We appreciate your strong support of play. We’re going to name three vulnerabilities here, and you hint at the first: play is being compromised, in part because of how children’s time is now managed. Childcare settings and families overly structure play, even at very young ages; children are often plopped down in front of screens; and the commercialization of childhood has taken away the open ended possibilities of playing with mud, exploring the outdoors, and trying on invented roles.

Another vulnerability comes from children spending less time engaged in solving problems with each other, thinking creatively about doing things in new ways, and hearing each other out. With their activities and play scenarios so well scripted, children are not always well prepared to enter into the kind of dialogue that promotes the development of flexible thinking and rich relationships.

Finally, child poverty, which is at the highest rate in decades, cannot be ignored. The emotional and physical stresses (e.g., poor nutrition, housing instability) must be addressed, though we worry that current and proposed budget cuts may seriously undermine many children's futures.

The deficiency in our field comes from the response to these forces that are hitting childhood from all sides: instead of schools acknowledging and compensating for children’s need for a rich environment for play, they are pressed to respond to outside mandates to “cover” academic material. Children’s early experiences at home are also compromised because of the rush to prepare children for academic success. Play is limited by materials that define play rather than offer opportunities for invention and imagination, and many children don’t play outside enough out of adults’ concern for safety.

To respond to these concerns, we kindergarten teachers can look closely at how we think about curriculum. The problem is not that curriculum is increasing, but that teachers (and thus children) feel a push to “get it done” rather than to engage with young learners in deep thinking. We can create classrooms where time is given to thoughtful conversation and the turning over of possibilities, where children can work with materials over and over again and in many different ways, and where children and adults take a moment to stand back and regard children’s work (a block building, a painting, a play scenario, a story) and appreciate in what ways it is strong and how it can continue to grow.

Dear Alana,

While we are not familiar with specific programs in your area, we do have some suggestions about how you can find out about what is available for your granddaughter.

First, you can contact your local child care resource and referral network. This agency will have information about different child care options. One way to find out how to get in touch with your local agency is to go to the website of the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies (http://www.naccrra.org/). On the site there is a tool to find the referral agency in your area. You can also contact your local school department. They may have a pre-kindergarten that your granddaughter can participate in (though often children need to be four to enroll).

You should also network to find out about options. Talk to family and friends, as well as parents and grandparents you meet at the park or grocery store. Hearing their experiences may well lead you to a good program.

Lots of teachers feel this bind—and it seems an impossible one. Think about what “reading” looks like and consider what, specifically, you are being asked to do. There is a theme in this discussion of lack of administrative trust. Once when Melissa was challenged by the lack of a large computer station in her classroom, she described to the principal what would have to be sacrificed in terms of space, materials, and time for other experiences in order to accommodate the computers and equitable computer time for each child. His response: “Oh, I see.” Sometimes administrators simply need our help in understanding what young children need to be doing.

Look at the standards and identify the many ways you are already meeting them. You know that you integrate other subjects well; you probably integrate reading, too. In kindergarten, children should be having many, varied experiences with print, listening to stories, interpreting illustrations, and noticing patterns in print. Your children do these things all day long, especially if you provoke them with your own observations about the printed world around us.

Reading should be a part of every center. If you do 90 minutes of centers, you will be fine. My centers contain at least 1 activity for children who are visual, audio, and kinesthetic and each have a literacy and mathematical element to them. Science center has books about fall weather changes, a book about how food grows, and labels on items and bins. There is a matching game with leaves that could easily be changed to a sorting game as well as adding words to match pictures making it a literacy game. We will make a mini book about fall changes that covers 3 areas of curriculum. The math center includes number words, books about math and numbers, reading/listening to instructions on games, the block center can be labeled, word and letter blocks can be added, a center on social studies would include things like books about other cultures, projects that include writing or making books, and key words that you would be using or tie into your regular reading program. Find ways to integrate many elements into one. The state expects that you will be implementing some creativity in your day to make litteracy a part of everything you do, not that you will drill them for 90 minutes. Even your outside time can have a touch of literacy to it....try word scotch (words instead of numbers), bringing out chalk for children to write or draw with, reading outside in the grass instead of inside on the rug....Science experiments require reading directions. You could actually create picture/word directions that would be easy for them to read. Put the (picture of marble) into the (picture of water glass). Does it (key words next) sink or float? This will actually get them reading in a way that is both fun and practical.

This has been a continual source of frustration for us, too: preschool teachers have a wealth of information about children, and we don’t always have immediate access to those teachers or to what they know. The reasons vary from system to system, but in general, we are dealing with different organizations between preschool and kindergarten, and communication between them is not yet given a priority. It must be frustrating to be a preschool teacher who writes careful reports that then don’t travel with the children to their new school. Sometimes we kindergarten teachers don’t know right away where (or whether) a child has attended preschool. It takes an extra step to know about the programs from which children are coming. Try to find out where a child has been in preschool (you don’t have to rely on school records; parents will generally be thrilled that you are taking the time to get to know their child in this way), and make a call. Ideally, of course, you have some kind of administrative support to bridge a child’s transition from preschool to kindergarten. As you begin to have conversations with preschool teachers and staff in your community, the detective work lessens and you begin to build the bridge you are looking for.

Let us remember that it is not just that preschool should prepare children for kindergarten, but that kindergarten, first and second grades need to be developmentally appropriate. We need to think about prek-3 as a continuum rather than as separate steps where each year is supposed to accomplish a distinct job so that children can move on.

I am fortunate to be teaching a preschool in our school district where I have daily contact with the kindergarten teachers. Unfortunately not all of the teachers want my feedback but I have made it a goal this year since this is only the second year our preschool is in the school to meet monthly with the kindergarteners and I have been visiting their classrooms on Wednesdays (don't have kids on Weds) to observe how my kids from last year were doing. Let's also remember that preschool and kindergarten are developmental ages and my job as a preschool teacher is to provide a nurturing environment for learning and provide rich learning experiences in language, math, science, art, fine motor, gross motor and social sciences that meet the needs of my children. We also need to stress more the positive interactions and social experiences that children are getting in order for them to feel good about school and learning. It helps if you can all be on board with that and sometimes that is half the battle.

Any good Preschool/teacher would know what the standards are for kindergarten. As a kindergartener parent, I monitored my daughter and reinforced what her preschool was teaching her. If a preschool does not have a curriculum of some type I would wonder why they would call themselves a preschool and not a daycare. It's not only up to the parent[s] to make sure that their child gets the best eduction but the school that they will be attending. While my daughter is in Kindergarten it is the SCHOOLs responsibility to teach her. While she is at home it is MINE. I think the better question is why isn't there better communication between the kindergarten teacher and the parent[s]. My daughter's preschool has taught her and taught her well...and if they hadn't I would have removed her and placed her in an actual preschool...

How exciting! Kindergarten is a unique and wonderful time. You already have strong ideas about what you want your kindergarten to look, sound and feel like. It sounds like you need to identify some like-minded colleagues and at least one supportive administrator (this might be someone who is in your district but not in your building, whom you can invite to visit your classroom). Since you are worried about your adminstration’s response to your approach, think about the value of your work in other ways:

Do your relationships with the children in your class promote joy, confidence and risk taking?
Are your relationships with family members built on communication and mutual trust?
Are the children happy to come to school each day? Are they engaged in their work?
Do the children talk with authority about their learning experiences, and do they produce work that demonstrates a mindset of experimentation, thinking, problem solving, and flexibility?

Find a space for displaying your children’s work where it will be viewed by other students in the school, families, colleagues and administrators. Include quotes from the children that value and explain their own or each other’s work, along with your own description of the learning that happened behind the work. Photographs of children working are powerful, as well. Illustrate the intellectual rigor of your program, and then let the work and the attitude of the children defend their kindergarten experience, rather than you worrying about defending your job.

We appreciate your concern for your child’s safety; that is part of your job as a parent.

Given we don’t know the details of this context, it would be irresponsible of us to comment on your specifics concerns. However, your question does get us thinking about issues of risk and safety. At home and at school adults need to strike a balance between appropriate safety measures and allowing children to take physical, emotional and intellectual risks. Such risks are necessary for children’s learning.

Our worry is that we are too often solely focused on safety, ignoring the importance of children’s exploration and developing independence. A few years ago Ben co-authored an article with Becky New and David Robinson titled “ Early Childhood Education as Risky Business: Going Beyond What's "Safe" to Discovering What's Possible.” We think you will find the article provocative (in a good sense). You can read the article on line at http://ecrp.uiuc.edu/v7n2/new.html.

When we think about children taking risks, be it in exploring the alphabet, learning about friendships, growing physical abilities or taking on new responsibilities, we want all of these to occur in a safe context. We hope that this will be the case in your child’s school experience.

Our first bit of advice is not to do any screening on the first day of school. Instead, spend your first days together getting to know the children as individuals and as members of the group. Notice what they choose to do and watch how they approach materials, activities, spaces, other children and adults.

Before you begin screening, think very clearly about what information you need to gather about these children. This will point you toward the screenings that will be helpful. They are not likely to be only math and literacy screenings. You may also want to tailor a standardized screening to your own needs and setting. We have seen a school break a long, comprehensive screening and break it into seven sections. Children brought a clipboard along so they could check off each station as it was completed (it included language, fine motor, phonemic awareness, draw a person, number sense, alphabet knowledge, and gross motor).

Of course a screening is only useful if you use it. Look at your results right away and make notes about what you have discovered about each child in each area (this is a lot more useful than keeping scored assessment tools in your files). Ask yourself: If I were going to talk to a parent tomorrow about what I know about this child as a learner, what would I say? What goals would I set based on this information? What further questions do I have? Then write down your next steps for teaching based on what you’ve learned. If you can’t answer these questions, the screening probably hasn’t been worth your time.

We appreciate your effort to make sure that the skills children are practicing are embedded in authentic experiences. Class meetings offer a perfect opportunity to heighten children’s awareness of the skills and strategies they are already practicing. You can sing a song that has lots of rhyming words and let them fill in the ones you leave out, or read a poem with alliteration to playfully hear and identify initial sounds. You can ask children to draw their block structures and record how many blocks they have used—counting, sorting, graphing, measuring, comparing.

Watch the children carefully and notice what they are doing under the surface of their activity? What must they know in order to be able to do what they are doing? This is an important kind of assessment that tells you what skills are at work in different moments of children’s day, and how you can continue to enrich their experiences with nurturing challenges. For example, offer to go to the grocery story for ingredients for the cake they are pretending to make in dramatic play; they’ll need to make a shopping list; ask them to record the rules of the game they were playing on the playground so other people will learn how to play.

Beyond that, introduce engaging curriculum that will require all their efforts to research and demonstrate understanding. Giving them a topic that ignites their curiosity and asking children to work in small groups encourages them to stretch themselves in all kinds of important ways. A scientific study of the life of a beach or a study of farm life (if a beach or a farm are near enough to visit) provide endless opportunities for reading, writing, explaining, problem solving, identifying characteristics and patterns. When thinking about integrating curriculum, it’s helpful to remember that young children do not separate out one academic content area from another; they are integrating everything they encounter to form ever more complex understandings of their world. We can best teach them when we understand that sense making isn’t discreet—it’s a constant, spiraling, connecting process in which we are invited to join them.

Dear Reggie,

While a historian of education might have a more nuanced answer, it seems clear to us that the accountability movement, epitomized by the No Child Left Behind law, is primary cause in the shifts in kindergarten you name. Agree or disagree with the movement, it has fundamentally altered education in the US, including the experiences of our youngest students.

Your second question—“What type of advocacy can I instill in my student teachers to help them re-claim a developmentally appropriate kindergarten once they get their teaching jobs?”—is important for all mentor teachers to consider. One suggestion is to include your student teachers in your parent conferences. We imagine at these conferences you explain your approach to education, including the importance of play. Hearing how you advocate for developmentally appropriate practices, and then debriefing the conferences with your student teachers afterwards, is the kind of mentorship the next generation of educators needs to help them advocate for children. Because whether they are comfortable with this role or not, part of the job of early childhood educators is to use our knowledge to advocate for what is best for children.

Your state school boards are the reason for this and legislators that interfere in school policies they know nothing about. Contact your STATE legislators.

First, we would encourage you to continue having living creatures in your classroom. Involving children in the care of these creatures helps build responsibly and compassion. They are wonderful subjects for observational drawings and scientific study. For children experiencing separation issues, they can provide a nice way to help transition into the classroom each morning.

Fish and hermit crabs are good choices. Turtles and small mammals (e.g., mice, gerbils) are also easily cared for. In the wild, gerbils will burrow to make their homes, so if you keep them in an aquarium half filled with dirt, they will create interesting environments.

You might want to involve your students into deciding what animal to bring into your room. Rich conversations can emerge as children debate the merits of difference creatures. If a budget is introduced, children will need to use number in an authentic way to navigate what needs to be purchased to support the classroom pet.

Of course you should appraise yourself of any school policies regarding living creatures and be sensitive to any allergies among your students.

Of course, not all kindergarten teachers want the same things of entering kindergartners. One things we all know is that children come to kindergarten from a wide variety of experiences and settings, so expecting them all to know and be able to do the same things is unrealistic.

Our primary hope—and we cannot emphasize this enough—is that children enter kindergarten excited to be at school. Beyond that, we would like them to have some experience with these things, with the recognition that some children will not yet:

• listening to others and taking appropriate turns for expressing ideas and questions;
• handing materials respectfully and putting them away;
• sustaining engagement with an activity or process;
• identifying and pursuing their own interests, choosing materials and having some ideas about how to engage with them productively;
• being safe in relation to the group (staying within school bounds) and attending to personal needs (washing hands); and
• asking for help when they need it.

There are other habits and skills that children may have begun to develop but which we understand will not be at all finished in preschool or even by the end of kindergarten: solving problems with peers, taking the perspective of others, increasing their stamina, and building academic mastery, for example.

But back to our first hope: that on the first day of school, children come to kindergarten with an expectation that school will be fun, fair and a good place to learn; that they arrive with joy and with confidence that school is a good place to be.

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Honestly, I couldn't be happier with the preschool my daughter attends. Each week they would pick a letter and practice writing it and the correct pronunciation. She also knows the basics of adding and subtracting. And of course, respect. She just started Kindergarten and is starting to read. I believe this to be because the preschool she attends did this and gave me the curriculum so that I could reinforce what she was learning in preschool at home.

Seek out parent or community volunteers (perhaps retired persons). 24 four and five year olds with just one teacher is too many!! This is one reason I chose not to get a teaching credential after being a preschool teacher for 10 years.

Leave the profession before it's too late!

Many Kindergarten teachers are teaching under the same conditions. Make sure you have interesting stations set up in the morning as the children come in so you can have the time to build relationships with the parents. Teach the children simple clean up routines so they can do the work. Spend at least 1 month just building relationships and teaching routines. Do not worry about what you are "supposed to" be teaching. If relationships and routines are your first goal, everything else falls into place. Try to connect with a college through AEYC in your local area and get a student to come regularly to volunteer. All the better if it's a bi-lingual student. Often time students must be place in a class as part of their education. Create one learning center that can be directed by a parent and get parents to volunteer. This works really well even if it's only for the first hour. Good luck. It can be done and done well. Signed a kdgn teacher with 24 students for 37 years (our school day is 8-2)

If you are fortunate enough to have options, choosing among different programs is, in part, finding the right fit for your child (e.g., some children will do better with more structure, others will thrive with more choice). It is also a matter of finding a program that aligns with your goals for your child; what you value in an educational experience.
We value classrooms where children learn to be creative, collaborate, communicate and think critically. We also value classrooms and schools where there is warmth and caring and children are valued members of a community.

With these goals in mind, during a classroom visit we would want to see children building in the block area, at play in the house corner, exploring a variety of art materials, using open ended materials outside, and engaged in small group activities. At a classroom meeting we would want to see the group having a real conversation (where ideas are built off one another and there is careful listening) and singing together. Throughout our visit we would want to hear laughter and expressions of excitement and joy.

Learn as much as you can about the philosophy of the school and ask: is this the right place for us? Not that you will find, or even want, 100% alignment, but do you feel welcomed and respect? Is this a place that might enrich your understanding of education? If it is not the right place for you and your family, it won’t be the right program for your child.

I am novice in this field, but have a few suggestions, you can try
Firstly try to make groups of two,one child who is learner and another who is more knowledgeable..children learn easily from each other and they are better at demonstrating their own strategies they might have used to reach up there.
Secondly, it might be helpful to know what is going at the home front...i mean are they going though some tough times at home, so we as teachers need to be considerate of the issues
Finally, try and assess what are those children's interests, so that you can modify your teaching strategy (for example if children like painting and you want to introduce shapes .. do it through painting)
Hope it helps
:)

It sounds like you already have some good ideas about what critical thinking means.

First of all, we adults need to be thinking deeply and critically all the time. This may seem obvious, but it’s too easy to get caught up in the daily or moment-to-moment demands of teaching, to do things efficiently, to respond quickly to a child’s question, to move onto the next thing in the schedule. It takes extra time to listen to what a child is really asking or saying and to respond thoughtfully, to ask the next question that will further a child’s thinking rather than simply answer the question.

The Mission Hill School (where Melissa teaches in Boston) embraces five habits of mind that we use as reminders to develop thinking skills. You will find other habits of mind referenced in other places (the Coalition of Essential Schools lists ten). Ours are: Evidence (how do we know?), Viewpoint (how else might this look if we stepped into someone else’s shoes?), Connection (have we seen something like this before?), Conjecture (what if…?) and Relevance (why does it matter?). These ways of approaching ideas forms the wallpaper of our school, and the expectation is that we are all thinking deeply about our own and others’ ideas.

Melissa also has some questions posted around the very top border of the classroom wall to help classroom adults provoke children’s deep thinking: Tell me about what you’re doing and what you’re going to do next. What makes you say that? Is there another way to do it? What might [your friend] say about that? What if you looked at it from another point of view? What if…? These questions also serve to make children’s interactions with a variety of adults more consistent so that their habits of mind and work develop more fluidly.

A curriculum Ben facilitated for his kindergartners about the Boston Marathon is an example of how to support children’s critical thinking. A video about the curriculum is on the CD-Rom that is included in Copple and Bredekamp’s Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children from Birth through Age 8 (3d ed.).You can also watch the video on line at: http://vimeo.com/21372133.

When children are engaged in block play or telling a story or figuring out a mathematical dilemma or debating the rules of a game, they are thinking about what is right, fair, or comfortable. They are weighing new possibilities to see what makes sense; they are navigating the consequences and benefits of acting on something in a particular way. When we think of the work children are doing as learning rather than accomplishing tasks, we make space for conversations about thinking. Again, this is not something extra to add to what we already do. Every time you interact with a child, you have an opportunity to provoke her thinking. Every time you take that opportunity, you build a habit of thinking deeply.

Yes, they are 5 years old, after all! Perfectly stated.

Consider the standards and remember what we know to be developmentally appropriate. Five year olds are learning to think, create and interact in order to be fully participating, contributing citizens. Your question sits at the heart of the real and pervasive dilemma of balancing state- or district-mandated curriculum/standards and the very children before you, full of diverse strengths, challenges and passions. Remember, too, that the “Anchor Standards” are written for kindergarten through grade 5. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves!

We would suggest that you not look at the standards and think about how to “do” them, but to look at what you already do and how that matches the intent of the standards. For example: We bet that every time you read a story aloud to a group of kindergartners—when you prompt them to talk about the story and illustrations and identify important moments—you are addressing most if not all of the literature standards already.

We get so caught up in trying to make sure we are covering the proper bases, but we find that if we look at our daily practice, we are doing all the things the legislators are telling us we should be doing—except that we are also doing much, much more, as we nurture children’s social, moral and emotional selves.

The tone of your question suggests to us that you may have administrative oversight that is less than understanding about what the standards look like in the hands and minds of young children. Your primary job may not be to change what you are doing at all, but to learn the standards so that you can justify your practice in light of them—kind of like becoming a tour guide or an interpreter. “The standard says this… and here you see children acting on that standard…”

This is one more way in which it is helpful to document children’s learning. Photograph children at work, write down what they say that illustrates their thinking, and keep a collection of student work—all of these demonstrate through children’s performance what the standards are demanding.

Hi Beth,
I have been teaching young children for 21 years and have seen what you are talking about in my district. I think there are many teachers who really want to do more engaging developmentally appropriate curriculum but are under pressure to do the prescribed curriculum a certain way. I think your child's teacher would be glad for your input. May I suggest you speak to the teacher first? It's really hard on the teacher to hear from the principal that a parent isn't satisfied with her performance. If the teacher doesn't get it, then speak to the principal. You should also write to your school board member and superintendent. It seems they listen more to parents than to teachers. Site Developmentally Appropriate Practice by NAEYC as a reference. It will make your argument stronger.