Kindergarten

What Kindergarten Readiness Means to Kindergarten Teachers

Lisa Guernsey — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:48:00 -0500

Data from a survey of kindergarten teachers in California's Santa Clara County adds to the mounting evidence that kindergarten readiness is not as simple to define as you might think.

Contrary to popular conceptions of what it means for a 5-year-old to be ready for kindergarten, most kindergarten teachers are not wishing for rooms full of children who can already identify the letters of the alphabet. What they want instead are children who have learned how to regulate their impulses, follow through on a difficult task and have the self-control to listen to the teacher's directions for a few minutes.

This was one of several messages that emerged in Sacramento last Thursday during a presentation of recent data from the Santa Clara County Partnership for School Readiness, a collaborative of public, private and non-profit organizations in Silicon Valley. The presentation was part of the forum at which the New America Foundation released our report on early education in California. (For more about the report, see last week's post, the executive summary and the full report.)

Researchers for the Santa Clara County Partnership surveyed 36 kindergarten teachers in 2008, asking them multiple questions about what they believed entering kindergarteners should to be able to do in the domains of self-care and motor skills, self-regulation, social expression and kindergarten academics. Loretta Burns, director for the partnership, showed this slide at the California event to explain how these domains build on each other:

(If the slides are hard to read on your monitor, you may want to open the larger versions by clicking on the attachments at the end of the post.)

While kindergarten academics is at the top of the pyramid, most kindergarten teachers did not report that children need to come in with a strong base in academic skills if they want to have a successful kindergarten year. Instead, the teachers gave top billing to self-care and motor skills followed by self-regulation.

Teachers said that it was easiest to help students develop their academic skills and hardest to make an impact in developing their self-regulation skills. In fact, they said they had to spend the most time in the classroom focusing on self-regulation. This slide below tells the story:

This highlights the importance of designing interactions in the preschool years that are developmentally appropriate. Worksheets that force 4-year-olds to trace the outline of the letter A are a far cry from the types of experiences young children really need in the preschool years.

The slide also raises a key question: How can preschool and kindergarten experiences help children learn to self-regulate? Research on the importance of building self-regulation skills in young children has been accumulating over the past few years, and some of it is starting to zoom in on the significance of playtime, particularly pretend play scenarios that are child-led but feature teacher input. For example, the Tools of the Mind approach, which we've written about several times, incorporates pretend play in classroom settings and has been shown in scientific research to improve children's executive function and self-regulation skills.

Burns' presentation about the Santa Clara project was valuable on several other levels too. It provided a view of kindergarten readiness assessment that may help to dispel concerns about inappropriate testing of preschoolers. As Burns explained early in her presentation: "This is not about standardized tests for 4-year-olds."

The assessments in Santa Clara collect information from parents, teachers and observations of children in classroom settings. They are not used to determine where children should be placed or what schools they should attend, nor are they used to evaluate teachers or for other high-stakes purposes. The observations are done by trained teachers who look for signs of children's progress on multiple levels. Some examples of what they look for:

Can the child operate zippers or work with crayons?
Can the child follow one- or two-step directions?
Can the child engage in symbolic play with others (like playing house or fire station)?
Can the child count 10 objects correctly?

The appendix of Santa Clara's September 2009 report provides a sample of the observation sheet used for recording children's development in these and several other areas.

Santa Clara has been conducting these assessments since 2004, and the data is providing new insights to better prepare teachers for the children coming through their doors. Besides demographic and skill-based information, the data tells schools and teachers how many children are arriving with some experience in early learning environments like preschools and high-quality child care centers.

Collecting information like this is critical to ensuring that early education systems provide what children need. We hope that, as states continue to build out more robust and accessible systems of early learning for young children, well-designed and appropriate kindergarten readiness assesssments like this one continue to be part of the picture.

Pretend Play, Self-Control and 5-Year-Olds

Lisa Guernsey — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:01:00 -0400

Paul Tough's article in yesterday's New York Times Magazine puts the spotlight on Tools of the Mind -- a teaching strategy that encourages children to engage in make-believe play in the classroom. The idea is that by letting young children adopt and act out roles -- whether it's doctor or daddy or doughnut maker -- these children will be indirectly learning skills of inhibition and self-control. They must stay in character and plan out their next move. What's more, they have to work out how to share the "stage" with their classmates and adapt to the movements and desires of different characters around them.

Early research on Tools of the Mind has been promising. In 2007, research results by Adele Diamond, a cognitive scientist at the University of British Columbia, showed that it made a significant impact on children's "executive functioning" -- their ability to regulate their emotions and focus on tasks. A 2008 study showed similar positive outcomes for children's behavior.The teaching appoach is now the subject of several research studies across the country, and as Tough's article explains, there are still many unanswered questions about exactly which parts of the Tools program are doing the most good and how to replicate them.

The "Tools" approach has been on my mind too -- and not just because it epitomizes the play=learning mantra that may help solve the problems of "kindergarten cram." Recent research, described here at Early Ed Watch, has shown that attention problems may be an overlooked area of concern as we talk about school readiness. Most people may figure that the only way to cope with a lack of focus and poor executive function skill is to rely on rewards and punishments, as well as the much-debated use of "time outs." But are these the most developmentally appropriate methods to use? What strategies should teachers employ as they prod their students to develop more focus and self-control? And can parents take home a few pointers?

To De-Pressurize Kindergarten, Here Are Four Must-Do's (9/10/09)

A Prominent Researcher Asks Some Good, Hard Questions About Playtime (8/11/09)

Two Antidotes to 'Kindergarten Cram' (5/4/09)

In Search of More Play in Kindergarten – and More Solid Research on What’s Happening There (5/31/09)

As I was reading the New York Times article, my daughters were busy "playing school" in our living room. Gillian, 5, was the teacher. Janelle, 7, was her assistant, clipboard in hand. Imaginary, invisible kids were sitting in a row of chairs. Yes, I said to myself, this is self-regulation in action.

But then, from what I could glean in my eavesdropping, one of the imaginary children struck out and hit another imaginary child. Janelle marched over, glaring at what looked to me like empty space. Gillian shouted: Time out! Now you're on "red"!

This talk of being "on red" was a direct replication of the '"conduct code" that has become a central part of her kindergarten experience so far. In her school, children start the day on "green" but get warnings -- usually moving from "yellow" to "red" -- when they act out or disrupt the class. And the "time out?" Well, that was probably something she learned from me, my move of last resort when I throw up my hands and cannot figure out how else to keep my children from clobbering each other. I wonder if we need a few more "Tools" here at home too.

Photograph by flickr user Riaskiff republished under the Creative Commons license.

To De-Pressurize Kindergarten, Here Are Four Must-Do's

Lisa Guernsey — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 15:39:00 -0400

In an op-ed for USA Today that came out this morning, I wrote about kindergarten -- a topic of heightened interest over the past six months as news stories, magazine pieces and research reports have sounded alarms about classrooms for 5-year-olds becoming pressure cookers.

In the piece I outlined four imperatives for improving the experience for all children, not to mention teachers:

Allow playtime and learning to be one and the same.
Make preschool affordable for working families.
Provide full-day kindergarten.
Build a bridge between preschool and kindergarten.

These actions are interrelated. They will make the biggest impact if they are implemented together. For example, without a better bridge between preschool and kindergarten, teachers may not get the resources, support and mentoring they need to create classroom environments that provide simultaneous playtime and learning time. Until we have more children coming to kindergarten with preschool under their belt, kindergarten teachers will continue to feel pressure to cram as much academic preparation into the day as possible. Until full-day kindergarten is available to students around the country, teachers will feel so squeezed by the 9 a.m.-to-12 p.m. schedule that they may feel little choice but to drill their students and eliminate unstructured time and recess.

It's no accident that these actions are pillars of the PreK-3rd approach. Our hope is that as more school districts adopt these strategies, stories about pressure-cooker kindergartens will start to become a thing of the past and children will find themselves immersed in the kind of vibrant, playful and purposeful learning environments they deserve.

A Prominent Researcher Asks Some Good, Hard Questions About Playtime

Lisa Guernsey — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:50:00 -0400

Anthony D. Pellegrini, an educational psychologist at the University of Minnesota, has been studying the whys, whens and hows of children's playtime for decades. He is an authority on recess, helping to remind all of us of why it's crucial for academic and social growth. And he just published a new book, The Role of Play in Human Development, that explores the role of play in our evolution as a species.

So when Pellegrini pens an article titled "Research and Policy on Children's Play," it's time to perk up and pay attention. The piece was just published this month in Child Development Perspectives, a semi-annual journal of the Society for Research in Child Development.

The piece makes two important points. It starts by reminding us that the word "play" needs to be defined more precisely before educators, parents and child development specialists can have a fruitful conversation about what is missing in children's school routines. And it ends by pressing for more research on exactly what kinds of benefits children derive from play at various stages of their young lives.

One pitfall in speaking too loosely about play is that the meaning of the word can take on many dimensions, meaning different things to different people. It is not true play, Pellegrini points out (and we agree), when children are asked to sing a "scripted letter-sound correspondence song." They have no freedom of choice; they are following instructions from adults.

Interactions with peers and moments of minimal adult supervision, on the other hand, are closer to qualifying as play, Pellegrini writes. For educators, this may mean that ensuring enough playtime means ensuring enough time for children to socialize and attempt things on their own.

The distinction is worth exploring and elaborating upon -- and perhaps even debating a bit. How and when should teachers get involved in children's play? Are there not ways for teachers to become part of a pretend play scenario ("I'll be the grocery clerk") to help children develop skills of language and observation ("How many tomatoes have you got there?" "What are you going to make with those?")? When should teachers step in, and when should they step out? And how do educators do this dance while maintaining other routines in the classroom?

A lack of answers to these questions is why Pellegrini calls for more experimental studies of play that compare outcomes between a group that has a chance to engage in some sort of play and a group that doesn't. There is still a lot that we don't know about how children benefit from play and under what circumstances. It seems highly likely, for example, that "locomotor" play -- like children chasing each other around the playground -- has a lot of physical and social benefits, in expending calories and relieving some of the pressure of the school day. But, as Pellegrini points out, we don't yet have empirical, research-based evidence that this is the case.

"Although there is a real danger that opportunities for children's play will be minimized, there is also a corresponding danger that advocates of play for children are overzealous in attributing benefits of play," Pellegrini writes. "This is understandable in the current educational environment, but such a position also jeopardizes the possibility of future inclusion of play in educational programs because policymakers and parents will equate play with overblown claims."

"If advocates stick to realistic readings of theory and data," he writes, "play will be included in the curriculum." We second that.

Image by flickr user nedradio, reposted under the Creative Commons license

Ohio Slashes Early Childhood Budget and Eliminates Full-Day Pre-K

Lisa Guernsey — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:25:00 -0400

The economic crisis exacted one of its biggest casualities on state pre-k programs last week when Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland signed into law a biennial state budget that zeroes out the state's full-day pre-k program and chopped funding for its half-day program by one-third.

The budget also slashed reimbursements for child care providers that serve low-income children, cut back on the number of poor families that can qualify for child care and reduced funding for the state's birth-to-three program by 25 percent.

The Early Learning Initiative, which funds full-day preschool for some 13,000 children, was one of 61 items that Gov. Strickland struck from the budget last week using the power of his line-item veto. The initiative was designed to bring community-based providers into the state's fledgling early education system by providing them with funds to train teachers. In fiscal year 2009 the program received $128 million, and in an observational study published last month, its teachers showed improvement in literacy instruction and classroom management since its launch four years ago.

It's too early to know how many children will be affected by ELI's phase-out, scheduled for August 23. Fortunately, about 4,500 of its enrollees are old enough to start kindergarten this fall. And the state has developed a transition plan to allow about 90 percent of current enrollees to continue receiving financial assistance through Ohio's subsidized child care program, according to Terrie Hare, director of the Child Care Bureau at the Ohio Department of Jobs and Families. (The department sent a letter to ELI parents late last week encouraging them to apply for subsidies.)

The state also runs an older half-day program, once called "public preschool" and now called Early Childhood Education. Children in this program are typically taught in pre-K classrooms located in public schools. To balance the budget, lawmakers stripped the program of $11 million, leaving it with $23.5 million. About 1500 to 2300 fewer children will be able to served, said Jane Wiechel, an early education official at the Department of Education.

So where will parents enroll those children instead? Good question. If they are looking for an affordable alternative at a child care center they may find themselves out of luck. The budget ax came down on child care providers too. The Ohio Legislature reduced reimbursement rates for providers that serve low-income families and lowered the income level at which families can qualify for subsidies. Newcomers to the subsidy program must now show that their incomes are at 150 percent of the federal poverty level ($33,075 for a family of four). Previously, families at up to 200 percent of the poverty were eligible.

The budget also squeezed Help Me Grow, the state's birth-to-three program, dropping its funding to $58.5 million next year compared to the nearly $80 million it received for fiscal year 2009, according to a budget summary sent to the childcare community from the Department of Jobs and Family Services. The program will be restricted to first-time parents at 200 percent of poverty, reports groundWork, a coalition of early childhood advocates. But one glimmer of good news for the program, said groundWork's operations coordinator Susan Blasko, is that most of its funding will now come from the state's general fund instead of being pulled from a pot of welfare money that is often used for other programs.

Including a few smaller programs not mentioned above, the cuts mean a drop of about $150 million in funding for early childhood in Ohio from 2009 to 2010, according to the summary by the Department of Jobs and Family Services.

This is a sad turn-of-events for early childhood advocates, who had been applauding the state's efforts until now. Gov. Strickland has been pushing for early childhood education and K-12 reforms since his election in 2007 and has been quoted in advocates' brochures for his dedication to increasing pre-K opportunities for disadvantaged children. But the cuts could undermine these efforts.

For example, a pillar of Gov. Strickland's reform agenda is a new funding formula for the K-12 system that the Governor was able to push through in this budget. Instead of distributing money to districts based almost entirely on the number of pupils they serve, the state will now allocate funding depending on what kind of services and what types of teaching expertise are needed by the pupils in those districts. The Ohio Education Association praised the passage of the new spending plan, describing it as fair and helpful to rural and poor schools.

But given the cuts to early learning programs, the K-12 system shouldn't be celebrating yet. It will likely be receiving more children unprepared for elementary school, leading to more education costs in the long run.

And while the budget does require schools to offer full-day kindergarten by the 2010-11 school year -- a good move -- it doesn't require that every school offer it for free. That's because, with budgets so tight, the new funding plan permits some schools that had started charging parents for all-day kindergarten to continue to do so. Fortunately, the Department of Education reports, most schools in Ohio's high-poverty areas are already providing full-day kindergarten for free.

One bright spot in the budget is an incentive system to nudge child care centers to make quality improvements. Centers that serve low-income children will be able to earn increases in their state subsidies if they score a two-star or three-star rating on Ohio's Step Up to Quality system. (We describe this type of quality rating improvement system in a recent issue brief.) But given the funding reductions these centers are contending with, it's a bit of a mystery how they are supposed to pay for the staff training or salaries that will help them achieve higher quality.

The shame is that the backsliding on early childhood investments may take Ohio out of the running for a new federal grant program that is part of legislation in Congress this week. Under the proposed plan for Early Learning Challenge Grants, states can compete for $1 billion a year to build a state-wide early learning system. The catch is that to get the grants, states must show progress and dedication to upgrading what they've already got. Ohio no longer looks so strong on that score. The state's now-defunct vision was to use ELI and the ECE program as key components of an integrated "mixed market" early childhood system, in which parents could choose from high-quality community providers or enroll children in preschool classrooms at their local schools. Both programs were designed, according to Wiechel of the Ohio education department, to use the same curricula, step into alignment with the state's K-12 academic standards and move toward hiring more teachers with degrees and early childhood credentials. ELI was a key piece of that puzzle because it had been providing payments to 101 school districts, Head Start agencies and community-based providers to help them hire credentialed teachers and pay for their training.

"Consistency across settings" was the intention, Wiechel said. "But it takes time," she added. "It's not a quick fix."

One of ELI's fatal flaws, it seems, is that it was funded with surplus federal dollars from the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program -- a program that allows states to determine how they want to use any extra money left over after federal welfare assistance funds have been distributed. Now, "that surplus has been depleted," according to a fact sheet distributed last week by Ohio's Early Childhood Cabinet. Child advocates had been hoping that ELI would eventually be funded with state tax revenues instead of the less-secure TANF dollars. The governor opted to delete it instead, according to officials, when revenue projections for state coffers looked even bleaker than expected.

Yet the administration is "still committed" to developing a system for early childhood programs, said Hare of the Department of Jobs and Families. She pointed, for example, to the implementation of the reward system for childcare centers with 2- and 3-star ratings under the Step Up to Quality system. In addition, the Child Care Bureau will be moved from the Department of Jobs and Families to the Department of Education to provide more continuity between child care and early education programs. And the budget calls for the development of a state center for early childhood to coordinate all early learning programs in the state. "We could have really dropped a lot of things but we tried to maintain some infrastructure," Hare said.

A bare bones infrastructure is, indeed, better than none at all. But it's disappointing to see Ohio balance its admittedly dismal budget on the backs of its youngest children and struggling families. Federal money for Head Start expansion may help in a small way (throughout the country, those dollars are still trickling through the pipeline and have yet to translate into any substantial new slots yet), but until we see an economic turnaround, early childhood programs appear to be easy targets.

Attention: New Research Is Changing the Picture of Why Children Have Trouble in School

Lisa Guernsey — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 13:52:00 -0400

Conventional wisdom often paints a picture of the poorly behaved student as the future flunkee. Even in early elementary school, we're led to believe, the kids who get in trouble will be the ones who struggle academically and eventually come home with failing grades.

Now new research is scrambling that image and bringing a few new culprits into focus. Two of them -- low levels of math and reading skill at early ages -- have received a lot of attention in early childhood circles, driving the movement for academically oriented pre-K programs. But something else may be to blame as well: the inability to pay attention.

A study in last month's Pediatrics shows that the greater a child's attention problems at age 6, the more likely that child will perform poorly on tests of math and reading in the last few years of high school. Contrary to some of their own expectations, researchers found no connection between achievement and behavioral problems, whether they were aggressive actions (such as children pushing classmates or lashing out at the teacher) or issues like depression or withdrawal. The study examined data on nearly 700 children of varying family backgrounds.

In 2007, a study landed with similar -- and similarly surprising -- results. In an examination of data on thousands of children across the country, researchers found that children with behavioral problems were no more likely to be poor achievers in elementary school. Instead, they said, low achievement was most strongly linked to poor skills in math and reading at an early age and to symptoms of attention disorders. Some preliminary data unveiled in April at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development follows the same narrative.

"What's striking is how consistent the findings are," said Joshua Breslau, an epidemiology professor at the medical school at the University of California at Davis and the lead author of the Pediatrics article.

The same thought came to Greg J. Duncan, an education professor at the University of California at Irvine who led the 2007 research (he was at Northwestern at the time). "The results are strikingly similar," Duncan said.

Neither study involves medical diagnoses of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD. But both relied on teachers' reports of how children fared on a common rating scale of children's attention, such as their ability to focus, follow directions and finish tasks.

If research continues to zoom in on attention problems, there are large implications for early education. The Pediatrics article, for example, suggests screening children for attention problems as soon as they enter school. Whether this would be done by kindergarten teachers or medical professionals, or both, remains to be seen. But it's likely that policies designed to foster collaboration between education and mental health professionals could gather momentum.

The importance of attention also complicates already hotly debated issues of what should be considered normal behavior in 5 and 6 year old children, what they should be expected to accomplish in the classroom, and how to handle young kids who are so easily distracted and difficult to teach.

And then there's the troublesome thought of kindergarteners taking ADHD medication.

Julie Schweitzer, a co-author of the Pediatrics study and a clinical psychologist at UC-Davis who specializes in ADHD, said she hoped the study would build more awareness among teachers and parents about the impact of attention problems -- and the importance of treating them as soon as possible. She said she encounters many parents whose children are diagnosed as having the disorder but who do nothing about it, often because the disorder still comes with a stigma, as many people continue to believe that it is simply a result of poor parenting or overly high expectations for children's capacity to sit still. Yes, the environment can make a difference, Schweitzer said, but accumulating evidence from the field of neuroscience suggests that ADHD has its roots in a person's physiology.

Still, kindergarten teachers can help children overcome some of the disorder's effects. For example, Tools of the Mind, a teaching method that we've cited at Early Ed Watch, was showcased in an article in Science and the Early Childhood Research Quarterly for its success in improving children's ability to focus and pay attention. In a "Tools" classroom, children are encouraged to engage in pretend-play scenarios, taking different roles and thereby gaining practice in disciplining themselves, keeping their behavior in check and staying "in character."

Teachers can also try simple interventions, Schweitzer said, "such as giving rewards for following rules, listening to the teacher, sitting still in circle time, persistence in their projects, keeping their hands to themselves as well."

"It may be," she continued, "that the ‘wigglers' might also benefit from being allowed to do more socially acceptable wriggling in the classroom."

But, she added, if those efforts don't work, teachers should refer children for an evaluation. "You don't want to waste time," she said. "It will mean worse outcomes for the children in the long run."

Keeping Track of Kids Entering Kindergarten

Sara Mead — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:58:00 -0400

A new report from California’s Children Now calls on the state to implement a comprehensive system that provides policymakers, educators and parents with better information about the skills of California’s youngsters when they enter kindergarten.

Already at least five counties in California have implemented their own systems for observing and taking note of kindergarteners’ skills. Children Now emphasizes that such observations should never have high stakes for children -- rather, they are primarily tools to help policymakers, educators, and parents improve the quality of education and other services provided to young children, both before and in kindergarten. Critically, the purpose of collecting such data isn’t just to see whether children are ready for kindergarten, but equally or even more so to ensure that elementary schools are ready to serve the children who come to them. Because these systems provide kindergarten teachers and principals with information about entering students’ strengths and gaps in their learning, schools can tailor their instruction to match children’s needs. Not only does this improve the quality of instruction that kindergarteners receive, it also helps to foster a smooth transition between pre-K and kindergarten.

We’re particularly taken with the report’s discussion of the potential of good kindergarten readiness observations to support PreK-3rd reforms by facilitating communication, collaboration and shared professional development between teachers at the pre-K and kindergarten levels.

Children Now also emphasizes that observations must consider more than children’s cognitive and early academic skills. The report calls for comprehensive approaches that pay careful attention to children’s physical well-being and motor development, social and emotional development, approaches to learning, and communication and language use, as well as cognition and general knowledge. Some states, such as Florida, have developed kindergarten readiness assessments that fail to take some of these important measures into account.

The report includes a good overview of the extent to which states currently use some form of observation system, profiles of California counties that have implemented sound systems, and features a list of steps the state must take to move towards more systematically collecting valid and reliable information on the skills and development of incoming kindergarteners.

Implementing observation systems like this costs money, and given California’s current budget and political situation, it’s unclear whether they will be introduced at the state level in the near term. Yet, such a system could actually save the state and its school districts money over the long run, by supporting more efficient early intervention and instruction at the elementary level, helping reduce rates of special education placement and catching struggling students before they fall too far behind.

California would be smart to use the data that could be collected under Children Now’s proposal in longitudinal student data systems that it – and other states -- are developing or have developed for K-12 education. As we’ve written previously, the stimulus legislation specifically requires states to have PreK-12 student longitudinal data systems, but many states have not done a good job of integrating pre-K data into their systems. Building data systems that have the capacity to include kindergarten readiness indicators, as well as information on the type of pre-K program, if any, a child attended, would be a valuable improvement on the status quo.

Finally, we’re curious how these policies relate to the larger discussion at the national level about the Obama administration’s proposed Early Learning Challenge Fund program. Information that the administration has released to date makes clear that measuring outcomes for early childhood programs will be a critical objective of the administration’s going forward. Do comprehensive, developmentally appropriate systems for assessing kindergarten readiness have a role to play here?

More Focus on Play at Summer Institute for Early Childhood Educators

Lisa Guernsey — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:11:00 -0400

Play through learning. Play = Learning. Play is learning. These are the variations of the play mantra that was repeated by researchers and early childhood educators last week at the annual professional development institute held by the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

More than 2,000 people attended the institute, which was held in Charlotte, N.C. Several of the presentations are now available online in a searchable directory on the NAEYC web site, which, by the way, received a major face lift last week to make it easier to navigate. Here are a few of the sessions that caught our eye (they cannot be directly hyperlinked but you can get to them by searching by author's name):

Guided Play - A Contradiction? Insights From Montessori, Reggio Emilia, and Tools of the Mind, a symposium with presentations by Mon Cochran, Angeline Lillard, Rebecca New, Elena Bodrova and others

Building Language Through Play: The teacher's role as a conversational partner, by Janice Greenberg

Play and the Construction of Scientific Knowledge in Preschool, by Victoria Fu,
Lynn Ann Wolf and others

The play theme is one we've sounded here multiple times at Early Ed Watch too, as we hope to encourage policies that give educators the training and flexibility to teach children in ways that are developmentally appropriate and academically challenging at the same time. Ours isn't a "just let ‘em play" philosophy so much as it is a creed that says: "just incorporate play everywhere you can."

Two Antidotes to 'Kindergarten Cram'

Lisa Guernsey — Mon, 04 May 2009 19:53:00 -0400

In Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Peggy Orenstein voices the worries that many middle-income parents are having about kindergarten: Have we gone overboard in trying to make sure our students are academically prepared? In her piece, "Kindergarten Cram," Orenstein asks: "What was the rush?" "How did 5 become the new 7, anyway?"

As the mother of two daughters -- one in 1st grade and another about to enter kindergarten in a Title I public school -- I often have the same thoughts. Not to mention my own nostalgia for those few kindergarten days I remember myself, apple-picking under a blue sky and dipping a brush into a gooey vat of paste during art projects.

But I also have high regard for research that shows the benefits of introducing academic concepts related to literacy, science and math skills in pre-k and kindergarten classrooms. Kindergartens that fail to support these developing skills, that take a lackadaisical approach to teaching and learning, can be harmful too, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds who do not have access to a lot of books or curiosity-provoking conversation at home. Intentional, purposeful and thoughtful teaching -- not just watching from afar, but guiding and prompting questions -- is critical.

The good news is that we're seeing a growing movement that advocates for the preservation of playtime and child-centered exploration while also recognizing the need for this kind of intentional teaching. (Maybe that's because the alternative appears to be kindergarten redshirting, the controversial practice of holding children back from kindergarten until they are 6 -- or nearly 6 -- years old. Research reported here, and described in a fascinating article in Slate, shows that the longterm effect of that practice may not be so beneficial.) The release last month of the report titled "Crisis in the Kindergarten," by the research and advocacy group Alliance for Childhood, has elevated this issue, and though we have wondered if it was premature to proclaim a nationwide crisis without more research, we agree that this subject demands more attention, more research and more thoughtful approaches for educators and policymakers to consider.

So what do we do about it? Translating these important ideas into policy is tricky but hugely important. Achievement gaps continue to plague American education. Research from over several decades has shown us that the way to close those gaps is to first make sure that children arrive at school with some emergent literacy skills and then provide them with language-rich, high-quality environments throughout their early years of elementary school.

The Alliance blames testing and overly scripted curricula. We agree that standardized testing has no place in kindergarten and that teachers need to be given some flexibility in how and what they teach. But well-designed, developmentally appropriate curricula are associated with strong early childhood programs and can be a boon to teachers in providing a framework for how to approach their classrooms. And assessments are important - not standardized tests, but developmentally appropriate assessments based on yearlong observations of how children are learning and where they are having trouble.

As Early Ed Watch joins with others in looking for better approaches for kindergarten, here two possible antidotes that we believe deserve a closer look:

"Tools of the Mind" Project and other strategies that marry play with language development

Envision a classroom in which children are pretending to work at a hospital. "I'll be the doctor!" says one child. "I'll be the patient!" says another. The teacher, gently guiding the play, announces, "Hmm, does anyone want to work in the emergency room lobby, writing down the names of who is arriving and taking their temperature? You do? Great!"

In play scenarios like this, children learn to take on the roles of others, practicing what it is like to have to control over their own impulses and stay ‘in character.' They are also getting opportunities to absorb new literacy, math and language skills. And they are playing in open-ended ways, giving their imaginations a workout and feeling a sense of accomplishment at having practiced what it means to be more grown up.

This is a snapshot of what is possible under the "Tools of the Mind" Project led by Elena Bodrova, a senior research fellow for the National Institute for Early Education Research, and Deborah J. Leong, a professor of psychology at the Metropolitan State College of Denver. Their project, which provides guidance for teaching strategies that are currently employed in dozens of pre-k and kindergarten settings, has been studied by Adele Diamond, a cognitive scientist at the University of British Columbia who co-wrote an article in Science about its success in improving children's executive function skills. A 2008 study published in Early Childhood Research Quarterly also showed benefits of the program. The evidence for gains in language development was not readily apparent; the data pointed in a positive direction but was not statistically significant. But there was a strong connection between the program and fewer behavior problems in school.

In the past few months, "Tools of the Mind" has received significant national attention, including a piece by Sue Shellenbarger in The Wall Street Journal and a segment by Alix Spiegel on National Public Radio. The New Brunswick Sentinel, a local newspaper in New Jersey, recently reported on how the program is being applied in a kindergarten classroom at Parsons Elementary School in North Brunswick.

The recently released 3^rd edition of "Developmentally Appropriate Practice," from NAEYC

The National Association for the Education of Young Children has recently published the third edition of its guide, "Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs," edited by Carol Copple, the association's director of publications and initiatives in educational practice, and Sue Bredekamp, an early childhood consultant in Washington, D.C. They have also created videocasts that can be viewed online.

For the first time, the book includes a full chapter on "The Kindergarten Year," written by Heather Biggar Tomlinson. It makes a strong case for kindergarten as a "critical year" for supporting -- or undermining -- children's enthusiasm for and engagement in learning. Tomlinson's chapter zooms in on the latest research in three areas of development: physical, social-emotional and cognitive, providing context for what children's brains, bodies and emotions are developmentally prepared to handle and primed to absorb.

Among its many recommendations, the chapter suggests that teachers encourage children to think and reflect by asking them questions ("I wonder how many blocks it would take to cover this rug?") and giving them time to answer. It also points out that play is a "crucial vehicle" for building and practicing self-regulation skills, urging teachers to make sure that children have ample opportunity, materials and encouragement to engage in dramatic play, such as make-believe play and play with made-up rules."

The book is a must-have guide for early childhood educators, as well as much-needed resource that brings together the latest thinking about how to best support not only children's cognitive development, but their physical, social and emotional development as well.

Kindergarteners are not just third-graders in size 6x clothes. And it is not automatically obvious to teachers -- particularly if they have been simply moved from, say, 3rd grade down to kindergarten -- how to teach academic content in harmony with a child's stage of development. That's why good teaching strategies and good resources for professional development are so important. At Early Ed Watch we'll be seeking out more examples of good practice over the coming months and diving into further research on developmentally appropriate practice and what it means in PreK-3rd schools. Please feel free to post additional ideas or forward new research or ideas for policies that we should be considering.

Photo from Flickr user WoodleyWonderWorks under Creative Commons license.

Making a Connection Between Social Behaviors in Preschool and Kindergarten Success

Lisa Guernsey — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:07:00 -0400

You voted. We investigated. In a blog post earlier this month, we asked you to choose what research most piqued your interest among 10 relevant posters released at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development. The top 3 vote-getters: Research on "fade-out" in the elementary school years; social behavior in preschool; and early academic outcomes for children in family-based care, center-based or public pre-K, which we wrote about last week. Here's report number 2, on social behaviors. Stay tuned for the final installment in May.

Can a preschooler's ability to play well with his classmates tell us about something about his chances for success in kindergarten? New data from Arizona State University provides some hints in that direction. The research has provided some of the first evidence to link academic skills to positive social behaviors at such young ages.

Children who interacted well with their peers in preschool -- sharing, acting kindly, asking them to join in games -- were more likely to exhibit behaviors in kindergarten that would help them achieve, such as being able to listen and follow a teacher's directions. They also showed "engagement" in kindergarten or, put more plainly, they seemed interested in school and wanted to be there.

"These social experiences are very important," said Laura Hanish, associate professor of family and human development at Arizona State, who is helping to lead the study. "They give children a sense of how to interact with peers, they give children a sense of how to regulate and manage their emotional impulses. These things are all really important to doing well in school."

Hanish and her colleagues also found that, in preschool, children who play well with their peers are more likely to do well in preschool teachers' assessments of their math and literacy skills, as well as their ability to pay attention and follow instructions.

Contrary to what some researchers expected, however, the data did not show any significant link between social behaviors in preschool and literacy and math skills in kindergarten.

The associations were discussed in a poster presented by Laura K. Clary, a doctoral student in the School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State, during the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development.

Researchers analyzed teachers' evaluations of 169 children who recently attended Head Start and kindergarten in Phoenix. The work is part of the Understanding School Success Project, a five-year project funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to study the effects of children's relationships on their transition to formal schooling. In addition to Hanish, Carol Lynn Martin and Richard Fabes are leading the effort.

The data presented this month have not yet been fully vetted and published; early outcomes from the project, however, have been described in recent peer-reviewed articles.

The full USS project followed three waves of children moving through Head Start and kindergarten, and researchers collected data from their teachers at the end of each year. The children were predominantly Latino and from families in which parents make less than $30,000 a year. Fifty-nine percent come from homes in which Spanish is the primary language.

The project is built, in part, on the ideas of Gary Ladd, an education and psychology professor at Arizona State who has written widely on how children's and adolescents' social interactions affect their experiences in school.

Researchers said the new findings, though still preliminary, appear to point to the importance of facilitating good relationships between children, giving them time to play together and learn skills for relating with their peers.

"People are, rightly so, focused on academic skills," Clary said. "But we can see that social skills and interactions with peers really contribute to academic success."

Questions still linger, however, and more data need to be analyzed. For example, researchers are puzzling over why positive social behavior in preschool was linked to academic skills in preschool, to children's engagement in kindergarten, and to good school behavior in kindergarten (such as listening to the teacher), and yet was not significantly related to academic skills in kindergarten.

One explanation, Clary said, might come from the way researchers controlled for variables. In analyzing the data for kindergarten, she explained, researchers controlled for children's academic preschool records, trying to tease out exactly what was happening in kindergarten above and beyond the preschool experience. So it is possible, Clary said, that the children with positive social behavior had already made such strong gains in math and literacy by the end of preschool that further academic gains in kindergarten did not register in their data.

Other data points were particularly heartening, Hanish said, because they provide some signs of the benefits that can come when preschool teachers help classmates play together and interact in positive ways. Preschoolers who played well with their peers but had moments of social disruption - such as those who had temper tantrums - showed an ability to pick up more school-behavior skills in preschool than their classmates who were both disruptive and had trouble playing with their peers. It was as if positive peer interactions tempered the impact of the outbursts. "The positive skills helped to counteract the negative effects," she said.