This week's article summary is We Mustn't Make Preschool Less Fun for 4-Year-Olds.
I liked the article for its historical overview of how and why preschools moved to being more ‘academic.’
As we touched on during our SAIS accreditation meeting last week, Trinity is both child centered (we cherish childhood) and academic (we prepare our students for the future), We also know that learning needs to be fun, engaging, and exciting. Particularly for young children play and learning are synonymous: at Trinity, we avoid the either-or/zero-sum extremes of separating academics from play, knowing that all classrooms—from Early Learners to Sixth Grade—are both student centered and teacher guided. Kids are naturally curious yet they also need guidance, explanation, context, and redirection.
I also liked how the article defines an effective classroom: ‘purposeful instruction that supports deep learning in a playful, engaging, and fun way.’ To me, this definition needs to extend beyond our elementary years to middle schools, high schools, and colleges, which all too often lack play, engagement, and fun.
Think about the best teachers you had when you were a student. More than likely they made learning interesting and fun; held you to high standards; empowered you to think, problem solve, and make--and learn from--mistakes; and provided guidance and support when you needed it. They also valued you as a unique individual and you were known and respected in their classroom.
Although this article pertains to the preschool years in particular, it contains sage advice for all classrooms and teachers!
Joe
----------
Which kind of preschool is more beneficial for young children: academic or play-based?
Recent research has breathed new life into a debate that has been around for decades.
For many parents worried that children are being pushed into structured learning too early, there’s immediate concern when the word academics is associated with preschool. Children need to have fun, be creative and make their own choices, they say.
To them, the term ‘academics’ connotes flashcards and a rigid, constrained environment. It’s the opposite of letting kids be kids and enjoying a childhood that will soon enough confront homework, lectures, testing, and sitting in desks all day.
Yet many of the parents who object to academic preschool are engaging in the very activities with their own children that are effective in laying the foundation for learning. They introduce numbers to their toddlers, counting fingers and toes, read to them and engage in conversations that are helping them develop the vocabulary they need to be good readers, point out letters on signs, and play games like chutes and ladders that teach counting.
What we know about teaching and learning has evolved to provide a research-based alternative that can satisfy people on both sides of the debate: purposeful instruction that supports deep learning in a playful, engaging, and fun way.
But engaging in purposeful playful instruction with a group of children requires a great deal of skill – much more than either just letting kids play or giving them worksheets.
The question we should be asking is not either/or, but rather what will it take to bring about a substantial evolution in practice?
In the 1960s, policymakers and educators became concerned about the substantial gap of more than a year in school readiness between children living in poverty and their more affluent peers. Preschool learning became an issue of equity, and the federal government responded by creating Head Start to address the school-readiness gap. Additional pressure on preschools to prepare children academically came from K–12 accountability policies — George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind, morphing into Every Student Succeeds Act under Barack Obama.
Throughout these changes, the play vs. academics debate persisted, with proponents on both sides voicing strong opinions. Those who dismissed exclusively play-based learning cited concerns about the school readiness gap, and pointed to research showing that direct instruction proved most effective in promoting basic math and reading skills.
Resistance to an academic focus came from two central concerns: that the focus on academic learning would crowd out attention to children’s social-emotional development, and that stress over academic outcomes or performance would squelch children’s natural curiosity and intrinsic motivation to learn.
Consider the following activity that I saw unfold in a classroom of 4 year olds:
The teacher maps a 6’ x 10’ grid on a shower curtain, which she spreads on the floor. She asks the children to take off one shoe and sort all of the shoes into six piles — sandals, slip-ons, shoes with laces, etc. Then, in the bottom row of the grid, they place one shoe from each pile in its own square, followed by the rest of the shoes from that category, one each in the squares above the first shoe. After the children count the number of shoes in each column, the teacher asks them what they notice, and the children discuss which columns are longer and shorter and which categories have the most and the fewest shoes. She follows up with questions: Are there any categories that have the same number of shoes? How many more sandals than slip-ons are there?
For the children, this is a game; they do not know they are experiencing instruction. The teacher, however, planned the lesson to help children develop particular math skills, including categorization, counting, graphing, and measurement.
In addition to math, the children are developing social skills — negotiating the shoe classification system, collaborating in creating the columns of shoes and learning to take turns to answer the teacher’s questions.
Young children need to be free to choose and explore on their own. But they also possess a natural curiosity and capacity to learn that, research shows, a skilled educator can harness.
They can learn a great deal about math, literacy, and science. Carefully planned activities with clear learning goals and a developmental progression can nurture young children’s enthusiasm and motivation for learning.
Since research confirms that these well-crafted and playful learning experiences help children develop important and foundational skills and understandings, why aren’t they more common in preschool settings?
One reason is that few teachers are provided with the training and support they need to plan and execute these activities, especially in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
Appropriate and effective learning experiences for young children require preschool teachers to master the material they are teaching and know how to plan activities that will help grow the skills of children with varying learning styles and levels of understanding.
Teachers also need to know how to provide an emotionally secure social context and support the development of self-regulation and social skills while promoting academic skills.
We need to move the conversation beyond play versus academic preschool, and focus on the kind of playful learning researchers have shown contributes to young children’s academic skills without undermining their motivation to learn.
To do this we will need to invest in training and supporting the teachers we expect to implement this demanding approach to teaching.
No comments:
Post a Comment