CHECKING IN ON MR. BILL

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Here we are in the middle of the third full week of school — a good time to check in on Mr. Bill’s kindergarten class!

I know how exhausting the first few weeks are for teachers (and children!). I wanted to be unobtrusive and give Bill some ‘space’ to get his classroom routines going so I decided not to visit for another week or two. In the meanwhile, I spoke with Bill and asked him if he has been able to get the inquiry study off the ground.

The children, as we predicted, came in to class on the first day excited about the playground study and eager to share their summer playground stories. They brought in pictures that they drew at home and made some in class. Bill invited the children to paste their pictures together to create a mural, and used this group playground montage as a jumping off point for starting the playground inquiry project.

Bill realized that, at this point in the year, it’s not easy to involve 24 four and five year olds in a complex class discussion. He decided to see what would happen if children were given pattern blocks and encouraged to create pattern-block playgrounds. At first the children worked individually. The class enjoyed this and began giving names to their structures. Bill said that some of their names were “the swing park”, “the hiding place” or “the sandbox”. When they were midway through their activity he stopped them and began a discussion about fences, entryways and connecting pathways. This class talk encouraged the children to bring their individual playgrounds together to create larger structures, leading the way towards collaborative work, imaginative pretend play and conversation! Another ‘perk’ is that the children were also becoming familiar with one of their new math manipulatives.

Tomorrow, Bill and I will meet to look over the children’s work samples, assess what they understand and misunderstand about playgrounds, and wonder about where their interests might lead. I’m going to suggest that we work out an anticipatory planning web. We can brainstorm all of the possibilities for this playground study, thinking of concepts, activities, trips, visiting experts, types of assessments that would be most informative, etc. This web gives the teacher a sense of what direction the study might go in and is very helpful in planning for the inquiry explorations. I’ve seen these webs done in a variety of ways. One example that I found at the Sauchildrenscampus site shows a web for a Tree Study made by a teacher and her assistant teacher. The web, in this case, is broken up into six categories: Parts of a Tree; Vocabulary Words; Animals that Live in Trees and Use Trees; When Trees Change; Items that Come from Trees; Types of Trees.

Because the web is preparation for an inquiry study, I personally prefer starting out the web with questions, anticipating what questions children might pose. On the Illinois Projects in Practice site, there is a sample Tree Study web that begins with possible questions. They are: In what ways do trees change?; What are the parts of trees?; What do trees need?; Where can we see trees change?; Who/What needs trees?; What tools do they use?; Who works with trees?; Do people cause changes in trees?; What writing is there about trees?

After tomorrow’s meeting with Bill, I’ll update you on what is happening in the kindergarten playground study!

INTRODUCING MR. BILL!

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Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition. ~Jacques Barzun

This past summer I spent a lovely afternoon having lunch with my friend and former colleague Bill. As always happens when two kindergarten teachers get together our conversation drifted to the classroom. Bill talked about how current trends in education nationwide have made school more stressful for children and for teachers. Even in Bill’s school, where the administration understands the social and intellectual importance of explorative play, there is often not enough time for children to become involved with interesting projects that they can direct at their own pace. Bill spoke, with a wistful voice, of the last few weeks of school when the children were happily engaged in an investigation of bridges. He devoted long stretches of time each day to this interesting project and noticed that the children were working with more self-directed independence and that many yearlong social tensions seemed to dissipate.

Out of this discussion came Bill’s decision to begin the year with, what he hopes will be, an exciting, child-directed study of playgrounds. We both believed that this inquiry topic would ‘speak’ to all of the children in the class.

Bill (or Mr. Bill as the children call him) wrote to all of the families on his class list informing them of this project and encouraging the children to think about playgrounds during their summer vacation. So far, the email responses from parents indicate that they are mostly concerned that their children have fun, enjoy school and grow as a person. It certainly seems as though they will be eager to support and become involved with their children’s investigation into playgrounds.

I became quite excited about this project and asked Bill if I could ‘follow’ his children and him along this journey of exploration. Bill was intrigued with this idea and so, on my blog, we will be visiting Bill’s classroom and meeting with Bill to plan and reflect throughout the year.

During the week before school was to begin, Bill started getting the classroom set up. To support play and explorations, it was important to leave ample room for extensive block building and also for dramatic play, science and art. This became quite a challenge. I remembered so well wanting to stretch out the walls of my classroom, giving enough room for all my centers and maintaining a sense of space and openness.

Bill decided that, instead of designating a separate classroom area for dramatic play (pretend play), he would use hollow blocks and prop baskets, keeping them stored in a corner of the classroom meeting area/library. That would give the children a lot of space for their play and also the ability to reinvent their ‘script’ each day. Doing this also created more area for a spacious block-building center. When I visited Bill, the day before school was to open, he was in the midst of getting ready for the children…. putting names around the room, setting up a cozy reading corner, hanging curtains, setting up his art center, and completing the myriad of details that will let the children know that this welcoming space is ready for them!

Time to begin unpacking!hmm...now what should I do next?Time out for a song!A place to meet, to talk, to listen, to read, to play...

hmm...now what should I do next?

Time out for a song!

A place to meet, to sing, to talk, to play....

More on “Ready for Kindergarten”

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This letter, in today’s New York Times, was so “on the mark” and I would love to share it with you and encourage you to share your thoughts and suggestions on my blog.

To the Editor:
Re “Too Young for Kindergarten? Tide Turning Against 4-Year-Olds” (front page, May 28):

Here’s a simple solution to the problem of too-young children in kindergarten: Restore kindergarten to what it was before we went off the rails in this country, sucking the joy and life out of learning and school by viewing education solely through the narrow lens of tests, tests and more tests.

The fact that parents of means are choosing to hold their children back until they are as old as 6 proves that kindergarten has morphed into first grade. Four-and-a-half and 5-year-olds are simply developmentally unable to perform the tasks that are being asked of them.

Kindergartners’ days should be filled with learning and fun that is accomplished through music, dance and movement, art-making, storytelling, read-alouds, pretend, dress up, blocks, play of all varieties, a multitude of science explorations, and, yes, a nap.

Such kindergartners will emerge well prepared for first grade, and guess what? They will do better on standardized tests down the road.

JANE COWAN
Brooklyn, May 29, 2011

The writer is a K-12 art teacher.

Changes!

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In response to the unfortunate atmosphere of teacher bashing that we are living through, I would like to focus on some wonderful work being done by a group of hard-working teachers in a public school in New York City.

Here’s a bit of background information about this barrier-free, pre-k – 5 school, located on the Lower East Side, which is situated in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge. The ethnic breakdown is approximately 75 % Latino, 20 % African-American, 3.5 % Asian and 1.5 % ‘other’. Many of the children live in shelters or foster homes. There’s a large special needs population, often transferring into the school mid-year. Because of the No Child Left Behind legislation, families from other areas of the city transfer their children into this hard-working, caring school and, because children are traveling long distances, there’s a major problem with lateness and absences. This year, the heavy-duty budget cuts came down hard on this community. Without any significant PTA fundraising, staff is often forced to reach into their own pockets if they want to provide any extra materials for their classrooms.

Four years ago, I was approached by their network leader, Dan Feigelson, and asked if I could do some consulting work here with the kindergarten and first grade teachers. He was familiar with the inquiry and Choice Time work that I had done in my own classroom (we had been colleagues at P.S. 321 in Brooklyn) and thought that the children would benefit from more exploration and playtime. The principal, a former pre-k teacher herself, was in agreement.

The school already had a long-term relationship with the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. The children were making progress in learning the technicalities of reading and writing. However, they were challenged when the content became more complex. Because of personal stress in their lives, children had difficulty working collaboratively and in resolving conflicts without resorting to violence. The administration believed that the children needed more opportunities to learn and practice positive social skills and to engage in abstract thinking. They decided that the place to begin working on these problems was in the early childhood grades and that is when they decided to approach me.

Here were some of my impressions when I first visited the school: very hard-working and committed staff; positive tone in the classrooms; I did not hear teachers yelling or using harsh words when disciplining children; kindergartens had an unplanned form of Choice Time (really more like free-play) for 20 – 30 minutes at the end of a day filled with all academics; classrooms had very little organization of centers and practically no sense that children were expected to use materials independently (in the block ‘center’ were math manipulatives, dramatic play, teacher-materials stored, etc., there was no visible art center); first grade classrooms did not have Choice Time at all (occasional ‘free play’ as a reward for good behaviors); there were no blocks in the first grade rooms and a very small collection of blocks in the kindergartens.

Drawing on the Reggio Emilia philosophy of considering that the classroom is the second teacher, we first worked on room environment. I wasn’t sure if I was putting the cart before the horse, but it seemed like a concrete way of beginning. Major changes were made in the ‘look’ of the classrooms. The principal also ordered unit blocks for all kindergarten and first grade rooms. To my delight, the teachers began noticing immediate changes in the way that the children were using materials and in the general classroom ambiance.

We then planned out some studies that the teachers thought would interest the children, support their curriculum and also interest the teachers. The first grade teachers wanted their inquiry project to have a social element to it. They thought about the day-to-day lives of the children, and what would be important to all of them. Most of the school population, rather than using private physicians, either went to the emergency room of the local hospital or to a nearby clinic. This is where the teachers wanted to begin…with a study of the EMS. This also morphed into an ambulance study because of the children’s interests and questions.

They visited the local clinic, had a doctor and a nurse visit the classroom, and examined up close an ambulance that visited the school specifically so that the children could explore the inside and outside of the vehicle and interview the EMS workers. Some children became fascinated with bones and what was happening inside their bodies. In the classrooms, ‘hospitals’ were created along with x-ray rooms (overhead projectors, old x-rays). In one first grade room during their choice time, I observed a boy, doll in arms, racing to the “x-ray” room. “My baby hurt his arm. He’s crying! Help me”. The doll was quickly put on the overhead projector and the “x-ray technician looked at the shadow on the wall. He held up an x-ray, looked at it and said, “Your baby has a broken arm. Take him to the hospital!”. He wrote a little note on a pad, gave it to the ‘father’, who took it and rushed back to the classroom hospital, where the baby’s arm was carefully wrapped up with an old ace bandage. That same day, at Choice Time in another classroom I noticed two girls tracing the body of a boy on butcher paper and then, using a book as reference, drawing in the bones for the body. At the same time two other children were using the overhead projector to trace an image of an ambulance. They kept turning it on and off to check their work. This drawing was going to be the ‘plan’ for an ambulance model that they would later create out of cartons and other materials.

The Kindergartens began with a study of the local firehouse, making many field trips there, exploring the firetruck, interviewing the firefighters, checking out their own homes for fire exits and smoke alarms and creating their own home-safety plans.

This year is my fourth year working at this school. Some of the studies that have taken place are a kindergarten exploration of “Beautiful Stuff” ( children brought in ‘found’ objects from home like buttons, toilet paper tubes, broken pieces of jewelry, wood scraps, etc., sorted and labeled all of the ‘booty’ and brainstormed for ideas on how to use these materials in different projects) , a study of the local bakeries, a neighborhood garden study ( I watched children in the block center creating different areas for a classroom garden, using sketches that they worked on together. There were children in the science center planting seeds in small pots that they decorated. When they were finished planting, they brought the pots to the block center where they were put in the ‘community garden’.), a first-grade study of bridges, particularly the Williamsburg Bridge and a study of the NYC subway system. Each first grade class designed and built bridge towers outside their classroom doors and then connected them across the corridor to make one large suspension bridge!

When I asked the teachers if they noticed any positive changes since we began our work, here are some of the things they shared with me:
They noticed that
o Children were becoming more verbal
o The children who are their ‘struggling learners’ are participating more in class work and discussions
o During Choice Time and Inquiry-study time, children with behavioral issues are becoming calmer and more cooperative
o English Language Learners are talking more and sharing stories, possibly because there is no fear of coming up with a right or wrong response
o There is a noticeable carry-over to the writing being done during writing workshop since the children have more shared experiences to draw from
o Field trips have become more purposeful and the children can understand the purpose of each trip
o Parents have told the teachers the their talk about things that they are exploring in class and use a lot of new vocabulary.
o The teachers are more supportive of each other
o There is more professional collaboration
o There’s more of a feeling of a grade-community
o Teachers, along with children, feel a pride in their work
o The cluster teachers have come on board and are planning lessons to support the classroom studies

In a recent email to me, one of the kindergarten teachers wrote about some of the changes that she and her co-teacher made in their classrooms, “ Our block area has been enlarged. Therefore the children have more room to build. We have “blueprint paper” for them to draw their ideas first before building and pencils as well as post- it’s for labeling their building. The art area is more accessible as well as all the different mediums that they need. The dramatic play area is changed with each study and discussed with the children beforehand. There are papers in each work area for the teacher to make notes about what the children are doing, what we think and how to proceed, as well as writing (down) what the children are saying. The room was not as organized and now the children have access to the materials and their projects.”

The children created a market in the pretend center when they studied The Essex Street Market

Building The Essex Street Market in the block center

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am noticing that the flow of the day is much more ‘child-friendly’. Kindergartens have Choice Time for an hour every morning. They go on more neighborhood trips. The first grade has Choice Time at least twice, sometimes more, each week and they too go on curriculum-related trips more often.

When we discussed future professional goals, the teachers asked if we could focus more in depth on using documentation and assessment to help in planning whole class and small group projects and investigations.

These teachers have worked so hard and been so admirable in their professional growth. Their classrooms breathe with imagination, inquiry and a real life force!

On June 10th, two of the teachers and I will be presenting a workshop at Lehman College in the Bronx, NY. The conference is An Early childhood Education Conference: The Reggio Emilia Approach in 21st Century Urban Settings. Our breakout group is titled CHANGE! – DEVELOPING INQUIRY-BASED SOCIAL STUDIES PROJECTS AND CHOICE TIME CENTERS IN KINDERGARTEN AND FIRST GRADE CLASSES AT P.S. 142M. If you’re in the area and would like to attend, you can email Carol Gross at cmg38j@gmail.com

Come and Read!

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“…reading continues to provide an escape from a crowded house into an imaginary room of one’s own.”
Anna Quindlen
How Reading Changed My Life

Sometimes I just love rainy weekends. When it’s sunny and warm outdoors, I feel a compulsion to get outside and ‘do something’…walk, shop, or visit a museum with my husband. But on rainy, nasty-weather days I don’t feel any sense of guilt about staying indoors, finding a cozy spot, usually on my soft living-room couch, and hunkering down with a good book.

In his book, The Reading Environment, Aidan Chambers wrote, “All reading has to happen somewhere. And every reader knows that where we read affects how we read: with what pleasure and willingness and concentration. Reading in bed, feeling warm and comfortable and relaxed, is different from reading on a cold railway station waiting for a train, or in the sun on a crowded beach, or in a library full of other readers, or alone in a favorite chair at ten o’clock in the morning.” He suggests, “ If we want to be skillful in helping other people, especially children, become willing avid, and –most important of all-thoughtful readers, we need to know how to create a reading environment that enables them.”

Early childhood classes, in these assessment-driven times, are inundated with programs to rush students into early literacy and ensure that instruction is in tune with standards. Children’s days are filled with word-study programs, leveled books, and tearless handwriting. It often seems to me that, within this rush towards academics, we’re losing sight of the true goal. The joy of reading and engaging in intimate discussions is somehow being left behind in the dust.

By providing a cozy reading spot in their classrooms, teachers can
encourage children to join the world of book lovers and conversationalists. This comfy, space invites children to curl up with a good book or to have a quiet, private conversation with a friend. This doesn’t have to take up much space. In fact the idea is to make it small and private. It just takes a little bit of ingenuity and reimagining of the classroom environment.

My best role model for carving out classroom reading nooks is my friend and colleague Connie Norgren. She’s a master at designing private, inviting reading corners in rooms where space is limited. She created in her classroom the same inviting spaces for reading that she has in her own warm and comfortable home.

It’s really a matter of priority. If we are attempting to foster literacy in our classes, then it’s a no-brainer that we should value the child’s need and right to find a wonderfully conducive spot to relax with a book, sit alone to daydream a bit or have a private conversation with a friend. Here’s an example of how Connie helped a kindergarten teacher set up such a space in her classroom:

If you don’t have small couches and easy chairs available, big pillows on the floor can provide soft seating. Look carefully at the photo. You will notice that the space is not packed with books. There are just enough books for easy browsing. This is also a reading corner decorated by the children. A child-created sign invites students to “Come and Read”. Above the sign is a reading frieze, made by a group of children during choice time. This wonderful piece of art is filled with magazine images and children’s drawings of people reading. The students have collaborated with the teacher in making this THEIR reading room!

I created a private reading room in my kindergarten class by using a large refrigerator carton. (I actually do think that I first got this idea from Connie!). I cut out an arched entrance, put in two high windows (purposefully high so that the children inside would not be distracted by other classroom activities), cut out a circle to serve as a skylight in the roof and covered the floor with a big pillow. One year I covered it with a carpet square. A carpenter who lived near the school volunteered to construct a wooden frame for the box, making it sturdy enough to last a few years. My rule for using this new ‘room’ was that it was limited to two children at a time and it was a sitting space, not a standing space.

Children love cuddling up with a stuffed animal or two. I remember peeking in and seeing Erika, a quiet, shy child, very seriously reading a book to a stuffed bunny rabbit, carefully being sure to show him the illustration before turning each page.

I sometimes added little flashlights so that children could zero in on words and the pictures. This was an especially popular activity around Halloween time when we were reading In A Dark Dark Wood. During shared reading, I would turn down the lights and use the flashlight as a ‘pointer’. At Choice Time, children would then have fun bringing the big book into the “reading room” along with the flashlight. It wasn’t unusual to hear spooky sound effects emanating from the box, as two giggly readers jazzed up their reading of the story!

Each year, the box changed a bit. One year, after visiting Reggio Emilia and seeing the interesting ways that mirrors were incorporated into their classroom environments, I “wallpapered’ the inside walls with Mylar to create a mirror effect. Other years I hung art posters or postcards. Sometimes the outside was decorated with drawings of scenes from favorite books. Children did these drawings during choice time as part of the “cozy reading room” choice. Other times they made new book jackets. For these, they first looked through books in the classroom library, picked one that they particularly liked, ‘reread’ the book to find a part of the story that would make a nice cover picture. I folded up paper for them so that it would make a book jacket. They then made the cover and added words to the jacket flap. The back flap had biographical information about the new jacket illustrator often including a photograph or self-portrait drawing! These new jackets were on put on display by the ‘reading room’.

When I worked with kindergarten teachers at The Children’s School in Brooklyn, they put their own personal spin on the refrigerator box idea. Since they were in the midst of a folk tale study, they invited children, during choice time, to decorate the outside of the box with images from favorite folk tales.

My last few years of classroom teaching, I ‘looped up’ to first grade with my kindergarten classes. The first time that I did this, I asked the children, at the end of kindergarten, to think about how we would change the arrangement of the classroom to turn it into a first grade room. We listed what would stay and what would be packed away for my next kindergarten group. I knew that I had instilled in them the specialness of curling up with a book when I finished hearing their responses. There was one loud and clear, unanimous decision. We MUST bring our cozy quiet reading room in first grade!

THROW AWAY THE WORKSHEETS AND NURTURE YOUNG SCIENTISTS

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Science education in our public schools, or rather the dearth of science education in the schools, has recently been popping up in the news. This January, the NY Times featured an article that highlighted the decreasing number of science fairs in schools around the country

Twenty-five years ago, in a speech to the children of America after the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle, President Reagan said, “they  [the astronauts] had that special grace, that special spirit that says, “Give me a challenge and I’ll meet it with joy” They had a hunger to explore the universe and discover its truths.” In his speech, he referred to “the process of exploration and discovery. It’s all part of taking a chance and expanding man’s horizons.”

What a vast disconnect exists between presidential aspirations for children and experiences to encourage discovery and exploration that are often omitted from our early childhood programs. It is so easy to tap into the natural curiosity of young children and to turn 5 and 6 year olds on to the excitement of scientific discoveries. Unfortunately, it is also possible to give them a negative association with science.

My kindergarten children were scheduled for a weekly Science class. Each Wednesday, they emitted a collective groan when I told them that it was time to walk across the corridor to the science room. This confused me since they loved spending time in the many science-based centers during our choice time. They were eager to investigate what happened after they mixed up a bubble-solution and poured it into the water-play tub. They figured out how to create their own magnets and then constructed trails of paper clip magnet chains to pull around the classroom. They were natural scientists and yet, here they were, complaining about a class that should have been a highlight of their week.

I decided to begin a discussion about their responses to this class when we had our morning meeting one Wednesday. I asked them what they were learning about in science. “The body (almost moaned rather than spoken) ” “That’s such an interesting topic!”, I responded enthusiastically. No! It’s soooo boring!”  Well, as we continued this discussion, I was told that they were “learning about the body and bones” mainly through teacher lectures and, that their ‘hands on’ activity’ consisted of cutting out and then pasting together onto another paper, a worksheet reproduction of a human skeleton. I absolutely did not want them to be left thinking that this was what it meant to learn about science so I shared with them a personal memory of the time, just a few years ago, when I fractured my ankle and had a cast put on my leg. This opened up the floodgate for stories about sisters, cousins, aunts and friends who had casts and broken bones, so I asked them if they would be interested in seeing the x-rays that I saved and, of course, there was great interest.

The next day I brought in my x-rays and projected them onto the wall. The children were so excited and interested that we moved the overhead projector to an “x-ray center” at Choice Time so that they could look at them more closely and trace them. I then began collecting books on anatomy, bones, our body and we began a ‘research’ reading center.

This small exploration grew into a full-blown class inquiry study.

We collected a variety of (cleaned) animal bones, looked inside a bone, read about healthy foods to make bones strong, visited a local pediatrician’s office, and interviewed the doctor. Creating and opening a doctor’s office in the dramatic play center followed this up. I sent out a request to everyone I knew who worked in a medical office or a hospital and we received lots of contributions from stethoscopes and doctors robes to eye charts and ace bandages.

We went to the fish store across from the school and brought back fish bones to observe and draw. These delicate bones were compared to the big beef bones and chicken bones that we had collected. The computer teacher heard about this interest in animal bones and surprised us by visiting the class and bringing with her the skeleton of a snapping turtle!

As the children became more ‘expert’ on the topic, we turned the art center into a skeleton-making center. One group of children used papier maché to make a skull. Then, over the course of almost two weeks, our life-sized skeleton was constructed. A variety of recycled materials and plasticine was used. One day, I stopped by to see how the skeleton was progressing. I noticed that wooden craft sticks were used to make the fingers. I looked at the hands and then looked at my hands, bending my fingers. I really didn’t need to do or say anything else. Four ‘skeleton-makers’ began bending their own fingers and an intense discussion began about how they could make their skeleton’s fingers bend. I suggested that they return to one of their ‘research’ books and look at the diagram of a hand. Revision! My help was enlisted to break the sticks into three parts and they were once again pasted onto the mural paper.

After the skeleton was completed, the parts of the body were labeled. A group of children surveyed the class to come up with a name, which was written next to the model. Our Mr. Tall Bones was then displayed in the hallway outside the classroom along with their sketches and descriptions.  We celebrated by making Bone Soup.

This became one of those serendipitous studies, unexpected but meeting the immediate needs and interests of the children. In the course of this mini study, children had many reasons and opportunities to write, count, use nonfiction books as ‘research’ sources, listen to read aloud texts, sing (…the neck bone’s connected to the shoulder bone…), play in the dramatic play center, and use ‘primary’ materials such as x-rays, bones and doctor’s tools. They even spontaneously created a huge, flat skeleton using the wooden unit blocks.

What pleased me most about this study and the centers that accompanied it is that the children were developing an excited and positive attitude about themselves as young scientists. They were, as Ronald Reagan recalled, taking part in “the process of exploration and discovery” as they expanded their own horizons.

PLAY’S THE THING…

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The NY Times has a wonderful article about the importance of play in today’s paper, Play’s the Thing… http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/garden/06play.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

I think that it’s really worth reading every line of the article and discussing it with colleagues and parents. Unfortunately, the writer, Hilary Stout, really doesn’t take it the next step: How do we support play in school and keep to the new learning standards?
What is the role of the teacher in children’s classroom play? How can the teacher scaffold children’s play without presenting ‘tasks’ and directives? What should classroom play look like in kindergarten? In first grade? In second grade?
The article describes how one parent’s interest was “piqued when she toured her local elementary school…before Benjamin (her son) was to enroll in kindergarten. She still remembered her own kindergarten classroom from 1985: it had a sandbox, blocks and toys. But this one had a wall of computers and little desks.” “There’s no imaginative play anymore, no pretend,” Ms. Wilson said with a sigh.
It is SO important for early childhood educators to think about and discuss this dilemma. What do we think about this?
I REALLY hope that you will send in your thoughts, concerns, suggestions, etc. after reading the article!

Following the Children’s Life Force

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Recently, a teacher new to teaching kindergarten asked me how she should know what centers and materials to offer children during Choice Time. She wondered what the “trick” is to planning for Choice Time.

I think that the most important aspect to planning choice time centers is for the teacher to be a good listener and observer. For example, in one class that I visited, the children were playing with Unifix cubes. They were making the line of cubes higher and higher. There was a lot of excitement. I walked over and exclaimed that the line of cubes seemed to be as tall as I am. I stepped over next to the tower. It reached my chin. One boy said, “wait” and got more cubes to add to it. (I actually had to put them on for him because, even though he got on tiptoes, he couldn’t reach. We kept adding one at a time until one of the children called out “Stop”. It was as tall as I am.

That was the perfect opportunity for the teacher to have the children share this experience at the Choice Time share meeting. She could start ‘wondering’ how many cubes might reach as tall as Sho Yin? How many Teddy Bears (little plastic teddy bear counters) could go from one end of Sho Yin to the other end? Hmm, maybe she would have to stretch out on the rug to be measured with Teddy Bears! What else could we use to measure Sho Yin? The teacher might start writing down the children’s suggestions and then come up with a great idea to share with the children. “How about a measuring center?” “What would we need to add to this center?” That is the birth of a new center that has grown right out of the teacher’s observations and interactions.

The children begin to pick up on the teacher’s interest in what is happening during Choice Time. They notice that she is writing down notes of interesting observations and often sharing these with the class. They will notice how she gets new ideas that grow out of these observations. If this happens enough, children will begin making suggestions for centers based on what they notice happening in their centers. One year a group of kindergarten children in my class asked to share their great idea at meeting. I really didn’t know what to expect. “Let’s make a castle in the Pretend Center!” Well, this made complete sense. For some reason, this class of children had a particular interest in castles, kings and queens, princes and princesses. Many castles had been constructed in the block center. I’m not quite sure where this particular interest came from. I had been reading the chapter book, The Wizard of Oz, to them and maybe this sparked the interest. I’m not quite sure but they certainly were enthusiastic about this topic. I said that they certainly could make a Castle Center but that we should first find out more about what was needed. Over the next few days I read some fairy tale picture books aloud (the version of Snow White illustrated by Nancy Eckholm Burkert was a favorite), and I found a shared reading book about a King (I can’t remember the title!). We made lists of what we needed in terms of dressing up and also decorations and then opened up an art center for making crowns, capes, wands, fancy-colored windows (dipping napkins in a water and food coloring mixture) and turning two chairs into fancy thrones. Signs were also made and hung up all around the center. Scrolls became important. There was a lot of writing important messages and proclamations on paper turned into scrolls. When all of this was done, the Castle Center was officially opened. It was interesting to observe the children playing there because, in many ways, it was the same type of play that they did pre-Castle…but with an added zest! It was the children’s incredible imagination and life force along with my openness to listening and taking their ideas seriously that opened up a new center for exploration and play.

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Is Kindergarten Ready for the Child?

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Have you ever had a parent ask you if her/his child is ready for kindergarten? Have you ever heard a teacher complain about a child who doesn’t have enough academic skills to be in kindergarten?

I’ve been wondering a lot about these two questions.

Checking online, I found one after the other websites-advising parents about kindergarten readiness. Some sites discuss the pros and cons of redshirting, keeping a child back from kindergarten so as to give (usually) him an extra ‘edge’ in the grade and also giving him time to develop the ability to sit still for extended periods – time for hours of reading, writing, phonics and math.

My big question is this: Shouldn’t kindergarten be ready for all children?

Shouldn’t teachers (and administrators, of course) understand that within this kindergarten age group there’s a wide range of development, physically, socially and intellectually?

New York State, among many others, has adopted the Common Core Standards (a document that defines, grade by grade, what children should be able to do in reading, phonics, writing and math by the end of the school year.) These prescriptions are all about ‘academics’. Social and emotional issues are not even addressed. I could go on and on criticizing all different parts of these ‘standards’ but unfortunately this is what schools must consider when thinking about classroom practices.

What I’m noticing is that many schools seem to be feeding the fire of this hysteria by assuming that kindergarten must now, because of the standards, become the ‘new first grade.’ Hence come the fears and anxieties of parents who naturally want to protect their children and insure their school success.

However, I strongly believe that teachers (and administrators) should analyze these standards and then revisit the writings of John Dewey and Lev Vygotsky. It is possible to create classrooms where children have many opportunities to learn through exploration, play, exciting inquiry projects, singing songs, reading funny big book stories together and also meet the standards. This can, and should, be a class where there is an environment of stress-free learning and fun.

When I work as a consultant in kindergarten classes, I always stress the importance of keeping inquiry-based explorations and play at the core of the child’s day. Reading, writing and math workshops certainly can by incorporated into the program but they shouldn’t be the focus of the child’s day. When I was teaching, I certainly did have those workshops, but my day always began with a group meeting that flowed into choice time centers. I put a lot of thought into planning centers that challenged the children while they were playing and having fun. This started our school day with energy and good feelings.
Now, returning to those standards for kindergarten, here are some thoughts:

Why not sing Down by the Bay, Jenny Jenkins and many of the other rhyming songs, where children need to listen for and generate rhymes? Won’t children then be demonstrating an understanding of how to “recognize and produce rhyming words” and have fun at the same time?

Why not introduce an inquiry into the names of classmates? Children will gain contextual practice in recognizing alphabet letters. They’ll have many phonological and phonetic experiences when they clap out the syllables of the names and make interesting comparisons and ‘noticings’ (“Look! Akhira and Alexandra both start with A and end with A” “Lee only has 3 letters and it has one clap. Barbara has more letters and it has 3 claps”. “If we take away Pam’s P and change it for an S…its Sam! Pam and Sam have rhyming names!”) With teacher guidance, they begin learning the small, frequently used words that are hiding inside names (am is in Sam, and is in Randy, in is in Devin…).

Inquiry projects provide unlimited opportunities for teachers to keep an eye on helping children meet the standards. For example when children study the trees around the school, they get to make shape comparisons, measure tree trunks, see how leaves can float (if they’re lucky enough to have a water exploration center in the classroom!), learn how to use nonfiction texts to get new information By exploring a topic that is of interest and that is a part of their real world, children learn that they can use a variety of tools and strategies to look for answers to their questions. They become researchers!

If we were to judge how young children learn best by putting inquiry based learning on one side of a scale and hours of paper and pencil instruction on the other, I think that the result is a no-brainer. I believe that the scale would tip down on the side of inquiry. On the inquiry side children have fun while learning and practicing skills such as formulating and asking questions, recording information, purposefully using a variety of math strategies, working cooperatively in groups, and using many different avenues and materials for making discoveries.

When teachers move towards a constructivist approach, the knowledge and needs of the children becomes central. This is different than a teacher-led programmatic approach where the program goals are central and the children must adjust to them. By designing instruction based on the children’s prior knowledge there are more opportunities for children to feel successful. When a teacher gives children opportunities to explore areas that interest them, she is helping children develop a disposition to become self-directed life-long learners.

This is what kindergarten should be. In this type of classroom, kindergarten is ready for the child!

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A Choice Time roadmap… not a train schedule

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In the summer of 1996, I attended a one-week institute for educators in Reggio Emilia, Italy. At that conference, Carlina Rinaldi, director of the Reggio Emilia schools, said something that has reverberated for me again and again. To paraphrase her, she advised teachers that they should consider teaching using a road map to guide their instruction rather than a train schedule. A road map lets you know where you started, where you’re going and important routes and landmarks along the way. But more importantly, it also allows you to take detours for interesting explorations, always showing you how to get back onto the original road. A train schedule, on the other hand, doesn’t allow one to take more time exploring places and ideas that are particularly interesting. It keeps one from taking those detours that allow for interesting and sometimes mind-altering surprises.

Some years ago, Lucy Calkins, head of the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, asked me if I would co-present a day for kindergarten teachers.. Lisa Ripperger was going to address writing workshop in kindergarten, Mary Ann Colbert was presenting the reading workshop and I was going to speak about choice time. When the three of us met to plan, Lisa and Mary Ann were able to plan together but I seemed to be the ‘odd man out’. I noticed that they were thinking about how their workshops changed and grew across the year. I began to wonder if I could use a similar paradigm to plan for a year of Choice Time. I’d like to share what I came up with. However, I think that it’s really important to consider this only as a possible Choice Time roadmap and not as a train schedule to follow.

Fall (September to December)

Since this is the start of the school year, my instructional focus for centers is on creating situations that will support conversation and also on helping children, often through direct demonstration, learn how to use and care for materials.
(I.e. unit blocks; water and sand implements such as funnels, tubes and different size cups; science tools such as magnifying glasses, droppers, shells; paint, crayons, markers, a selection of papers, glue, scissors and other possible art materials in the art center; a selection of math manipulatives; and independently using the headphones, tapes and tape recorder in the listening center).

At centers, children can explore the many possibilities for using a variety of equipment and materials. They also have time to work independently and in small groups, sharing materials and ideas with each other. I have noticed that activities and constructions, at this time of the year, are quite often ‘of the moment’ and might last only for one day. Children are usually ready to explore something new the next day. They are also just learning to work in small groups and in partnerships where they need to share materials.

By giving children opportunities to share their work and choice time experiences with the class, and by providing places in the room to display children’s work, both projects that are completed and work in-progress, the teacher is encouraging children to see themselves as competent explorers.

Winter (January to March)
By this time of the year, my instructional focus is more towards giving children opportunities to work on expanding their projects. Children are encouraged to build onto a project. A few examples are adding more details or color to a drawing or painting. They might create signs and add people and animals to a block structure. In my class and in other classes I’ve seen the dramatic play area transformed into a doctor’s office, a post office, a castle, a grocery store and even a playground. The water table becomes an exciting center for making new discoveries just by adding new materials such as food coloring, ice cubes, snow or soap suds. I remember a time when a group of children used the Cuisenaire rods and small wooden ‘people’ from the block center to create a village in the sand table. What is so exciting is that the possibilities are endless depending upon the children’s interests.

By now, children are often beginning to label projects and to use print more naturally in the different centers, such as writing telephone messages in the dramatic play center or making a ‘scientist’s observation book’ in the science center. Children might be becoming more involved in planning together before beginning their play. The teacher would probably notice a greater use of dialogue within the centers as children share ideas and negotiate compromise.

Spring: April – June
For me, this was a particularly exciting time of the year. My instructional focus for Choice Time now included supporting children’s increased engagement in dialogue and their growing ability to use writing and reading as part of their choice time projects.

During this time of year, I found that it was important for children to have more time in their centers. They often stayed in the same center for at least two days.
My centers would quite often give children opportunities to expand on classroom inquiries in social studies, science and chapter books that I read to them. Some examples of this were a group project to design and construct a bridge when we were involved in a bridge study. The group spent five days working on this project, drawing bridge plans, revising, building and using toy cars and people to play with their bridge. After I read the chapter book, My Father’s Dragon, the children asked if they could make their own 3-D map of Wild Island. I gave them a large piece of cardboard to work on in the art center. Different children worked on this project each day, referring to the book to be sure that they were putting everything in the right order. They labeled the different parts of the map, made arrows to show what came first, made ‘pop up’ people and animals and, as you can imagine, had many opportunities to resolve conflicts within the group!

The science center, one year, led to an interesting child-created project that combined science discoveries, literature and art. After a few of weeks of open, self-directed explorations with magnets in the science center, a group of children thought of adding a story box center to choice time. The children used empty shoeboxes to recreate scenes from favorite storybooks. They folded paper to make people who could stand up and glued paper clips to the bottom of each figure. They then used their magnets to move the figures in their boxes, creating magnetic theaters. This activity was inspired by my daughter’s store-bought magnetic theater (she called it her ‘Magnetic Land’) that I had shared with them earlier in the school year.

By the spring, children tend to work independently and more self-sufficiently. Now the teacher has more opportunities to observe children working at their centers during choice time. At this time of the year, I’m consistently impressed by the incredible progress children have made in working cooperatively and in using classroom materials with so much creativity. Now when children use print within their projects they are using more conventional spelling for the high-frequency sight words that we have been exploring during shared reading and writing workshop. I also notice the dialogue that takes place during share meetings becoming more sophisticated and descriptive. Children listen to each other more attentively and, in their responses, exhibit a greater ability to partake in the give and take of conversations.

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This is, of course, only a road map and not a train schedule for planning Choice Time across the year. To make all of this work well, I assume the involvement of a teacher who enjoys observing and listening to children at play.

This teacher is eager to develop a lively, interactive and stimulating classroom. She/he values individuality and improvisation, and understands that there are many playful, age-appropriate roadways leading towards developing children with strong literacy and mathematical skills. This teacher has also created a classroom environment that has allowed children to develop positive self-images. Through a year of working cooperatively in inquiry-based Choice Time centers, they have learned to value and respect the contributions of the group. These centers provide a road map to the world around them, which offers endless opportunities for being inspired.

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