Posted in Curriculum, Developmentally appropriate practice, Quotes on March 8, 2013 | 2 Comments »
“If you walk into a high-quality early education classroom, what you see is children playing. What you may not realize is that each station in the room, whether the block area or the dramatic play space or the book corner, has been carefully set up to foster children’s learning and healthy development.”
Amy O’Leary, Strategies for Children, March 7, 2013
Posted in Curriculum, Developmentally appropriate practice on March 7, 2013 | 5 Comments »
Photo: Micaela Bedell for Strategies for Children
There have been some questions raised about the “rigorous curriculum” called for in President Obama’s proposal for universal access to preschool, starting with children from low- and moderate-income families. My own daughters went to a wonderful preschool with a “rigorous” curriculum that playfully and intentionally focused on children’s cognitive, social-emotional and physical development. And, as readers know, I’ve written about the subject often in this blog. With young children, play is the curriculum. With young children, a “rigorous” curriculum means a whole lot of learning going on while having a whole lot of fun.
This is the message in the Massachusetts pre-kindergarten curriculum standards in English language arts and math, which are aligned with K-12. The standards are “rigorous,” and they emphasize the importance of embedding curriculum in play and exploration.
“In this age group, foundations of reading, writing, speaking and listening, and language development are formed out of children’s conversations, informal dramatics, learning songs and poems, and experiences with real objects, as well as listening to and ‘reading’ books on a variety of subjects,” the introduction to the Massachusetts English standards states. “The standards can be promoted through play and exploration activities, talking about the picture books, and embedded in almost all daily activities. They should not be limited to ‘reading time.’… The standards should be considered guideposts to facilitate young children’s understanding of the world of language and literature, writers and illustrators, books and libraries.”
Likewise, the curriculum standards in math “can be promoted through play and exploration activities, and embedded in almost all daily activities. They should not be limited to ‘math time.’ In this age group, foundations of mathematical understanding are formed out of children’s experiences with real objects and materials.”
I asked Amy O’Leary, director of our Early Education for All Campaign, for some examples of what a “rigorous” early education curriculum looks like in action. Before joining Strategies for Children, Amy spent a decade as a preschool teacher and director at Ellis Memorial in Boston’s South End neighborhood. (more…)
Posted in Developmentally appropriate practice, Research, Science & math on October 10, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Photo: Michele McDonald for Strategies for Children
Evidence continues to mount about how much young children learn through play. Now a new report in the journal Science shows that children at play use sophisticated scientific and mathematical principles to explore how the world works. The report, by psychologist Alison Gopnik of the University of California, Berkeley, reviews more than a decade of research and finds that very young children are natural experimenters. (See also “Studies Shed Light on the Minds of Young Children.”)
“New theoretical ideas and empirical research show that very young children’s learning and thinking are strikingly similar to much learning and thinking in science,” the Science report’s abstract states. ”Preschoolers test hypotheses against data and make causal inferences; they learn from statistics and informal experimentation, and from watching and listening to others. The mathematical framework of probabilistic models and Bayesian inference can describe this learning in precise ways. These discoveries have implications for early childhood education and policy. In particular, they suggest both that early childhood experience is extremely important and that the trend toward more structured and academic early childhood programs is misguided.”
Gopnik’s lab, for instance, (more…)
Posted in Developmentally appropriate practice, Play, Research on October 4, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Photo: Alessandra Hartkopf for Strategies for Children
Think Simon Says is a simple children’s game? Think again, suggests a recent item in The New York Times that offers more evidence of the important role of play in developing critical executive function skills in young children. As I noted in an earlier blog post (With Young Children, Play is the Curriculum), play helps children learn the executive function skills that research finds are important for school success.
“A growing body of research suggests that playing certain kinds of childhood games may be the best way to increase a child’s ability to do well in school,” the Times reports. “Variations on games like Freeze Tag and Simon Says require relatively high levels of executive function, testing a child’s ability to pay attention, remember rules and exhibit self-control — qualities that also predict academic success.”
With Simon Says, for instance. asking children to do the opposite of what Simon says “helps a child develop mental flexibility and self-control,” the Times reports. Researchers at Oregon State University use a game they call Head-to-Toes to assess young children’s development. The game starts with preschoolers copying the teacher’s movement – touching either her head or her toes. Asking children to do the opposite requires more complex cognitive skills, such as attention, focus, memory, self-control and mental flexibility.
Oregon State researchers followed 430 children from preschool to age 25 and found that children’s ability at age 4 to pay attention and finish a task were the greatest predictors of their chances of graduating from college by 25. Another study cited by the Times found that young children who are better at games like Simon Says perform better in reading and math. Still another found that children who began the school year with low levels of self-control improved after playing games like Red Light Green Light, the Times reports.
“Focusing on the how of learning, on executive functions, gives you the skills to learn new information, which is why they tend to be so predictive of long-term success,” Ellen Galinsky, a child-development researcher and author of “Mind in the Making: The Seven Essential Life Skills Every Child Needs,” tells the Times.
Posted in Developmentally appropriate practice, Play, Quotes on August 24, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
“Through mature play, children learn to adhere to roles and to rules, they begin to understand emotions and relationships; in short, they begin the process of self-regulation.”
Susan Ochshorn, ECE Policy Matters, “Experiential Learning: Play by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet,” June 2012
Posted in Developmentally appropriate practice, Play on August 20, 2012 | 3 Comments »
Photo: Alessandra Hartkopf for Strategies for Children
A reporter once called about a story she was pursuing about “the conflict between play and curriculum” in preschool. Conflict? What conflict? In preschool, I told her, play is the curriculum.
The reporter’s question illustrates a central challenge for all of us working to ensure that developmentally appropriate instruction and assessment guide efforts to align early education with the K-12 system. Now comes Susan Ochshorn, founder of ECE Policy Matters, with a look at how young children develop critical self-regulation skills when play is integrated into the curriculum. (See “Experiential Learning: Play by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet.”)
Ochshorn draws on a recent presentation by Deborah Leong, who helped develop Tools of the Mind, a curriculum for young children designed to build self-regulation skills.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about executive function lately; like the other great gifts that neuroscience has brought, it has the potential to break through the unfortunate perception of play-based learning as utopian fantasy. (more…)
Posted in Developmentally appropriate practice, Play, Research on May 7, 2012 | 5 Comments »
Photo: Alessandra Hartkopf for Strategies for Children
We often say that young children learn through play. We say that play is children’s work. What does research tell us young children gain through play? A recent article in Psychology Today and results of a 15-year longitudinal study, published in Family Science, provide some answers.
As the Psychology Today article notes, there is more to play than swings, jungle gyms and games of tag on the recess playground. Imaginative play – make-believe and pretend – is important for young children’s healthy development.
“Over the last 75 years a number of theorists and researchers have identified the values of such imaginative play as a vital component to the normal development of a child,” Psychology Today reports. “Systematic research has increasingly demonstrated a series of clear benefits of children’s engagement in pretend games from the ages of about 2½ through ages 6 or 7. (more…)
Posted in Developmentally appropriate practice, Science & math on April 30, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Photo: Kate Samp for Strategies for Children
Writing recently in Education Week, Deborah Stipek, Alan Schoenfeld, and Deanna Gomby call for increased attention to building children’s math skills in early learning settings. Citing research that links early math skills with later academic progress – including math and reading skills in second and third grade – they call for developmentally appropriate instruction in mathematical concepts.
Stipek is a professor and former dean of Stanford University’s School of Education. Schoenfeld is a professor of education and mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley. Gomby is vice president for education at the California-based Heising-Simons Foundation.
“We need pre-k standards that are aligned with the Common Core,” they write in “Math Matters, Even for Little Kids.” “Perhaps the biggest hurdle is getting past resistance to academically focused instruction in early childhood settings.”
In Massachusetts in December 2010, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education approved pre-k standards as part of broader frameworks in English language arts and mathematics that include the Common Core. “The [math] standards—which correspond with the learning activities in the Massachusetts Guidelines for Preschool Learning Experiences (2003)—can be promoted through play and exploration activities, and embedded in almost all daily activities,” the math frameworks state. “They should not be limited to ‘math time.’ In this age group, foundations of mathematical understanding are formed out of children’s experiences with real objects and materials.”
In their Ed Week column, (more…)
Posted in Developmentally appropriate practice, Quotes, Standards and curriculum on March 30, 2012 | 1 Comment »
“We have to be careful that those [Common Core State] standards, particularly as they extend downward, appropriately recognize these important social, communication, and self-regulation skills that are really as critical for kids’ learning in those early and later years as whether they know the alphabet.”
Robert Pianta, Curry School of Education, University of Virginia, December 2011
Posted in Developmentally appropriate practice, Quotes on March 23, 2012 | 2 Comments »
“Through play children build the foundation they need to understand the concepts they learn in school, but play offers an even deeper benefit as well. Through play children continually regain their sense of equilibrium, which is what allows them to greet learning tasks in school with openness and confidence—to have the emotional and mental readiness to say: I can do this task and I want to do it!”
Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Lesley University, “Reclaiming Play: Helping Children Learn and Thrive in School,” 2008
Eye on Early Education focuses on the twin goals of ensuring that Massachusetts children have access to high-quality early education and become proficient readers by the end of third grade.
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