Not all Assessments are Created Equal

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

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

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

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

The Power of Planning

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

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

Here are just a few examples of their growth:

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

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

Whose Curriculum is it Anyway?

Curricula decisions in pre-k affect everything from what students learn to how they learn it.  While many early childhood curricula promote developmentally appropriate practices, I believe some, particularly the scripted programs, fail to capitalize on the “teachable moments” that occur every day in the classroom.  As one blog reader recently commented, a scripted program "doesn't really get to high level thinking questions, doesn't address the needs of kids in individual classrooms.".

To be sure, a highly passionate and organized teacher can make the most of any curriculum.  But the ability of teachers to adjust specific curricula often depends on a school’s or center’s relationships with the district, company, or other organization it reports to and teachers’ relationships with their direct supervisors.

I recognized the strengths and limitations of the previous curriculum my district used, Curiosity Corner, and engaged my students in meaningful dialogue that came out of our own discussions, regardless of the exact questions the curriculum manual prescribed.  This worked largely because my supervisors did not micromanage my classroom, not a benefit every teacher has.

When it came to handling a curriculum switch, my district notified the pre-k teachers of the new curriculum during a summer workshop about a month and a half before school started.  Prior to the announcement, we knew only that district officials in the Office of Early Childhood had been vacillating between a few curricula.  We were never informed of possible opportunities to voice our opinions based on classroom experiences.  Clearly, teacher input and evaluation time were not top priorities.

I think my experience with curriculum decisions is hardly unique and begs important questions, like “What role, if any, should teachers play in choosing a curriculum?”

Any teachers, administrators, or curricula authors who want to take a crack at answering that one?  I’m sure we can improve matters if we put our heads together.

Circle Time Question: Pre-k and Hispanic Children

Last week, the National Task Force on Early Childhood Education for Hispanics released an important report called “Para nuestros niños: Expanding and Improving Early Education for Hispanics."  The report highlights the fact that much of the achievement gap between Hispanic children and their peers exists before they enter kindergarten. Citing research on how high-quality pre-k and other early childhood programs improve Hispanic children’s school readiness, the task force issued recommendations aimed at:

• Increasing Hispanic children’s access to high-quality early education;
• Increasing the number of Spanish-speaking educators; and
• Designing and evaluating strategies to strengthen Hispanic children’s language and literacy skills.

What do you think about these objectives and how we can achieve them? How does your pre-k program help Hispanic children and families overcome barriers like access and language?

Tackling the Digital Divide

“Google it,” “blogosphere,” “download it” - If you are reading this blog, chances are you are familiar with these terms, use technology on an everyday basis, and know many others with a similar knowledge base.  But what about children in low-income communities with little, if any, access to technology at home?  When trying to close school-readiness and achievement gaps, the impact of the “digital divide” can’t be overlooked.

I consider technological awareness, just like math, literacy, and social readiness, one of my main priorities as a pre-k teacher.  Children also need to understand the function of the Internet and email because of their vital role in communication, education, and jobs in our society.

We are fortunate to have two computers in my room, which children can use to play educational games and explore basic applications like Microsoft Paint.  I set up the activities before choice time each day and introduce them during our tour of the centers in the beginning of the week.  The children can then choose to use the computers during choice time, alone or in pairs.  I have also set up an email account for the class and invite family and friends to send interesting stories, photos, and questions.  We respond as a class using the large “Smart Board” projection screen in our school’s Computer Lab.  Last year, my friend Alex sent pictures of llamas from his trip to Peru, and the students contemplated and answered his question about whether they would want to ride a llama or a horse.

This week we learned about researching online.  The students came up with questions about animals and brought them to the Computer Lab along with clipboards and pencils.  I searched on Google for answers to their questions while the students took notes using drawings and words.

Our first question was, “What do zebras eat?”  We walked through the search engine process and discovered that zebras eat grass.  The students drew the zebra they saw in the photograph and labeled it.  One astute note taker, Aniyah, raised her hand when I scrolled down to the picture past the words and said, “Wait, Ms. Pappas, go back so I can write zebra.”

We also explored bear and bat caves, lions, and dogs. The only disappointing part was when we had to leave, as many of the children wanted to look up additional animals.  We will have to wait until next week.  Luckily, though, their exposure to various uses of technology won’t have to wait because it isn’t available at home.

Honoring our Contract

She did it!  After three weeks on her individualized behavior contract, Aniyah finally earned enough points to present a special cheering show in front of the whole class. 

As she stepped into the spotlight, Aniyah was surprisingly shy, unlike her attitude when giving frequent, disruptive cheers at inappropriate times.  This “command performance” cheer was a bit more subdued.  Yet as her friends cheered her on, her face brightened, and you could hear a sense of pride reverberating through her voice.

She cheered while clapping out each letter, “A-N-I-Y-A-H, A-N-I-Y-A-H, Aniyah, Aniyah, I am Aniyah! Aniyah, Aniyah, Aniyah!”

When I shared news of Aniyah’s show with her brother and mother the following day, the pride became contagious.  Her family members smiled widely and seemed relieved that Aniyah was showing progress.

Aniyah’s road to victory was not quick and easy.  She initially responded to the point system just as she had to our whole class color card behavior system, asking me angrily why I gave her a one or a two or a yellow or blue card instead of connecting her behavior to the negative consequence.

As we had one-on-one conversations each day, focused on her specific behaviors and the number of points that corresponded with them, she began to grasp the relationship between her choices and the consequences.  Towards the second week, I would ask her how many points she thought she earned for the day, and she could usually guess correctly based on her own assessment of her behavior. 

What does Aniyah’s behavior look like on the rug now?  She usually listens to her friends and me attentively and rarely creates a disturbance by calling out.  We, of course, still have our cheering moments, but these have become exceptions.

Perhaps best of all, Aniyah’s behavioral improvements have facilitated intellectual growth.  She engages more actively in discussion during stories, making predictions and thinking critically about how to solve the characters’ problems.  Just last week, she posed the “water car” solution to the problem in Leo Lionni’s classic, Swimmy.  After losing his school of fish to one deep sea predator, Swimmy found another school of small fish so petrified of big tuna fish that they would not swim around the ocean.  Aniyah’s solution required the small fish to drive a water car out of the ocean away from the big tuna fish.  Aniyah was so focused that she not only suggested the idea but also wrote “wtr car” on our solutions list without guidance from me.

Her behavioral and academic progress have gone hand in hand, and I look forward to more improvements in the months ahead.  This is one contract that both sides of the table are happy with.