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.
“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.
Noticeable growth in pre-k is all about making meaningful connections. The connections happen when a child links decisions about sharing to consequences, a letter she sees on a label to a friend’s name, or a discussion about hibernation to the cave she built with blocks. Children’s ability to link pieces of information reveals their progress in a wide range of social and academic skills.
The approach and underlying principles of a pre-k curriculum can significantly influence a child’s ability to form such connections and, in turn, the quality of pre-k programs. While many pre-k curricula seem similar because of a common emphasis on “learning through play,” the structure and focus of those activities can dramatically differ.
During my first year teaching pre-k, my school used Curiosity Corner, a highly scripted program with weekly themes and daily activities laid out in extensive detail. Everything from theme-related art activities to the specific questions to ask children during story time was handed to me on Day One.
How closely was I supposed to follow the script? I distinctly remember an instance when my resource teacher from the Office of Early Childhood first applauded my open-ended and higher-level thinking questions used in a whole group discussion and then instructed me to keep the manual in front of me to make sure I was following along. Well, I wasn’t following along, but that’s because the direction of my students’ comments diverged from the script, which was written without a true understanding of their interests and backgrounds. Imagine that!
It turns out my resource teacher was often just as torn as I was about “following suit” and meeting the needs of actual children. She would say when that door closes, its your classroom, but at the same time ensure I fulfilled all of the curricula’s criteria when supervisors from Curiosity Corner came in.
We now use Creative Curriculum, an unscripted program focusing on building meaningful relationships between students, teachers, teaching assistants, and family members. We focus on developing student interest driven activities and a structured but flexible classroom environment responsive to the diverse needs of children. I, of course, have to plan more, but my ideas come from observations and reflections of my students’ skill deficits, strengths, learning styles, and interests. Their connections to the material and teaching strategies produce that noticeable growth I mentioned.
For example, this week Kevin and I were in the Dramatic Play area when I showed him an airplane ticket he could use during our topic study on transportation:
Kevin: Wait a second, Ms. Pappas…the airplane can’t go straight up. It first needs to roll on the ground really fast and then fly up, like the geese in the book. He had to run real fast and then fly up too!
Ms. Pappas: Great connection to the book about birds. We read that book a long time ago. Give yourself a connection kiss.
The movements we first used to compliment our initial discussions about geese and airplanes were clearly evident in the hand gestures Kevin used as he made his point. And his interest in both areas helped invest him in the thought process needed to build on prior knowledge to generate new ideas.
I am curious to hear from other teachers, administrators, and parents about the successes and challenges of various curricula.
Like any good professional educator, I spend hours and hours designing lesson plans. In pre-k, it is especially important that lessons excite and center on the children’s four-year-old interests. Yet my planning is not complete until I also determine how to transition my children from one lesson activity to the next.
Why are transitions so important in pre-k? Well, take an example from my first year of pre-k teaching. On a typical morning, my students read independently after breakfast, and when that less structured activity was over I struggled to motivate the class to clean up and get focused for the more structured whole-group circle time that followed. I noticed that I spent, on average, 10-15 minutes transitioning the children between the two activities - precious minutes that could have been instructional time.
I reflected on how to minimize time lost to off-task behavior and learned that simple songs and rewards kept the children engaged and attentive as they put away their books or play materials and prepared for the next lesson. Among the little ditties we now sing are:
• “Read, read, read a book, we are getting smart” (to the tune of “Row, Row, Row, Your Boat”) • “Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere, clean up, clean up, everybody do your share.” • “Clap, clap, clap, snap, snap, snap, now it’s time to take a nap.”
I also began providing incentives like short “dance parties,” a parent visitor, or a fruit we hadn’t yet tried in return for the class consistently getting ready and focused before I could count down from 10 to zero.
Before long, my class was able to clean up and be ready for our morning meeting in less than one minute. Reclaiming those ten minutes each day for the entire year adds up to 1,800 minutes of instructional time. Think of what you could teach in 1,800 minutes?! And that’s just one transition time among eight or nine in a given day.
But time saved is just one benefit of an effective transition. When four year olds are standing around while their teacher scrambles to move to the next part of the day, they are apt to fill that vacuum with undesirable behavior. By laying out behavioral expectations at all times, including transitions, and designing transitions that meet students’ developmental needs for plenty of movement and singing, transitions help curb those undesirable behaviors. For instance, Ravon, who swung his arms and legs aggressively in the beginning of the year, is far less likely to engage in such behavior now because he knows what is expected at all times.
Transitions can also reinforce the concepts and skills we learn throughout the day. As in the examples above, we use counting skills to get ready for circle time and rhyming skills to get ready for nap and to clean up. Instead of just saying “line up,” we line up in a pattern. Individually, the songs and counting just seem like normal pre-k classroom sounds, but, together, they ensure that the children and I get the most out of each day.
“And chances are if the mouse asks for a glass of milk, he’s going to want a cookie to go with it.”
Ahh, the end of story time, right after lunch and before nap-time…a time when most of the children are relaxing, flirting with the decision to crash prematurely on the rug before retiring to the comfort of their individual mats, or contemplating the complexities highlighted in the literary masterpiece just presented to them, in this case the enigmatic cyclical nature of Laura Numeroff’s classic, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.
Yet, for Kevin, this point in the day used to be filled will anxiety, frustration, and sometimes pure anger if he was not chosen to help me pass out the mats. Not anymore.
Unlike the other children, our key phrase –“Oh well, I’ll get picked next time.” –did not work for Kevin. Ms. Morrison and I decided to individualize our approach to Kevin’s struggle with taking turns and build on his visual learning style and interest in taking on greater responsibility. Each day, after we complete our post-story discussion, Kevin walks over to Ms. Morrison’s table and figures out who should have a turn to distribute the mats by reviewing a list of his classmates who have helped over the course of the past two weeks. He then announces the person picked for the day to the entire class. Since we have developed the system Kevin has not cried or thrown a tantrum once during this transition time.
We still have some difficulties in other parts of the day; for instance, if he doesn’t get picked during a discussion or game on the rug. Yet the intensity of his responses has subsided, and he is better able to manage his anger without much direct attention from me. He will sometimes turn his back to the group to weep silently or just breathe deeply. He either comes back to the group on his own in a few minutes or responds to me praising others or engaging him with an interesting activity. He even occasionally uses our “Oh well” message.
We have certainly made progress in working with Kevin and understanding how to continue improving his behavior in the future. His ability to stay focused and calm even when he is not chosen or he does not get what he wants will undoubtedly help him grow both academically as a learner and socially as a member of our classroom community.
In my classroom, setting and working tirelessly toward goals are crucial to our overarching theme of going from “good to great.” I set goals for my students, use data to assess our progress toward those goals, and design lessons based on those analyses. Likewise, I aim to instill in my students the importance of reflecting about areas in which we can improve and addressing those areas in order to grow as learners. I also want to invest families in this process in order to ensure that a goal oriented mindset stays with my students after they graduate from pre-k.
As part of our celebration of the New Year, we made resolutions with our families. Each student received a note and blank resolution card
the first day back last week. Students returned the cards after coming up with a resolution with family members at home.
2007 New Years Resolutions
Tyrone and his mother: Our goal is to read more words and count more numbers.
David and his mother: Our goal is to read two books every night and find more words and letters.
Sierra and her family: As a family our goal is to spend more time reading and sharing our thoughts.
Derrell and his mother: Our goal is to improve Derrell’s writing of letters.
Tyrique and his mother: Our goal is to strive for the best together.
Awana and her mother: Our goal is to identify numbers and the alphabet and to work on writing Awana’s first and last name.
Karen and her grandmother: Our goal is to read one new book a night and write down two new words out of the book.
Fuquan and his mother: Our goal is to read a book every night.
Kevin and his grandmother: Our goal is to help Kevin read a book until he understands how to read alone.
Jeffrey and his mother: Our goal is to learn how to tie our shoelaces.
Ravon, his mother, and father: Our goal is to sing more songs together such as “The Wheels on the Bus.”
Friday morning, 7:45 am, and still no Ms. Alexander. Tyrique’s mother and I have now set up four alternative conference times to meet about Tyrique. Each time she has said she would make it. Each time I have provided several oral and written reminders; and each time, she has not shown. Tyrique is not a major behavior problem, but he did come in among the lowest academically in the class. He could barely identify any of the letters in his name and struggled to pick up on basic book handling skills. We have a lot to discuss, but still, Ms. Alexander doesn't come. She does come, however, to other parental events: Family Show and Tell, Giving Thanks, Halloween Costume Parade, Tyrique's birthday party. She comes late, but she comes, nonetheless.
I grow frustrated and decide instead to focus solely on Tyrique and our work inside the classroom. With our efforts to target his needs in one-on-one, small group, and whole group interactions, Tyrique has now started to identify beginning sounds and some letters in words on his own. He can also write his name and read the names of his friends.
Is family support important? Of course. But what happens when difficulties with parental investment arise, even as early as pre-k? Does the child become a lost cause? Of course not. Should teachers relinquish their own responsibility? Just the opposite.
Partnership and cooperation between teachers and parents are so critical to pre-k. What happens at home impacts events at school and vice versa. Even though I spend months interacting with my students, recording their progress, and collecting their work samples, I need parental involvement to fully understand each child’s interests and needs. And I need parents’ trust if I’m going to get the information that, as David’s mother put it, will help their children go “sky high and have a better life.”
For example, last week our school held a parent-teacher conference night. But well before that week, I laid the groundwork to make sure my students’ parents came. I share information about their child's progress 2-3 times per week, either orally for those parents who drop off and pick up their children or through informal notes to those parents who work during school hours. I also reinforce that they are always welcome in my classroom by inviting them to special events like “Family Show and Tell” and our “Giving Thanks Party.” The use of both formal written invitations and constant oral reminders to anyone and everyone in the family we see helps boost attendance and demonstrate my sincere desire to invest each family member in their child’s education. Then, during conferences, I use an open dialogue format, as opposed to a more overbearing and arrogant top-down approach with me talking at them. Rather than just delivering and explaining the report card, I use an individualized action plan to guide discussion of the child’s strengths, target areas, and ways both families and I can move the child forward.
This last time, thirteen out of fourteen parents or guardians showed up for conferences. Several parents remarked that their child does things like rhyming and retelling stories at home -- activities I’d not seen these children do in school. This information is invaluable, since I now know the issue is not a skill deficit but a matter of not feeling comfortable or motivated to show these skills in the classroom. Now I can design teaching strategies that more accurately reflect each child’s needs. Thank you, families!
I think results like these prove that parents will make time to be involved if teachers make time for them and create strong home-school connections.
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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.
