Preschool: The Most Important Year

This week’s article summary is Why Preschool is the Most Important Year in a Child's Development, which highlights the contents of the recent book, The Most Important Year, one of our summer reading choices.

Many of you may remember a report on NPR last year on a study of sixth grade—nicknamed the Big Dog Research—that detailed how important the sixth grade year is for kids and the resulting recommendation that sixth graders be as close to the highest grade in their school. Hence, it’s optimal for sixth to be the culminating grade of elementary school rather than the first year of middle school.

This article (and the book) explains why the preschool years are so important and what the key criteria are of high-quality preschool programs.

To me, these two articles are perfect bookend ‘talking points’ of why Trinity has the school structure it has. Having sixth grade in elementary school provides students the opportunity to develop a greater sense of self-confidence and assurance, better equipping them for the peer-pressure, self-doubt, search-for-identity years of 7^th-10^th grade.

A high-quality preschool experience develops foundational academic and social-emotional habits, skills, and attitudes both for the short and long term.

Joe

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Quality really matters.

Pre-K is a foundational year because, for most children, it provides their initial exposure to school and sets the tone for their educational career. They develop certain feelings, perceptions, and ideas about school. Conversely a sub-par experience in pre-K has the potential to create enduring negative emotions about school.

Researchers have found that few pre-K are truly poor quality and few are truly excellent.

The most important thing to look for is how the adults interact with children. You want to see them engage with children in a way that is positive, nurturing and genuinely curious.

In fact, according to her research, the best pre-K programs are staffed by trained teachers who know how to build students’ self-regulation skills; nurture their creativity and curiosity; and foster an environment of playful learning.

Building Self-Regulation Skills: The ability to manage one’s behavior and emotions in a given situation is the most important skill to foster at this age. Good pre-K programs effectively build students’ self-regulation skills that will help them experience success in pre-K and beyond. These classrooms teach children “how to be learners,” including how to deal with difficult emotions, how to pay attention, and how to be peers who listen to and interact positively with their classmates. You want to teach children how and why to behave. What to do instead of just what not to do. Effective pre-K classrooms teach self-regulation through songs and routines; picture prompts can remind children of the steps in a process. Skilled preschool teachers have strategies for redirecting student behavior and use language that provides instruction. Rewards and punishment are not effective tools because they do not teach kids how or why to behave. Rather, it just emphasizes that you want them to do something. Ironically, kids who have the biggest struggle with self-regulation are those most damaged by these strategies. When they are unable to earn the reward, they may feel frustration or shame or simply decide to stop trying.

Nurturing Creativity and Curiosity: Effective pre-K classrooms also engage students’ natural curiosity and creativity. In these classrooms, you will hear teachers using open-ended inquiries such as: How do you know that? How did you figure that out? Explain to me what you are doing. What do you think will happen if we . . . ? This dialogue between teacher and student focuses on the process of learning. In pre-K everything should be process focused and not outcome focused. For example, art projects should be more about exploring materials and techniques than about producing a replica of what the teacher made.

Fostering Playful Learning: Much of the public debate around early childhood education comes down to which matters more: academics or play. That’s a false dichotomy. Play is really the way that young children learn. It’s a way that they experience the world, and it engages them and helps them learn more deeply. Sadly, the “skill and drill” approach to teaching academics is most frequently used in classrooms serving at-risk preschoolers in an attempt to close the gap on school readiness. These teaching methods can turn young kids off to school and introduces the possibility of shame and anxiety. Skill and drill doesn’t teach kids the curiosity and critical thinking skills that they need to develop in early childhood. However, pure free play — an approach advocated more frequently by wealthier cohorts — also misses the mark. If it only involves setting out materials and not thinking about learning goals, there’s a real missed opportunity. For example, researchers have found that children used more sophisticated language about building activity when they had a goal in mind. What effective preschools aim for is guided play or scaffolded play, in which adults create a purposeful play environment that encourages student exploration. For example, in setting up blocks, a teacher might put up pictures of buildings to inspire kids. They may ask students, ‘What are you doing?’ and gently push kids’ thinking by offering new information or nudging them to experiment. Of course, the ability to find this balance rests with teachers. That’s why it’s really important that we invest in teachers and give them the training to find that middle ground — to guide play without overly controlling it and to encourage kids to develop an understanding of letters and numbers without ‘skill and drill.’

Investing in Teacher Training: Teachers need research-based training, information about what developmentally appropriate practices look like