The Power of Bubbles

For the past few weeks, our unit has focused on things we can do outside.  We have spent time talking about swimming at the beach, flying a kite, skate boarding and roller skating, riding a bike and playing with a ball.  But the highlight of the week is definitely our time spent with bubbles.  As I blow watery soap through a small plastic wand, I am amazed at the raw excitement that explodes from each and every one of my students.  It is hard to explain the joy and pure innocence that their laughter conveys.  For a moment they are able to forget about the difficulties of a broken home, the challenges of living with a disability or the frustrations of not getting what they want.  It takes my breath away. 
 
Some of the students I am teaching spend a very limited time outside.  On home visits and discussions with parents, I try to explain the importance of large motor activities.  More than one parent has stated, "I would spend time outside with my child but they would rather watch TV or play video games."  Other parents express concerns about their child’s physical incapability.  I tell these families, "Come to school and watch your child be successful!  They are jumping, running, twisting, turning, hopping, and laughing!"  All the while…the teacher in me takes over and says they are learning so much more.  They are communicating with each other and they are using their brains and bodies to do some great motor planning exercises.  They are experiencing cause and effect and the amazing science of air, wind and gravity. 
 
I am thankful for the opportunity to have the job I have.  The deep belly laugh and uncontrollable joy of four- and five-year-olds is contagious.  We have so much to learn from them.

S'more Outdoor Learning!

Summer in Minnesota is a great time to move your classroom outside.  It is critical for helping our students make meaningful connections about how our world works, as well as good for their health (see previous blog Going Green.) This past week, we explored the sun.  Thankfully, we had a week without incelement weather.  I asked a simple, open-ended question to guide our discussion: “What can you tell me about the sun?” We came up with the following list:

-       It is shiny.
-       It is this big (arms above your head).
-       It is yellow.
-       It is hot and sweaty.
-       It is a circle.
-       When I go outside it hurts my eyes.
-       It is like on another planet.
-       It helps the flowers grow.

After we made our list, I had a fun experiment to try.  I reminded my students that the sun creates heat and we were going to use it as our oven.  I covered a pizza box with tin foil and had each student put a graham cracker, piece of chocolate and a marshmallow on the bottom part of the box.  Then we went outside and picked a spot to put our solar panel oven.  In a little less than an hour we had delicious S’mores and my students were amazed at how the sun had melted the chocolate and marshmallow.

This kind of experiential, tangible learning is so crucial to our children’s development.  They are able to visualize, manipulate and have a “real world” experience that connects them to the concepts they are learning about.  The beauty of hands on learning is its ability to encompass such a wide variety of subject levels.  Throughout this lesson, for example, we practiced our language and vocabulary skills, developed analytical and scientific thought, and engaged in social interactions among our classmates.  And let me tell you, almost everyone wanted S’MORE!   

Mr. Alligator and 5 Little Monkeys

It is always good to see how my students are able to apply their knowledge.  It's something you often read about in textbooks, but, to see it before your own eyes is beyond empowering.   Today, one of my students, Tim, was working with some jungle toy animals I have out in our science area.  He took an alligator and a monkey and started moving them around.  I asked him to tell me about what he was doing.  He replied with a big smile, “I am playing the alligator and the monkeys.  Do you want to hear?”  Of course I said yes and he proceeded to sing and act out a popular song we sing in class: “Five little monkeys swinging from the trees, teasing Mr. Alligator, can’t catch me!  Along came Mr. Alligator, quiet as can be and snapped that monkey right out of that tree!” 
 
After listening and watching him, I was filled with pride. Not only did he remember all the words, he also used his prior knowledge of our song in his daily work.  As a teacher, this is when you know that what you are doing really works. Through his play, Tim discovered that numbers represent quantity, the foundations of subtraction – counting backwards, the food chain and rhyming.
 
I cannot explain how many times I have to explain to parents, other teachers and the general public that our work in the early childhood years is contingent on learning through play.  Tim, Mr. Alligator and the 5 little monkeys are a perfect example. What a busy day in the jungle of pre-k!!!

Pioneer Day

Teaching is often referred to as being “in the trenches” and if you have ever wondered what that means, by all means keep reading.

If you've even heard of Pioneer Day, my guess is you'd think its some quirky thing we do down here in Texas to celebrate our diverse heritage.  You'd be very wrong though.

It all started with a bang last week-- literally -- when a severe storm with winds of 90+ mph ripped through our community in the middle of the night. The morning after, as I drove to school slowly inching my way through the darkened intersections of Dallas Fort-Worth, I contemplated the numerous scenarios that might lie ahead: Was the school still in tact?  Were our students safe?  Did they still have adequate housing? As I pulled into the parking lot, I was relieved to see that the first of my worries was unfounded.  Some trees had fallen near the playground and the power was out, but our building was still standing.

My relief quickly turned to horror as I entered the darkened school to discover that classes were running on schedule. No, it wasn't a typical nightmare or “schoolmare” that us teachers often have, but basic necessities like air conditioning in the Texas heat and classroom and bathroom windows were completely missing .  As I toured the damage, I had to pinch myself several times to fully comprehend the gravity of the situation. 

Our principal had things under control calling both teachers and students to the cafeteria.  There we were informed of temporary emergency procedures: some classrooms were doubled up to make use of windows, several were forced to conduct lessons in the library, while others found themselves teaching traumatized children in the hallways near open outside doors.

Many students were crying and fearful of the dark although we had a small window in our room that provided some light. One little boy crying hysterically kept asking for our custodian.  When I asked him why he said, “Because Mr. S fixes things and he can fix the lights!” Soon the chorus of “why’s” became deafening and completely overwhelming. No matter how many times we explained the power outage, the concept was too abstract for our little ones to understand.  One after another they chimed in:

• "Why can’t you turn on the lights?"
• "Why is it so hot in here?"
• "Why can’t we do the calendar?" (Our calendar is now done via the ActivBoard, which requires power)
• "Why didn’t we hear the morning announcements?"

Multiply the above questions  by 1000 and crank up the volume of inconsolable children 44 times to understand my day in a nutshell. While pre-k teachers are known for having many talents and skills, I assure you teaching a double-class of four-year-olds in the dark is not one of them.

We waited patiently for the announcement that school would be canceled as the temperatures in the classroom began to climb. The power lines weren’t the only things buzzing as teachers scurried back and forth with their flashlights to find out what was going on.  With little new to report, the verdict was in, we would have to make do for now.

Our principal, known far and wide for his wit and witticisms, quickly coined the term “Pioneer Day” to help lighten the mood.  His humor and contribution, ordering pizza for the entire staff, did wonders for staff moral. We quickly established a makeshift Pioneer Day schedule that included taking the students to the bathroom with flashlights. Our two classes alternated throughout the day; while one group sat at the tables, the other circled in a carpeted, large group area. We were fortunate that the calm after the storm brought a beautiful day.  Half the students took a walk outside, while the remaining listened to a story (listening being the operative word since it was difficult to see the pictures), before we switched.

By the end of the school day, Pioneer Day had a whole new meaning for me.  I felt like I had survived an entire month on a wagon train!  Sweaty, dirty, and exhausted, legs and back aching from the day's constant crowd control activities, I had made it.  Even my jaw hurt from having to talk constantly: ‘It’s going to be okay." "We’re safe." "I’m sorry I can’t turn on the lights.” 

Although I didn’t have a mirror, I am certain I looked as if I had spent the entire day in a trench.  But that's what being a good teacher is all about: surviving the trenches by making do with what you've got and still managing to bring the troops home safely.  At the end of the day, I was grateful to be in a figurative trench with my class rather than the overseas or stuck-behind-a-desk-in-a-quiet-office-space variety.

Let this story serve as a reminder: be it Teacher Appreciation Day or any day, take time out of your busy schedule to thank a teacher for a job well done.  While circumstances differ, chances are they too know about the trenches as operating within them just comes with our territory.

Washing your hands - it's harder than you think!

Each year pre-k teachers are faced with the task of teaching their students self-help skills. Part of our job as pre-k teachers is to foster independence in our students to prepare them for kindergarten. Our students need to be taught how to do things for themselves such as wash their hands. It seems that teaching simple tasks would be easy; all one would have to do is show the students once and then students can do it perfectly. One would be terribly wrong!

This year, my class is having a difficult time learning how to wash their hands.   Apparently the phrase “wash your hands” and “take a bath” were confusing to them--they often emerged from the bathroom dripping wet with soap bubbles in their hair. I finally decided to create a step-by-step multi-media slideshow in Photo Story  titled "How to Wash Your Hands" (see below) that I could show to the class daily.  While it did help cut down on bathtime, their hands were still dirty and soapy when they exited the bathroom.

I had a "light bulb moment" when I realized they weren’t rubbing their hands together hard enough or long enough to rinse off soap or dirt. On-line, I stumbled across an idea about having the students sing the ABC song while they washed their hands. The song is long enough that once they are done singing, their hands are clean. I thought this was a fantastic idea--they can practice letters and learn how to wash their hands simultaneously.

At first, it worked wonders. Everybody's hands were clean. But one day in December, as I stood in the hallway between the restrooms, the singing stopped. I poked my head in the girls' restroom to see what happened.

Me: Why isn’t anybody singing?

Alondra: Everybody knows the ABC song now, that’s for babies.

The gaggle of girls around the sink all nodded their heads in agreement. Alondra is a real pack leader--if she says it’s for babies, then all the other students agree.

There was no singing from the boys' restroom either. I was approached by Octavio who showed me the soap bubbles on his hands, so I sent him back to the restroom to wash again. Octavio must have noticed the defeated look on my face because after a moment, we heard loud singing coming from the boys restroom. I peeked past the door and saw Octavio washing his hands while singing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer at the top of his lungs.The students started giggling and singing along in the hallway. This quickly turned into a hit and soon the kids were looking for excuses to wash their hands and sing. I guess we’ll try Frosty the Snowman this month.

How to Wash Your Hands from vanessa on Vimeo.

Inclusion

Today, we have laws that entitle all children – disabled or non-disabled – to an education in the "least restrictive environment." Inclusion is a part of the least restrictive environment, providing differently abled children opportunities to consistently interact with their peers in the regular classroom.  Inclusion plays a vital role in any child's education " especially in pre-k. Our students are so young and their view of the world has not yet been completely solidified. By interacting with differently-abled children on a regular basis, our students learn that we're each unique. We are giving them valuable experiences that will leave lasting impressions for life.

I have had inclusion students in my previous classrooms. On my current campus, we have a developmental center that serves children with severe disabilities. When I first heard Jonathan was coming to our class from the developmental center, I wasn't sure what to think. Most of my experiences with inclusion up to this point had been with students who were autistic or had Down's Syndrome, but were otherwise physically independent.  I had no prior experience with students like Jonathan who were in a wheelchair and required constant care by a nurse.  I have learned from my prior experiences that four year olds are four year olds no matter what " I was certain everything would be fine. Of course, on Jonathan's first visit to our class there were lots of questions and stares from the students. I was careful not to label Jonathan by saying "Jonathan has ______," and instead allowed the students to make their own observations and ask questions.

The Pudding

The results are in!  After nine months of instructing and assessing in various forms, I have comprehensive data on my students’ growth in literacy.  How did they do?  Each child achieved an average of 80 percent or better on a wide range of literacy assessments!

Because pre-k children often don’t show you everything they know or can do with one type of assessment, I used two types of assessments and incorporated all the objectives from each into my calculations.  One type were performance-based assessments that include anecdotes and work samples collected while the children play and interact throughout the day.  I supplemented these with standardized assessments administered by me to each child to test skills like letter identification and rhyming words.

Overall, 10 children out of 14 achieved 100 percent on the standardized assessments and 9 achieved 90 percent or higher on the performance-based assessments.  I’m especially impressed by the individual gains made by the children, such as:

• Awana, who often struggled to move forward in letter identification and listening skills, in the end achieved 85 percent on the standardized assessments and 83 percent on the performance-based assessments.
• Tanasia, who started off the year too shy to even come to school the first day, achieved 100 percent mastery on the standardized assessments and 88 percent on the performance-based assessments.

I realize some in the early childhood community are skeptical of the extent to which standardized assessments are developmentally appropriate.  I agree that such tests could potentially produce inaccurate results, given the young age of my students.  I try to reduce the potential for inaccuracies by identifying the assessments as “fun games to play with the teacher,” which can help the children feel more at ease and less stressed by the experience.  I ask students if they would like to play with me, and many times they jump at the chance to spend some one-on-one time with the teacher, especially since they get to press the “easy” button (thanks, Staples) when they finish.  I remember Tyrique expressing sadness that he could not play our “game” a second time.

Consistency between the scores given by the two types of assessments suggests that these techniques can help produce more reliable results from the standardized variety.  The results also show general consistency between the two kinds of assessments.

Standardized assessments are necessary in my case because the kindergarten teachers who will have my students next year use them and not performance-based assessments.  This begs the question, of course, why are kindergarten teachers not using performance-based assessments?  I think they should use some combination of the two, at a minimum, to gain a more comprehensive understanding of their students’ strengths and needs.

I am very proud of my students’ growth and know that the combined efforts of Ms. Morrison, Ms. Bimba, each child’s family, and me contributed to their success.

Snowed Under

No, I’m not digging out from an anomalous May snowstorm, but I do feel quite overwhelmed by end-of-the-year paperwork.  Like other teachers, I have mostly assessments and annual school wide forms to complete this time of year.  My pre-k program has additional sets of the former handed down by the district and the state.

The state mandates the use of ELAS, a performance-based assessment system focusing on six language arts/literacy expectations. Normally, I would not voice concerns about ELAS; despite the tedious paperwork involved, it has been very helpful as a tool for targeting the strengths and weaknesses of my students.  My concern is this: the collection period for ELAS ends in June, but my support person from the Office of Early Childhood has insisted we hand in the paperwork nearly a month earlier. Why? My guess is because other pre-k sites have been delinquent in handing in paperwork on time in the past.

The problem with this creative revision of the ELAS timetable is threefold:

1.    This time of year many pre-k students start to demonstrate remarkable academic progress, especially those who entered pre-k younger than the other students.  If we stop collecting anecdotes and work samples from those children in mid-May (to ensure we can finish the paperwork before Memorial Day), we may fail to capture this growth and, thereby, provide the state, our schools, and parents with inaccurate results.

2.    We are also responsible for a social skill checklist and the district’s experimental assessment forms (requiring the collection of anecdotes covering over 30 expectations) in the same time frame.  Now, I am all for an Amazing Race-style challenge for teachers to balance three assessment systems, simultaneously, while also instructing students.  But, if we are really in early childhood for the children and not just to satisfy the sadistic cravings of paperwork hungry bureaucrats, we should think realistically about how our demands on teachers affect their ability to perform in the classroom.

3.    I have always handed in paperwork on time along with additional individualized action plans for my students.  If the folks at the Office of Early Childhood were as organized and well managed as they should be, they would put additional pressure only on those teachers who need it.  In a sense, they should differentiate their approach to employees in the same way that they require teachers to differentiate our approach for the varying needs of our students.

Well, I have to go now…because this paperwork is not going to fill out itself.

Not all Assessments are Created Equal

Recent debate over Head Start’s National Reporting System got me thinking about the challenges of assessing what three and four year olds know and what they have learned from their pre-k teachers. Early Stories sums up the NRS debate with some great examples.

Not being a Head Start teacher myself, I have never administered the NRS.  I am required, however, to use the Brigance screening in the beginning of each school year to identify developmental delays.  While some of the sections are helpful (e.g., following two and three step directions; fine motor and gross motor evaluations), many of the questions seem to measure a child’s exposure to certain words and objects rather than development.  For example, in one section Brigance asks the child to identify a picture of a tractor.  I personally fail to see how the inability of a four year old from the inner city to identify a tractor indicates any sort of delay in her development.  The test also requires children to identify several body parts including the jaw and ankle, a stretch for any four year old in my opinion. 

I think my ideal pre-k assessment tool would breakdown the four areas of child development (i.e., social/emotional; physical; cognitive; and language) and be able to measure each of those components regardless of a child’s background.  Unlike the Brigance screening, such an assessment may have to be partially or entirely performance-based since a child may not reveal the full extent of his problem-solving or language skills in a single one-to-one interaction at the start of the year.  A teacher can, however, observe a child within the context of play with materials and areas the child has chosen. 

Creative Curriculum’s assessment system is entirely performance-based, uses the “developmental continuum” to assess all four areas of development, and is both the most comprehensive and least biased assessment I have seen.  While it can be quite helpful in providing information about your students, it is not necessarily the most accessible data for kindergarten teachers to use the following year, so I do think the more traditional assessments (e.g., letter identification, book handling checklist) have a role to play. 

The Power of Planning

“Your students’ growth will be your growth”: wise words from one of my three greatest role models as a teacher, an older Teach For America teacher who taught in my district. 

Each year, as we begin to discuss signs of spring in the sprouting flowers and leaves outside, I can also notice my students’ academic growth, particularly in basic literacy skills.  As I observe them throughout the day, I see how the individual action plans I created and implemented facilitated their achievement.  The anecdotal notes and work samples in their portfolios provided insights into my students’ strengths and weaknesses.  I then used that data to develop teaching plans for both me and the students’ families to follow.  While I started using these plans last year, more practice with anecdotal note taking and familiarity with analyzing skill deficits using our performance based assessments strengthened my ability to target and address student needs this year.  The success of this valuable teaching tool makes me feel like I have really improved as an instructional leader. 

Here are just a few examples of their growth:

•    David’s anecdotes and work samples from the fall revealed the need to work on listening skills (e.g., incorporating ideas from discussions into play).  Consequently, I linked my questions before and during choice time to ideas we had discussed during circle time.  I also brought in more topics that seemed to appeal to him, such as transportation and animals.  David recently approached me with a toy airplane and his name card and said, “Look Ms. Pappas, the airplane ‘bout to take off on the runway.  It can’t just go straight up, it has to go like this,” as he rolled to airplane on the flat surface and then had it take off.
•    Tyrone’s target areas in the fall included relating stories to his own life.  So, I worked on this skill with Tyrone in whole-group and small-group instruction, modeling how to connect stories to our own experiences.  For example, during a read aloud of Cat in the Hat, I might relate to the experience of the children sitting at home on a rainy day by saying, “I remember when it was pouring rain and I couldn’t go outside to play tag with my friends.  I felt sad.”  I also designed activities around comparing and contrasting characters’ lives with our own.  Tyrone’s recent literary insights include: “I took a long train like the one in the book to New York.” and “I went to the zoo too.  We saw an elephant.”
•    In the fall, Fuquan was strong in letter identification and was starting to identify beginning sounds in words.  From that foundation, he needed to work on making letter-sound connections and using that skill to write words.  My plan for him included playing letter-sound sorting games in small group, discussing sounds in words one on one during activities like journal time, and singing songs about letter sounds during transition times.  Fuquan is now labeling his drawings with the letters that match the pictures and can write short sentences with some guidance from me.

I look forward to using my improved planning skills to make the most of the precious few months left with my students this school year.