social development); Language and Literacy ( based on the theory that students learn to read and write the way they learn to speak, naturally and slowly); Mathematical Thinking (focusing on children s approaches to mathematical thinking and problem solving); Scientific Thinking (emphasizing the processes of scientific investigation, because process skills are embedded in and fundamental to all science instruction and content); Social Studies (understanding from personal experience and by learning about the experiences of others); The Arts (focusing on how using and appreciating the arts enables children to demonstrate what they know and to expand their thinking); and, Physical Development (developing fine and gross motor skills and a growing competence to understand and manage personal health and safety).

As a teacher who uses assessment to drive instruction in my classroom I am actually starting to get a little data envy at this point. The assessment uses developmental checklists and portfolios to collect data. FairTest goes on:

The Work Sampling System is a continuous assessment format which helps teachers, families and students gain perspective on the student s development and skills over an eight-year period, from ages three to 11. It allows schools to create mixed-age groupings in classrooms if desired, and allows for longitudinal study over time to examine how a child has developed. The continuous use also allows parents and families to become extremely familiar with the assessment system and its benefits.

Wait a minute! The Work Sampling System actually goes from age three to 11? That means that pre-k isn't considered an add-on program in Maryland. No wonder they were named the nation's best state school system by Education Week. With an assessment tool that already tracks from three to 11 it will be much easier than I thought for Maryland to take that system all the away up to college. Heck, most of the work is already done by addressing the hardest to assess grades, the pre-literate grade levels.

"She got a name?!"

March appears to be the month of new students!  This week we were happy to welcome Tamara, a recently-turned-three year-old, into our classroom community.  My students were eager to show Tamara around and were fascinated by the fact that Tamara had replaced Ruby as our "newest friend." 

On Tamara's second day of school, she walked in to find her name and picture on a myriad of belongings around our classroom -- her writing box (for markers, pencils, and pens), her "situpon" (to cushion the carpet), her journal, her center nametag, her small group nametag, her cubby, her bathroom clip (a way to keep track of who has used the bathroom before naptime), and more.  Tamara was beyond excited and kept bounding from place to place, pointing to her picture, and saying "Tamara, Tamara, Tamara!"  Helping her associate her picture with her printed name is one of the first literacy skills she will learn in school, and she is clearly excited to get started! 

Today, I took Tamara's excitement and translated it into a small group activity about sequencing letters in your name.  For each child, I wrote the letters in his/her name on small squares, and put the squares in an envelope labled with their name.  The ultimate goal of the lesson was to help the children learn to spell their names without requiring them to rely on fine motor skills and write the letters legibly.  But for Jose, I think the most valuable part of the lesson came even before he saw his own name envelope.  We were flipping through the stack of envelopes reading everybody's name, and we came to Tamara's name.  Nobody in our class has a name that starts with "T," and my students were stumped about what this new word could say.  I told my students that it was Tamara's name, and Jose looked at me in disbelief; "She got a name?!" he exclaimed.  The fact that Jose had been talking to Tamara and using her name for that past day and a half indicated that he knew who she was, and that she was called "Tamara," but he hadn't made the connection that the spoken word "Tamara" could be written down and also represent her name.  This short exchanged reinforced -- in a very exciting way -- the idea that all spoken words can be written and all written words can be spoken, which is a critical pre-k literacy skill.

The Importance of Early Childhood Screenings

I recently got another new student.  Surprisingly, she came from one our kindergarten classes at an elementary school just down the road.  I could sense from the principal and number of specialists I spoke to that school was not easy for Tyra.  The hope was that she could finish out the year in my two-hour a day, four day a week program and then repeat kindergarten next year. 

 

Throughout her first day, I noticed some typical first day behaviors.  She was exploring every inch of the classroom and pushing some behavioral boundaries.  But, all in all, she had a good and productive day.  She is learning to follow our rules and what her jobs are as a student in my class.  At the end of our time together she was amazed it had gone by so fast! 

 

What is interesting is that Tyra was five in July of last year.  Based on her birthday, she was eligible to start kindergarten this fall.  However, early on, her teachers were noticing that she was just not ready for an all-day, very cognitively based program. 

 

In reading through some of her records, I mentioned to a specialist, “Do you have a copy of her Early Childhood Screening records or any information on her opportunities for preschool or early learning?”  There was nothing.  This student has spent the last six months in a setting that is completely inappropriate for her.  Although she is five, she is developmentally, behaviorally and emotionally not ready for kindergarten.  This might have been discovered through a screening or family interview.  Our School Readiness program will hopefully be just what she needs.  She will have an opportunity to learn how to go to school, what the role of student and teacher is and how to be an active member of a community in addition to learning some basic skills that will help her lay a foundation for many years of academic achievement.   

 

I am puzzled that in a small school system like mine, not everyone knows just what early childhood education is all about or even where to access it.  I say this not to point fingers at those who are not in the know.  Rather, I hope to encourage those in the know to make sure to NEVER stop informing others about the great work that is done with 4- and 5-year-olds all over our nation.