Summer Learning

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 Pudding

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.

Saying Goodbye

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 = Critical Time for Student Growth

"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.

Awana's Struggles and Successes

This time of year can be bittersweet, with many students demonstrating remarkable growth and others still struggling with some basic skills.  Awana, uniquely, can do both, depending on the day or even the hour.

I recognized her needs early on and have been working intensely with her one-on-one in addition to our small and large group lessons.  Awana started making connections in December when she wrote her friends’ names in the Writing Area.  She recalled the formation and order of the letters for most of her friends and had developed the fine motor skills needed to write those names.  She could not, however, identify the letters or the sounds in their names.  That “wow” moment taught me the importance of Awana’s friends as a reference point for her further growth in literacy along with the need to build on that foundation with instruction that helped her make connections between words, letters, and letter sounds.  If Awana chose to draw and write about dogs, we thought about the sound in dog.  Awana thought about the dog, listened for the /d/ sound, said, “like in David’s name,” and then wrote the letter D.

As I worked with Awana with this plan in mind, I noticed that her friends’ names weren’t the only useful resource.  Our transition chants involving letters, which we sing every day, also helped her make connections during choice time and small group.  For example, we move from the daily schedule routine to a letter exploration activity by chanting, “Big ‘L’!  Little ‘l’! What begins with ‘L’?  Lunch, lunch, /l//l/ Lunch.” Recently, the class wrote a letter to the mayor about the littering problem in Newark as part of our study of the environment.  To help us get writing, I thought out loud for the children, saying, “Hmm…litter, what do you hear in litter.” Before I could “struggle” with the difficult challenge, Awana’s hand shot up.  She responded, “/l/, Big ‘L’!  Little ‘l’! What begins with ‘L’?  Lunch, lunch, /l//l/ Lunch.”  She then proudly came up to the board to add the letter “L.”

And yet Awana does not always retain the information.  Many times during the day she responds by shrugging her shoulders and remaining silent or just calling out random letters (or sometimes numbers).  I realize some of the inconsistency may be developmental, but I have never seen such dramatic differences in the same child within the same day.

There is also the issue of her mother.  Awana receives the least amount of support from home out of all of my students.  I hope to send my class off in June with a toolkit filled with games their families can play over the summer to help them retain the skills they have gained.  Awana will need this support the most, but given the difficulty her mother has had in keeping appointments with me this year, I fear that Awana won’t get it and these hard-won skills may fade.

Praise with a Purpose

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.

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. 

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.

Curriculum Connections

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. 

Dealing with the 'F' Word

No matter how many times I tell my kids, “We cannot always do everything we planned, sometimes we have to be flexible,” the sudden need to pick up and leave in the middle of a lesson still frustrates me.

This time it was Friday afternoon and we were just getting into a comparative discussion of Anne Rockwell’s Big Wheels and Cars, when some unexpected visitors arrived: a repair team to fix a leak in our radiator.  To be honest, when I discovered the leak on Monday, I briefly vacillated between reporting it or just hoping it would go away…no, not because I want to teach my students about the wonders of flooding or a potential gas explosion, though experiential learning would be developmentally appropriate.  In fact, I dreaded the prospect of abruptly relocating materials and my students to the auditorium when it came time to fixing it.

Well, it happened. And despite an inner desire to scream out of frustration, as their leader I, of course, had to redirect my children calmly and quickly.  We grabbed some toys, a bin of books, and some map floor mats for continuing our exploration of transportation.  We then lined up and headed to the auditorium.  The students became so focused on our new mission that we even received a compliment from a fourth grade teacher who remarked that it would be difficult to get her students that quiet.  We finished the literary discussion and then set up informal centers.  We also took full advantage of the stage to practice public speaking and rehearse for our future American Idol auditions or Grammy night performances.  Step aside Beyonce and Justin…

What happened with the leak?  Well, as of now it’s still not fixed, and we may have to move somewhere else for a few days or the whole week.  The uncertainty means the need for more flexibility.  There, I said it again.  And, yes, regardless of my frustration with the situation, I will have to flexible since I cannot control the leak or the pacing of its repair, but I can still maximize constructive learning time with my students.

Update: I came into my class early Monday morning only to find the furniture still relocated and to learn that nothing was done over the weekend.  I organized various center and whole group materials that my students, Ms. Morrison, and I could transport easily into the library.  The final call that we needed to move came in the middle of Morning Meeting.  Despite my frustration at having to leave during our attendance routine, I remembered the need to be flexible and quickly pulled out a rubber band to guide my students.  We discussed the need to stretch a little--essentially to "be the rubber band."  It turns out my students are incredibly elastic, maybe beyond "rubber band elastic," even "bungee cord elastic."  They adapted quickly, made creative and print rich Valentines for family and friends, explored patterns with shapes, sorted "shiny" and "not shiny" coins, and created a backdrop of train tracks for our Dramatic Play area, just to name a few of the options available. 

And the radiator?  Unfortunately, they did not finish fixing it.  In fact, for whatever reason, they seemed to stop working on it shortly after they arrived.  It is now Thursday evening, and we are still unsure when the radiator will be fixed.   The saga continues...