Any experienced early education teacher will tell you there are three key ingredients that go into creating every recipe for classroom success: blood, sweat, and tears. Just like any good chef, good teachers add their own flair, spices, and secret ingredients to their classrooms to make the flavor “just right”. No two classrooms are the same because no two chefs teachers are the same. What separates me from Ms. Hoffman the fifth grade teacher down the hall and Chef Boyardee culinary extraordinaire is music.
As a pre-k teacher, I'm continually thinking of ways to motivate my students to learn, while keeping them focused on the activity at hand. Learning the lesson is only one piece of the puzzle; ensuring the concept being taught is retained for future application is where success lies. I have found music to be the most engaging, beneficial way to give my students memorable and meaningful learning experiences while keeping them alert and on task. Simply singing or playing the first few beats of a particular song can allay dangerous daydreaming and classroom catastrophes. I incorporate music in my classroom as often as I incorporate technology – which is constantly.
Here are just a few examples of songs I use to teach skills and concepts in the classroom:
Dr. Jean’s Rise and Shine song = good morning ritual
Sweet Honey in the Rock “Oh My Goodness Look at This Mess” = clean-up routines and procedures
Dr. Jean’s Good-bye Friends song = good-bye ritual
No discussion about music in early childhood education would be complete without a mention of visuals. For an auditory lesson to have maximum impact, singing a song is just not enough. Visual aids accommodate students of different learning styles while introducing students to new skills and reinforcing thier knowledge retention. Another obvious benefit, imagery assists ESL learners in easily grasping otherwise difficult English language concepts. Examples of visual props to use with music include:
Clip-Art: Pictures that go with a song (i.e. pictures of the animals to go with the song I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly)
Stuffed animals or puppets (i.e. a stuffed dog or dog puppet to go with the song B-I-N-G-O)
Toys (i.e. a toy boat to go with the song Row, Row, Row, Your Boat)
Actions: Using simple actions to accompany songs such as dance movements to Jack Hartmann’s Rhymin’ to the Beat Nursery Rhymes
To the trained musical ear, auditory lessons might not be considered “music” at all. And while This Old Man and Down by the Bay aren’t the revered works of Bach or Beethoven, they are effective tools that promote fun learning to otherwise un-captive 3 and 4-year-old audiences. Integral to any early education lesson is the ingredient music. There’s always room for a sprinkle of Raffi or dash of Rachmaninoff in a delicious pre-k recipe.
As a School Readiness teacher and an Early Childhood Screener, I am often invited to the Kindergarten registration nights. In Minnesota, kindergarteners are required to be screened within 30 days of starting Kindergarten. The placement center coordinators invite us to registration to help families make appointments. It is usually a relief for these families to see me there – a familiar face in a sea of new experiences. I help them find where to go and who to ask. I really enjoy working at the events because I am able to see many of my current students exploring what will soon be their new school, classroom and teacher! It’s helpful for my students to have a safe and familiar teacher as they think about what it will be like to be a kindergartner. I usually get sentimental – like a proud parent – seeing the children grow up so quickly!
A few days after a registration night, Malik came to me during class. He seemed very troubled by something, so I asked him if I could help.
Malik: “You remember that other school you were at?”
Me: “Yes.”
Malik: “I really don’t know about that.”
Me: “Well, what are your thoughts?”
Malik: “Do you remember my new teacher’s name?”
Me: “I am not sure, but I know they will help you and remind you when you go there.”
Malik: “Will you be there?”
Me: “No, I will stay at this school and teach another group of students.”
Malik: “Oh. Why can’t you come?”
I was so moved and intrigued by his thought process. He will do fine with this transition, but, it is a little scary to think about. There are new teachers, a bigger building and new friends to make. Parents are often concerned about the length of time their child will be in school and also the start and end time (having to get up earlier or give up a normal afternoon rest time, etc.)
In addition, the communication styles of teachers and schools are different. I have a very open and consistent relationship with my parents – I check in at least once or twice a day during drop off and pickup. My style may not be the same as another teacher’s style. As a school readiness teacher, I have tried to work with parents and students about this transition. However, because we have about four months off in the summer, I often wonder how the first weeks of Kindergarten go for some of my students.
Does anyone have any ideas or feedback about how they approach discussing the transition to kindergarten?
This time of year is always bitter sweet. I must separate from the students and families with whom I have built relationships for the past ten months, and yet those students leave me with a social and academic foundation that will facilitate their success in the future.
Those mixed feelings are particularly pronounced this year, as I’ve decided to leave the classroom and take a leadership position with Teach For America. Rather than preparing to receive a new class of four year olds this fall, I will be working to bring cohorts of new teachers to pre-k classrooms across the country as the Director of Growth and Development for TFA’s Early Childhood Education initiative. Placement sites range from Camden, New Jersey and New York City to Houston, Texas and South Dakota. Teach For America’s focus on early childhood supports our overall mission to close the achievement gap. As we select, train, and support teachers committed to laying a strong academic and social foundation during a crucial stage in their students’ development, we hope to expand those students’ opportunities for success in school and beyond.
I will certainly miss directly impacting my students with a supportive classroom culture, individualized instruction, and a print-rich classroom environment. But my success in room 114 has taught me both the incredible prospects of high quality pre-k and the need to bring more intensely driven, passionate teachers to pre-k classrooms. The TFA position affords the opportunity for me to do just that, and will expand my impact and take my passion for early childhood education to the next level.
In the end, my work is about kids and their ability to be successful in school and the larger society. I taught my class both basic skills and the ability to think and problem solve. I also instilled in them the confidence needed to take risks and, in turn, grow as learners in the future. Now, I can be part of a larger effort to ensure that life circumstances at birth do not define and limit the life prospects of children in low-income areas.
This blog has been an invaluable outlet for my own reflections and a source of growth for me as a teacher. Though I’ll no longer be writing for this blog, I look forward to reading and commenting on the experiences of the next person with that privilege. Perhaps that will be you or someone you know? As policymakers and the public continue to consider and evaluate high-quality pre-k for all, the voices of teachers are never more needed in this discourse.
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.
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.
[This entry was contributed by guest blogger Marissa Castro Mikoy, the director of the Universal Pre-Kindergarten Incentive Program at CentroNía, an educational community-based organization in Washington, D.C.]
Transitioning to kindergarten in Washington, D.C., is not the easiest process in the world. Public charter schools, neighborhood public schools, private schools, "out of boundary" schools... For parents, learning the differences between schools and what those differences might mean for their child is key to answering the million-dollar question, Where should my child go to school?
At CentroNía, we make a concerted effort to help families find the answer. Working with and supporting all our pre-k families, especially immigrant families, has proven to be helpful and rewarding. After the transition process, I've noticed that parents are typically more confident and, in turn, more likely to participate in school meetings or to simply schedule a meeting with their child’s kindergarten teacher.
So, what does our transition process entail? Well, we start by preparing individualized transitions packets for parents. Each packet contains a neighborhood map with plotted color-coded points representing the child's eligible public school, the closest public charter schools, and private schools in the neighborhood. We also provide contact information and school statistics for each school on the map.
Next, we host two breakfast meetings for parents to drop in, pick up their transitions packets, and grab a meal. Our resident CentroNía "transitions experts" are available at these meetings to talk one-on-one with parents, helping them to review the information in their packets, understand the differences between each school in depth, and even complete charter school applications.
More individual attention follows our breakfast events, for I've found that even afterwards there are parents who have more questions but feel intimidated by the thought of calling a school's principal or counselor. I often meet with parents to coach them on starting a dialogue with a school and, in some cases, to serve as a translator.
With individualized guidance and support, a child and his or her family can transition smoothly from pre-k to kindergarten and beyond. Research continues to show that family involvement demonstrates to children the value of their education and their families' role in it. This process should be a partnership with families, and I think we, at CentroNía and across the early childhood community, are proving how that can be done. Pre-k's ability to give children and parents critical skills and confidence is a huge reason why these programs are an important first step in improving K-12 education.
I would love to hear what other communities are doing by way of transitions work. Please post a comment with your ideas or thoughts.
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.
“Hello, my name is Tanasia Britch from Pre-k 114. We will now sing Dr. King,”
Tanasia exclaimed loud and clear for everyone, grades pre-k through two, to hear.
She did it! After a tough transition in the beginning of the year, Tanasia slowly began to participate in classroom activities without much encouragement from me or her peers. Moreover, rather than repeatedly crying and inquiring about the time of her mother’s return, she now focuses on a wide range of subjects including bears and cars. The more she shares with us in terms of her thoughts and interests, the better able I am to chart her academic growth. Her gradual progress culminated in her widely acclaimed introduction of our class performance during the school assembly commemorating the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Her other accomplishments during the past two weeks include:
Counting each of her friends for snack time in a clear and loud voice without skipping anyone;
Identifying and chanting out the letters in the word "like" in our modeled morning message for the first time; and
Choosing to read books to and with her friends rather than reading alone. Tanasia even encouraged her friend to read with her when she saw her friend crying.
As I reflect on her growth, I consider two major reasons for Ms. Morrison’s and my success with Tanasia:
Student-Driven Instruction: We took the time to understand Tanasia's interests and provided opportunities for her to talk about and make things for her family. Our discussions at the rug, during lunch, and at choice time included plenty of open-ended questions which allowed Tanasia to speak openly about what was on her mind: her sisters, mother, father, and auntie. If the mouse ate cookies and asked for some milk, we learned about how happy Tanasia feels when she eats cookies and drinks milk with her sister at home. In addition, while Tanasia first hesitated to join her friends during choice time, she began to gravitate towards the Art and Writing areas once she learned that she could take home her finished products. Tanasia may have been physically separated from her family, but since she had the chance to talk about and make things for her siblings and parents, she still felt connected to them while in school; and
Classroom Culture of High Expectations: We consistently responded to Tanasia’s crying with the expectation that she would eventually become more of an active and enthusiastic member of our classroom community. Rather than excuse her from class activities or call her family to pick her up, we taught her all of the routines and rules like the rest of the children. If she needed to cry when she first came in, she could, but she still needed to unpack, put her Math Homelink journal in the bin, wash her hands, and get her own breakfast.
“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.
We work hard to keep students focused and engaged during
circle time. Given their short attention
spans, we need to incorporate plenty of songs, movements, and upbeat
transitions to make sure those twenty minutes are productive. Today I decided to see how well they knew our
routines by stopping before each transition and asking them what happens
next. I shrugged my shoulders
exclaiming, “Oh no! I don’t know what we
are doing today. What should we do? Should we just sit here and look at each
other until we get picked up?” Despite
the obvious attraction of an all day staring contest marathon, the students
opted to take charge and suggest we look at the schedule. We then decided it would be a good idea to
have a Schedule Manager to remind the class daily. What would I do without them?
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