It's hard to believe that we have been in school for a month! We currently have seven centers open in our classroom -- discovery, cooking, art, sand and water, blocks, toys and games, and library -- and will open the remaining two centers -- dramatic play and computers -- next week. Even in just a month of school, some of my students have already started to develop their "favorite" centers. Ana loves to work in library, Liliana enjoys drawing intricate pictures in art, and Suniah can most often be found in the block area.
While each center naturally lends itself to a specific type of activity, it is important to remember that every domain of development and academic content area can be addressed in every center. For example, Suniah has been working in blocks fairly consistently for the past two weeks. She builds small houses with foam blocks, makes furniture out of bristle blocks, and assigns family roles to the miniature people. Suniah likes to work with her peers, but she sometimes gets frustrated when they don't follow her directions. Having observed Suniah in blocks for several days, I knew that she was naturally getting practice identifying shapes, comparing quantities, and thinking creatively about problems. These are all important cognitive development skills that my students learn in pre-k.
During center time this week, I made a note that I wanted to observe Suniah and join her play to facilitate some more social/emotional and language development. Suniah went to blocks at the very beginning of center time today; she made a flat rectangle of blocks, added several bristle blocks in the middle for "beds," and lined the miniature people up in rows. Over in art, Aaliyah started talking about the TV shows that her mother likes to watch. Suniah apparently heard this, because she soon announced, "Okay, guys, it's time to watch TV!" This was my opportunity to jump in.
"Suniah," I remarked, "did you hear Aaliyah talking about her mommy watching TV?"
"Yeah, we're gonna watch TV!"
"Oh, is there a TV in your house?" I asked, gesturing to her block house.
"Nooooo, it's right here!" Suniah exclaimed with exasperation, gesturing to our alphabet chart on the wall. "They're gonna watch the hippopotamus channel!"
"The hippopotamus channel? With the letter H?"
"Yeah! They're gonna watch the ABC TV!"
At this point Stephen, Jose, and Julia came over to Suniah to see what all the excitement was about.
"Sit down," Suniah instructed the other students "It's time to watch the ABC TV! Now we're gonna watch B.../b/ /b/ baby!" Suniah confidently pointed to the "B" card on our alphabet.
"Now C.../c/ /c/ caterpillar channel!" exclaimed Stephen, eager to get in the game. Suniah obliged, and pointed to the letter C.
This process went on for several minutes; Stephen, Jose, and Julia eagerly called out letters and Suniah quickly pointed to the letters, adding in any information that her friends may have missed (such as the letter sound or corresponding picture).
With a little bit of careful "kid watching," I was able to determine what developmental domains Suniah needed to focus on in centers, and I was able to naturally integrate those domains into her play. She practiced working collaboratively with peers, taking directions from others, and identifying letter names and sounds. In the future, if Suniah continues to work frequently in blocks, I will encourage her to read, write, make patterns, build more complex structures, etc. -- the possibilities are endless!
It’s that time of year again! The nights are getting longer, there is a slight chill to the air and the “Great Minnesota Get-together,” otherwise known as our State Fair, is coming to an end. I love the back-to-school time as much as any other teacher. There is great excitement, anticipation and a tremendous amount of work! I have tried my hardest to be organized and prioritize but it is amazing how much work has to be done. One of my goals as a professional is to work on my delegation skills. I have learned to let my assistants help me with labeling, student packets, and project preparation. In order to delegate these tasks, I have had to be proactive and ultra-organized. I have to have materials ready to be assembled and a framework or example for how I want each task to be completed. Although initially a lot of work, this system has helped me focus on bigger and better beginning of the year tasks.
During our workshop time this year I was able to spend the bulk of my time with other collaborating teachers. We discussed curriculum and our strong desire to make sure our learning experiences were aligned with the Minnesota Early Childhood Indicators of Progress. These goals are research based and comprehensive. I am excited to be a part of a team that has committed to providing opportunities that are proven to prepare and support a student as he or she starts a lifetime of learning.
Here are some of the ideas we have brainstormed so far:
Oral Language: Each classroom has a song time in which we will practice nursery rhymes and finger plays to support the language and literacy development indicator.
Morning Meeting: Students will participate in a large group time where they will
greet each other using eye contact and polite words. In addition, they will participate in a sharing time activity and news and announcements. This helps to support the social and emotional development indicator.
Math Manipulative Small Groups: At least once a week, students will meet in a small group. They will work with numerals, simple patterns and one to one correspondence. This supports a portion of the cognitive development indicator.
Fellow teachers: What creative, but important, classroom activities can you recommend to other teachers?
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!!!
Recently, the early childhood world has been buzzing about an NPR story on the importance of play. This was music to the ears of educators like me in the "pro-play" choir!
What I found most fascinating about the story was the research reported, which showed strong positive gains for children who experienced a play-based curriculum in pre-k. All too often, pre-k teachers find themselves defending the use of play in the classroom to administrators who are unfamiliar with best practices in early childhood classrooms. By attesting to the importance of play this information may also help ease the fears of those parents who feel public pre-k is too academic. Whether you are a parent or a teacher, it is research such as this, presented to a national audience, that can help raise awareness of the central role of play in the pre-k classroom.
The article discusses "executive function" and how it has drastically declined in our population in recent years.
Executive function has a number of elements, such as working memory and cognitive flexibility. But perhaps the most important is self-regulation - the ability for kids to control their emotions and behavior, resist impulses, and exert self-control and discipline.... Poor executive function is associated with high dropout rates, drug use and crime. In fact, good executive function is a better predictor of success in school than a child's IQ.
Unfortunately, play has changed dramatically during the past half-century, and according to many psychological researchers, the play that kids engage in today does not help them build executive function skills.
This really struck a chord in me as I have definitely noticed a change in my students over the years. Long before I read this article I was calling this phenomena “t.v. syndrome” because the students appear to be watching t.v instead of participating in class.
I spend the first two months of the school year showing students appropriate behaviors during circle time. For example, when I am reading a story their eyes glaze over and their jaws go slack; some lay on the floor like they are watching t.v. They will not interact with me and can’t answer even the simplest of questions like, “What color was the cat in the story?” When I sing a song such as Five Red Apples the slack jaws and glassy eyes persist, and I can’t get them to sing with me and hold up five fingers. These problems spill over into play time as well. Most students will wander around aimlessly during play time unless shown how to play with each other and each item, specifically.
What is most troublesome, however, is their lack of empathy, which I feel directly relates to a decline in their executive function. In the beginning of the year if I stumble or pinch my finger in the door the students will laugh. It’s almost as if they are watching an episode of Tom & Jerry instead of a real person. I have learned over time to actually teach them how to interact and respond to these types of situations. If somebody cries, get them a tissue; if somebody trips or falls, help them up and ask if they are o.k.
The article also mentions a program called "Tools of the Mind" that helps children develop their executive function. I have never heard of this program before, but perhaps it warrants further investigation. I would love to hear comments from anybody who has used Tools of the Mind in their classroom.
When we provide opportunities for children to engage in play in the classroom we are allowing them to exercise their executive function and self-regulation skills, which the NPR article points out are extremely important parts of their development.
Recently, the state of Texas has started revising its Pre-K Guidelines. The Pre-K Guidelines are the standards that all public pre-kindergarten programs in the state of Texas follow. I feel the guidelines are crucial to the success of the public pre-k program in Texas as they provide a foundation from which all pre-k teachers can work. As part of the revision process, the Texas Education Agency has scheduled public forums in 12 different locations during the month of February to receive feedback from experts and stakeholders across the state.
Personally, I feel the revisions are very necessary and long overdue. For one, the current Pre-K Guidelines in the state of Texas require that students learn only 10 letters and don’t address whether those letters should be upper or lowercase or a combination of both. My students learn 10 letters in the first few weeks of school, and all upper and lowercase letters, in addition to letter sounds, are covered by December! The current guidelines don’t take into account the fact that some districts now offer full-day pre-k. If a student attends pre-k all day every day and learns only 10 letters in a year, that’s a travesty - not to mention a waste of taxpayer money.
The public forums are being held during the day, making it impossible for regular classroom teachers to attend, and this contributes to teachers feeling alienated in this process. Many pre-k teachers are concerned that the new guidelines will not be developmentally appropriate and may mandate less play and more academics. The current guidelines provide for plenty of art, music, oral language, and dramatic play so their fears seem somewhat ungrounded to me. My feeling is this: the old guidelines are just that - old! They need to be replaced in order to move forward and keep up with the pace of education in the 21st century. The current standards are too low and don’t benefit teachers or students. Only those who were able to attend the forums were able to actually see the proposed revisions, but soon there should be a sneak peek on the TEA website. I would love to hear comments from anybody who attended one of the public forums. When the revisions are made public I will discuss them further here.
A key element of any successful early childhood program is the use of learning centers in the classroom. A learning center is a clearly defined area where students can independently explore and learn with hands-on materials. Research has proven that young children learn best through active, hands-on play; learning centers engage students and make learning fun. With learning centers, I have more time to interact with students one on one. The children become more independent and confident about the decisions they make in centers.
In our full-day classroom we have three different learning center times daily; ABC centers, math centers, and developmental centers. We spend 30 minutes each day at ABC centers, 30 minutes each day at math centers, and 45-60 minutes each day at developmental centers. In each center I have signs posted from ABC Teach that explain exactly what skills we are learning.
The ABC center provides students with hands-on activities that encourage letter identification, phonemic awareness, and literacy. Students manipulate colorful, plastic letters in a variety of ways such as: spelling their names or friend's names, sorting letters by lines (curvy vs. straight), matching same letters, and matching upper to lowercase letters. They also enjoy fishing for magnetic letters with mini fishing rods and tracing sandpaper letters with their fingers.
The math center provides students with hands-on activities that promote number sense, ordering, sorting, patterning, 1:1 correspondence and more. My students enjoy creating patterns by using tongs to place pom-pom's in egg cartons. This activity promotes 1:1 correspondence as they place one pom-pom in each egg cup and fine motor development as the students squeeze and control the tongs with the small muscles in their hands. Another favorite math activity involves ice cube trays, one foam die, and pom-poms. Students take turns rolling the die, counting the dots on the die and placing the correct number of pom-poms in their ice cube tray, which also helps promote 1:1 correspondence and number sense.
Socialization and oral language development are the focus of developmental centers, where students are engaged in activities like dramatic play and science exploration. In the dramatic play center students are learning how to cooperate, share, and communicate with each other by dressing up and role playing. At the flannel board, students are manipulating pieces to re-tell their favorite story. Concepts such as questioning and observation are developed in the science center as students watch worms wiggle under magnifying glasses.
One of the most common misconceptions of learning centers is that the students are “just playing”. Young children are not "playing" during learning centers; they are learning both hard and soft skills. These are all skills that are necessary and will be used daily for the rest of their lives. It is important that teachers create rich learning experiences for their students that lead to higher-order thinking skills. When students engage in authentic activities, it is more meaningful to them and will resonate more deeply as opposed to a one dimensional worksheet.
The retention of skills and knowledge from one school year to the next is crucial for students of any age, including children transitioning from pre-k to kindergarten. Since I teach in a school-year, not full-year, program, I make extra effort to get my class’s families committed to summertime learning.
I’ve seen first-hand what can happen when that effort and commitment are lacking. After my first year of teaching, I ran into a former student and her mother on the bus, right before the new school year began. In our conversation, I discovered that the child had regressed both academically and socially. Subsequent discussions with some of my school’s kindergarten teachers revealed that this child’s experience was not unique.
Once I moved past the initial frustration and disappointment, I began thinking about how best to ensure that the learning foundation established in my classroom did not crumble after Pre-K Graduation Day. My first thought was to recommend to families some summer programs for young children. It turns out, though, that my district does not offer such programs for pre-kindergartners, and affordable non-school-based options are scarce.
Next, I decided to create summer learning supports for families myself. In the past, I had sent home books and writing materials for the summer, but had not strategically designed tools to meet my students’ needs. Sure, I’d given parents their child’s assessment results and general tips for keeping their child engaged over the summer, but this proved insufficient as it meant more work for busy parents to choose and create learning activities based on this information. So, I now give families a homework packet
with specific activities they can do with their children and the materials needed to do them. There are no dittos in the packet, but rather various opportunities for the children to review and continue to explore letters, words, writing, numbers, and shapes.
Judging by the my class’s high return rate for homework packets distributed at other school-year breaks (over 85 percent!), I am confident that my students’ families will work with their children on these activities during the summer. And, because of this family involvement, I’m hopeful that my students’ school readiness in the fall will be equal to or even greater than it was on their last day of pre-k.
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.
This time of year we begin the process of transitioning from pre-k to kindergarten. We must prepare our students for the move out of Pre-k 114 and the reality that many of the adults and peers they have come to know may not be moving on with them.
My class started this process earlier than usual, because Ms. Bimba, the woman who comes each week to work with the children on social skills, had her last day today. Saying goodbye is not easy for many people, both young and old. How we handle goodbyes for young children can be particularly delicate depending on their emotional development and past experiences.
Here are some ways we facilitate the process in Pre-k 114:
1. Start Early – We leave enough time to prepare students, mentally, for change. We engage students in a dialogue, plan special events like the pizza party we had for Ms. Bimba, and give students other outlets to express themselves. Our conversation with the children about Ms. Bimba’s departure began a week before she left, and we have already started our conversations about the larger transition to kindergarten. 2. Invite Expression of Feelings in Many Forms – Children, like adults, express feelings in different ways. For Ms. Bimba’s departure, we not only discussed our feelings but wrote, sang, and danced about them, too. We focused the conversation on how we felt about Ms. Bimba throughout the year, not just about our feelings about her leaving. 3. Integrate Transition Process into other aspects of the Curriculum – Thinking strategically, we incorporate “saying goodbye” activities into other lessons. For instance, we did a whole-class letter to Ms. Bimba using interactive writing, explored water color paints to make a piece of art for Ms. Bimba, and read a book with similar “goodbye” themes to help the children practice relating the characters’ experiences to their own lives. 4. Consider Individual Children and their experiences – Some children have a particularly difficult time with goodbyes because of their own experiences with adults or other children having to leave them (e.g., I’ve had students separated from family members because of custody issues and incarceration). We think proactively about how to help these children deal with their feelings; for example, we recognize that some may not like to talk about such experiences in a large group.
We as educators must ask ourselves, what messages are we sending to children during transitions like these and what are they taking away from the process? My children have a sense that sometimes people we care about cannot stay and that it’s okay to feel angry or sad. They also have ways of constructively dealing with those feelings, whether it be writing the person departing a letter or talking about the fun things we did with that person. As they move forward to kindergarten and beyond, they will need these tools to remain calm and focused, even in times of change.
"Choice Time" is a critical time for pre-k students to grow academically and socially. During choice time in my classroom, the children can go to any of ten interest areas that provide a wide range of opportunities for learning through hands-on, experiential activities. Each area has labeled materials and books pertinent to that area (e.g., Blocks has books about building and transportation; Dramatic Play has cooking and career books; Art has books of art with famous paintings). These materials help teach how literacy permeates all areas of life.
Here is a glimpse into choice time in Pre-k 114:
Blocks Area – Quite logically, the blocks area contains different types of blocks - wooden and plastic, large and small. In addition, we have worker hats, transportation toys, animal toys, and people figurines. We put illustrated labels on all toys to help make children aware of letters and words and how we use print in a functional way. When this photo was taken David and Samar were trying to construct a tunnel through which the car could pass. I asked them to recall what the tunnel looked like in the book we read. They found the book and discovered they were missing the top part of the tunnel. They also learned about cause and effect when they pushed a car through their construction project too fast and the tall sides fell in.
Dramatic Play – This area includes everything from plastic fruit to a medical kit. The children take on pretend roles ranging from mommies and daddies to doctors and waiters. We expose them to different functions of print by including real maps, menus, recipe books, and bus schedules to support their play. I often engage students with open ended questions that build their vocabulary and target their individual needs. In the "doctor's office," I asked Doctor Tyrique whether he was going to fill out a prescription for my medicine. He responded by grabbing a notepad and writing my name. We worked on listening for the sounds in Pappas and connecting those sound to letters. In the photo, Tyrone is writing a grocery list for his family.
Art Area – This area includes a wide range of materials intended to spark the children's creativity and invite constructive and open-ended dialogue between the teacher and student. Rather than tell children exactly what to make, we give them tools such as water color paint, paint markers, hard and soft clay, and collage materials. We provide an example, and then encourage them to express themselves with their tools. The symmetrical paintings shown on the back wall in the photo exemplify this process. I showed students how to paint on one side and make a mirror image on the other side by folding their paper. They then made their own paintings and, in the process, learned about symmetry.
These examples reveal the successful results of learning through play, or what I would deem constructive play. Teachers create interest areas with opportunities for children to explore and grow in various content areas. They then use choice time as a chance to target individual student needs identified through ongoing, performance-based assessments, and analysis. As children explore and discover, teachers can seize teachable moments and move their students forward.
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Blocks Area – Quite logically, the blocks area contains different types of blocks - wooden and plastic, large and small. In addition, we have worker hats, transportation toys, animal toys, and people figurines. We put illustrated labels on all toys to help make children aware of letters and words and how we use print in a functional way. When this photo was taken David and Samar were trying to construct a tunnel through which the car could pass. I asked them to recall what the tunnel looked like in the book we read. They found the book and discovered they were missing the top part of the tunnel. They also learned about cause and effect when they pushed a car through their construction project too fast and the tall sides fell in.
Dramatic Play – This area includes everything from plastic fruit to a medical kit. The children take on pretend roles ranging from mommies and daddies to doctors and waiters. We expose them to different functions of print by including real maps, menus, recipe books, and bus schedules to support their play. I often engage students with open ended questions that build their vocabulary and target their individual needs. In the "doctor's office," I asked Doctor Tyrique whether he was going to fill out a prescription for my medicine. He responded by grabbing a notepad and writing my name. We worked on listening for the sounds in Pappas and connecting those sound to letters. In the photo, Tyrone is writing a grocery list for his family.
Art Area – This area includes a wide range of materials intended to spark the children's creativity and invite constructive and open-ended dialogue between the teacher and student. Rather than tell children exactly what to make, we give them tools such as water color paint, paint markers, hard and soft clay, and collage materials. We provide an example, and then encourage them to express themselves with their tools. The symmetrical paintings shown on the back wall in the photo exemplify this process. I showed students how to paint on one side and make a mirror image on the other side by folding their paper. They then made their own paintings and, in the process, learned about symmetry.
