Language acquisition has always intrigued me. It is amazing to see four and five year olds come to my class with very little English and, in matter of weeks, be repeating, practicing, and even formulating their own English phrases!
This year, however, I noticed that I was getting the "silent treatment" from several of my English language learners (ELLs). They could go through most of our day without saying a word, in English or their native language! Concerned, I started to pull out all the tricks. I had the students work one-on-one with a teaching assistant to practice environmental print words (door, chair, table, etc.) and daily greetings ("Good morning, How are you?", "I am good and you?"). I tried small groups with two language learners and two native English speakers. We even worked with native speaking interpreters!
After doing some research, both through online articles and emails with ELL teachers in other schools, I have found out this a normal and common stage of language acquisition. (Something I probably knew deep down!) This “pre-production” stage is a time in which many learners are silently taking everything in. It may last a few days or a year. I was reassured to hear from many sources that these students are learning! As children learning a new language interact and observe, they hear common phrases, learn basic language skills, and develop confidence to begin trying out their newfound language.
I see this happening with some of my students. They are mostly silent but enjoy repeating phrases with a teacher or student one-on-one. Ramon is a good example. He will say his name during our circle time and he knows the names of at least three other students in our class. During our free choice center time, Ramon often starts out alone in the book area or stands on the outside of the block area watching to see what is going on. With encouragement and help from a teacher, he will usually join a group of students who are already working. At our calendar and weather time, he has recently started to open his mouth and move his lips, although the sounds are very quiet and hard to interpret. Once or twice a week, I have him and another English language learner work on the calendar and weather with me. When he is repeating after you, the days and months of the year are understandable.
These recent developments in Ramon’s language are really exciting! Every day at snack or before he leaves to go home he tells me something about his dog. He seems so excited to be able to communicate these stories with me. Although they are often very similar stories, it seems as though he has spent our two hours together building up the courage to try out his English language skills. We will continue to model, practice, and encourage language for him and all the others in our class.
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.
Like adults, pre-k students have good days and bad days. How we as teachers deal with the latter can significantly impact our relationships with individual students, their academic and social growth, and our overall classroom culture.
Just as we differentiate instruction to meet the needs of all students, we must also individualize our approach to motivating them. Karen, though upbeat and highly participatory throughout the day, periodically comes to school in tears, clinging to her grandmother. She is quite comfortable using writing and drawing as a creative outlet, so I suggest that she write a note or paint a picture for her grandmother during choice time. This helps her remain connected even when she cannot be with her family.
Her grandmother and I have also worked on stressing responsibility with Karen. I thank all of my students for being responsible when they correctly follow our morning routine as they enter. Karen’s grandmother and I use that same terminology when we are trying to stop her from crying. This process usually takes a few minutes. She then calmly puts away her belongings, washes her hands, and is eating breakfast with her friends in no time.
Awana occasionally comes in sobbing and lethargic, particularly if she has been absent or we are returning from the weekend. If she says anything, it’s usually a very quiet, “I want to go home.” Her mother is not nearly as present or supportive as Karen’s grandmother, nor does she use writing and art in the same way as Karen. She does, however, respond well to good old-fashioned hugs. I usually ask her how she feels, let her know how I would feel, remind her of our classroom routines, give her a hug, and send her on her way to “have fun and learn with her friends.” Kevin or David sometimes chime in with their own hugs and a “We missed you when you were out, Awana.”
Aniyah often arrives late and upset about something that happened with her brother on her way to school. Despite our daily “fresh start,” she sometimes carries over some baggage from behavioral problems the day before. I am quite familiar with her affinity towards cheer leading and use this knowledge to motivate her. I often greet her with a cheer to her name or ask her to help me out with a cheer for one of her friends.
Understanding and effectively addressing mood fluctuations is an important part of my job, and through this process my students gain self-confidence and the trust in me they need to be engaged members of the classroom community. When we as teachers succeed in this role, disruptions to the class are minimized and children are less likely to use negative behavior to get attention.
All I have to do is turn on a cable news show with talking heads barking at each other to know how important listening is for the young generation I teach. I work intensely with my students on their ability to listen to teachers and each other.
Like any other skill, I start my plan for listening skills by familiarizing myself with the state’s idea of mastery. The NJ Preschool Expectation for listening is pretty comprehensive. In addition to following directions with several steps, students must demonstrate proficiency in engaging in a dialogue with others and incorporating ideas from previous discussions and songs into play.
With these guidelines in mind, I design lessons that cover each component. These can be games explicitly dealing with following directions (Simon Says has always been my favorite) or increasingly complex directions given to students in small group and one-on-one interactions during choice time.
Story time discussions are obviously valuable opportunities for students to strengthen listening skills as they listen to the teacher read to them. Students can also work on listening to their peers as we engage in a dialogue about the story. I have taught my children how to build on the comments of another student and respectfully offer alternative ideas by using phrases such as “I agree” or “I disagree.” During a recent read-aloud of the book Giraffes Can’t Dance, Jeffrey noted, “I think the giraffe is gonna leave the jungle ‘cause the lion mean to him.” Samar then responded, “No, he not gonna leave. The other animals will be nice to him.”
As you can imagine, with 14 four year olds egocentric tendencies can pose challenges for the frequency and depth of these kinds of interactions. Tanasia, whose mind was often on her family in the beginning of the year, would comment on her brothers and sisters regardless of the topic of our class discussions. After months of working on listening skills and becoming more comfortable in the classroom, she now makes comments and asks questions pertinent to stories. During a story for Mother’s Day just last week, in which the mother is in a wheelchair, she asked, “Ms. Pappas, why she in the wheelchair?” Derrell demonstrated his own growth in listening by answering her: “I think she fell in the street and was hit by a car.”
Students also show progress by incorporating ideas from discussions and stories in their play. After building a house in the Blocks Area, Fuquan told everyone to step back and then cried, “I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down,” thereby applying his knowledge of the Three Little Pigs to his independent work. Ravon showed me a turtle moving slowly in the Discovery Area after we acted out The Tortoise and the Hare during Outdoor Play time.
These skills lay a strong foundation for our students as they head off to kindergarten, having gained an understanding of how to follow directions and recognize the perspectives of others in pre-k. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some “Hardball” and “O’Reilly Factor” to catch up on...
Four months ago David’s mother remarked that she wants her son to go “sky high in life." Now, as he begins to transition to kindergarten, David shows tremendous social and academic progress. His story shows how high quality pre-k supports multiple facets of childhood development.
Socially, David adjusted to our rules and routines fairly quickly back in the fall, but he tended to avoid playing with others and participating actively in large group activities. He was reluctant to sing along with the group or respond during a read-aloud. He preferred playing with dinosaurs by himself in the Discovery area to playing with his friends in more populated areas such as Blocks and Sand. The challenge was to have him go beyond just following all the rules as an individual and begin collaborating more with his peers and participating during whole group lessons.
To help his growth in this area, I encouraged David and his classmates to support their friends by cheering them on with individualized chants (e.g., There is a friend who’s in our class and David is his name-o, d-a-v-i-d, d-a-v-i-d, d-a-v-i-d, and David is his name-o). I also used stories and puppet role plays to facilitate discussions about how we can help each other solve problems (e.g., if our friends are struggling with a task, we can help them remember the “Little Engine that Could” by saying, “I think you can, I think you can” or if a friend does not get picked for something we can say, “oh well, you’ll get it next time,” just like “Susan the Squirrel” puppet did for her friend, “Danny the Dog” puppet).
David soon started having breakthrough moments. He expressed pride in himself by informing his mother of his “purple” status (a reward system I use) the moment she picked him up. The next day, David would let me know how proud his dad was when he told him. He also started contributing more on the rug. Just this week David got to purple for his active participation throughout the day. In terms of playing with others, David often travels between play areas with friends, most notably last week when he and Tyrique together made newspaper hats in the Art Area and drew a pirate adventure on the chalk board in the Writing Area.
Academically, David came in to pre-k knowing some letters and was starting to write his name, but he had difficulty counting, making connections between letters and their sounds, and forming letters. I soon made him the snack manager, which required him to count his friends every day. We also worked with him in small group on name puzzles and exposed him to print and letter sounds at every opportunity. His mother was also quickly responsive to my efforts to invest her in David’s progress; his father soon followed. They worked with him on writing the sight words we learned in school, labeling pictures he drew with the beginning letter of each objects and person, challenged David with opportunities to count with everyday routines (e.g., the number of dishes needed for dinner or shirts in the laundry), and, as they noted in their New Year’s Resolution, read with him every night. His father remarked at one of our conferences that David was so excited about books, he would stop his father repeatedly during stories to make comments. I kept them updated on specific strengths, weaknesses, and ways they could move him forward. I could tell from looking at his writing and hearing him explore letter sounds that his parents were using the strategies at home.
David can now write short sentences with little guidance and is starting to sound out words. Furthermore, he not only counts to twenty, usually without mistakes, but also suggests using counting to figure out the answer to a question (e.g., how do we know that more students voted for apples as their favorite fruit?).
David, like all of my children, came to me in September with strengths and room to grow, both socially and academically. I responded to these complexities with a multifaceted approach that reflects and addresses the needs of the whole child. His progress highlights the potential of pre-k to impact several developmental areas positively and the important, collaborative role parents can play in laying a strong foundation for their children.
The other day I was reminded of the importance of solidifying positive and peaceful attitudes early on in pre-k. I overheard a teacher reprimanding a first-grade student in the hallway for hitting another child. The teacher simply said, “You cannot hit her, it’s not nice. Do you understand?” When the child did not respond, the teacher said, in a more abrasive tone, “Say YES!.” The child then said “yes,” as commanded, and the teacher moved on.
I had to wonder how effective that child will be in solving problems on his own. Perhaps his teachers to date have not taught social skills effectively. Or possibly he has experienced things that have undermined the endurance of those skills in the long run. The incident caused me to reflect on my efforts this year.
I start teaching our peaceful and empowering approach in the beginning of the school year. The process entails direct whole-group instruction through puppet role plays, books about friends and feelings such as Words are not for Hurting, and songs like “The More We Get Together.” In these activities, we use consistent language like, “I feel sad when you [fill in the blank].” Add to this many one-on-one, informal teachable moments, and gradually the children gain an understanding of why they should use their words instead of their hands.
By December, my students were able to follow through with a “peace agreement”, but I served a dominant role in the initial stages of the process. Since then, the children have made even more progress and now take ownership of the peace process from the beginning. For instance, David used to suggest that characters in our stories use violence to solve problems. If the Cat in the Hat won’t leave, David suggested, we should “hit him on the head.” Now, he is more likely to recommend talking through problems. When we discussed recently how the farmer in Farmer Duck exploits duck and refuses to do any work, David chose peaceful means over violent ones, advising the duck to tell the farmer, “Please, can you help me?.”
Other children still require occasional reminders and encouragement, but their skills are clearly developing. Tyrone’s first inclination during a recent read aloud was to hit the animals that had stolen a character’s fruit. After I asked him, “Do we hit animals or people?” he offered an alternative measure: “I would tell the animals that I won’t ride them no more.” Similarly, Jeffrey came to inform me today that another student would not let him play with a certain toy. All I had to say was, “Work it out on your own,” and Jeffrey returned to the student to say, “I feel sad when you won’t let me play with it.”
Pre-k teachers - indeed, all teachers - have an obligation to teach conflict resolution in a way that empowers students to solve problems peacefully. I want my students to leave pre-k with the rationale and language needed to facilitate peaceful conflict resolution so that, throughout their lives, they will rarely, if ever, receive a scolding like that first grader in the hall. Perhaps if we start with pre-k classrooms that provide students with such tools, we will lay the foundation for a society that more closely embodies Immanuel Kant’s vision of enduring peace between people and states.
Effective Praise is a crucial element of a strong pre-k classroom. As any early childhood educator or parent will tell you, young learners constantly seek validation from adults. In response, I try to provide constant support for my students’ achievement in order to instill in them the self-confidence needed to take risks as learners and to remain highly motivated. Yet “being positive” in any way does not necessarily benefit young learners.
Consider how we, as adults, become better at something professionally. If a boss or colleague simply says, “Good work,” we cannot be sure what was good and how we can continue improving in the future. If the coworker is specific and genuine, however, we feel not only confident in our abilities but empowered to produce “good work” later on.
The principle holds when working with young children. A child might approach me with a piece of artwork, for example, and I may feel inclined to comment on how beautiful it is. The child, however, walks away from that exchange with no understanding of the strengths he exhibited or areas he could work on. So, while it takes more thought and effort, I aim to engage each child in a dialogue with comments and questions like, “Interesting, I like the way you used three different colors on the top part of your design. Why did you use three colors on top, but only one color on the bottom? Tell me about the design. What could you add to the horse?” Through dialogue, I can focus the child on specific aspects of the work and invite her to reflect.
And it’s amazing when you can actually see and hear that reflection taking place. I often hear my students think out loud and address the points we brought up in earlier discussions. For example, Ravon recently noted, “Oh, the cow has eyes to see just like me,” before he added eyes to his drawing, and Tyrone now engages in a dialogue with himself as he writes independently. While labeling his cat mask during small group recently, he asked himself, “How do you spell cat?” and then responded, “You need to stretch it out, c-aaaaaaaaaaaa—ttt” as he pulled his hands apart the way we had discussed in a one-to-one guided writing session.
In a given day, between small group and whole group lessons, anecdote note-taking and snack time, providing specific and authentic praise that invites further reflection seems difficult. But praise with a purpose is so effective and rewarding that I encourage everyone around young children, in or out of the classroom, to do it. I’ve summed up these principles in a document for easy adult reflection.
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Four months ago David’s mother 
