In Defense of Childhood: Keeping the Joy of Learning Alive – A Conference for Educators and Parents

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If you are in New York City on March 10th, there’s a very exciting conference taking place at City College. There isn’t any charge for attending but you must first register.

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The City College of New York’s Graduate Programs in Early Childhood Education, Psychology Department, Educational Theater Program, Colin Powell Center for Leadership and Service, Auxiliary Enterprise Corporation, Office of Student Services, New Educator journal, and School of Education’s Retired Faculty Association, and Lillian Weber Fund invite you to attend a conference in honor of the School of Education’s 90th anniversary

IN DEFENSE OF CHILDHOOD:
Keeping the Joy of Learning Alive
A Conference for Educators and Parents

Saturday, March 10, 2012, 9am-4:30pm

The Great Hall (in Shepard Hall)
The City College of New York

The widening gap in our society between children of low-income backgrounds their more affluent peers, along with new insights gained from an explosion of research in the neurobiological, behavioral, and social sciences, have captured the public’s attention about the importance of childhood and the need for high quality education. The means to achieving these goals, however, has recently focused on preparing children for school success primarily through an emphasis on standardized testing. This has been done at the expense of what research and educators’ experience tell us: Optimal learning results when the whole child is supported in his or her cultural context; when teaching fosters active engagement, is responsive to diverse cultures and languages, supports family involvement in learning, and develops not only cognitive skills but other human attributes such as curiosity, perseverance, empathy, flexibility, resilience, and social awareness.

It is in the context of these issues that this conference addresses how educators and schools can nurture children in accordance with their developmental needs and teach them in the ways that they learn. Presenters will share effective practices and make recommendations for how school and societal challenges can be negotiated to create more effective and more equitable learning environments to enhance the life chances of our youngest citizens.

9:00-10:15: Plenary in the Great Hall (Shepard Hall) with keynote speaker, Nancy Carlsson-Paige (author of Taking Back Childhood)

10:30-12:00: AM Workshops

12:00-2:00: Lunch and Cultural Arts Fair/Book Fair with featured speaker

1:45-3:00: PM Workshops

3:15-4:30: Closing Plenary: Panel discussion on “The Good Childhood/The Good School: Giving Our Children What They Deserve” followed by a children’s performance

ADMISSION IS FREE

Register

Conference am and pm sessions

Sponsoring organizations: The City College of New York’s Graduate Programs in Early Childhood Education, Psychology Department, Educational Theater Program, Colin Powell Center for Leadership and Service, Auxiliary Enterprise Corporation, Office of Student Services, New Educator journal, School of Education and School of Education’s Retired Faculty Association, and the Lillian Weber Fund.

Supporting organizations: Alliance for Childhood, American Museum of Natural History, Bank Street College of Education, Child Care Council at CUNY, Child Development Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, City College Child Development Center, Community Playthings, Democracy Inquiry Group of New England, Manhattan Country School, New York City Early Childhood Professional Development Institute of CUNY, SciPlay Center of the New York Hall of Science, and the UFT Teacher Center.

In Defense of Childhood: Keeping the Joy of Learning Alive
March 10, 2012
BREAK-OUT SESSIONS
(There will be no advance registration for sessions)

AM Sessions: 10:30am-12:00pm

The Mutt-i-grees Curriculum: Teaching Social and Emotional Skills
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 2/203
The Mutt-i-grees Curriculum is a comprehensive program that bridges humane education and Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), In a series of easily implemented lessons, the Mutt-I-grees Curriculum enhances children’s social and emotional skills and introduces them to Mutt-i-grees, a new term for shelter pets. Developed by the North Shore Animal League America, in collaboration with Yale University School of the 21st Century and TV’s Dog Whisperer Cesar Millan, the Curriculum has been implemented in hundreds of schools in 40 states. The workshop will include the research base on SEL, resiliency and human-animal interactions review of lessons and best practices, bringing a dog to class and findings of preliminary evaluations which show that curriculum outcomes include improved behavior and social skills among students and increased parent involvement.
Misty Ginicola, Training and Evaluation Associate, Yale School of the 21st Century, the Mutt-i-grees Curriculum
Byron Logan, Kay Hammerson and Jayne Vitale, Mutt-i-grees Team representatives

How to Integrate Common Core Standards into a Rich Learner-Centered Curriculum for Pre-K, K, and 1st Grades
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 3/225
We will present a framework for planning that takes into account standards as well as principles of learner-centered education.
Betsy Grob, Bank Street College
Fretta Reitzes, Director, Wonderplay, the 92nd St. Y
Julie Diamond, Author, Kindergarten: A Teacher, Her Students, and a Year of Learning (The New Press)

180 Days Well Spent
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 2/202
Film showing and discussion about “What is it that we WANT for our children, schools and communities to ensure their right to a high-quality education?”
Pam Cushing, teacher emeritus, the Ella Baker School and Central Park East I Elementary School
Marilyn Barnwell, Director, Bloomingdale Head Start

What Are We Doing To Our Children?: How Societal Pressures Are Affecting Our Schools And Children
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 3/217
This presentation explores the effects of modern social media, the “Race to Nowhere” phenomenon, and parental pressure on today’s children.
Marcy Guddemi, Executive Director, Gesell Institute of Child Development

Social and Object Play for the Young Child with Disabilities
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 4/222
This panel presentation will provide the evidence and recommended practices related to the importance of play in the learning and development of young children with disabilities, and explore the interaction between the child and the environment to promote play competencies, developmental abilities, and social
experiences.
Espa Sergiou, Deputy Director of Education Programs, Birch Family Services, Inc.
Bonnie Keilty, Associate Professor of Education, Pace University
Hedi Levine, Education Supervisor, LifeStart
Gay Wilgus, Assistant Professor, School of Education, CCNY

Making Learning Visible in School and Home Environments: Documentation and the Documenter
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 4/220A
How do teachers learn how to document children’s learning? What are effective ways for teachers to use video to communicate with families? What practices can help teachers and caregivers gather documentation (e.g., photographs, video clips, samples of children’s work) and present these rich materials in engaging formats for different audiences, such as children, caregivers, and the larger community? Using examples from several unique settings, we will illustrate the processes that individuals use when documenting children’s learning, and how we can support those new to documentation practices in taking their first steps as documenters.
Megina Baker, Jesse Feigenbaum, Jane Lannak, and Liz Zigmont, Boston University, Early Childhood Learning Lab
Vicki Bartolini, Wheaton College
Lisa Fiore, Lesley University

The Finland Phenomenon: What’s Behind The Top International Ranking School System And What Does It Mean For U.S. School Systems?
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 5/101
Finland’s school system is consistently at the top of international rankings for education systems. They were not always at the top of the rankings. How did they get there and how are they staying at the top? This workshop, through excerpts from the film: The Finland Phenomenon: Inside the World’s Most Surprising School System, explores some of the key features that define Finland’s approach to education and their applicability to the U.S. education system.
Sara Wilford, Director, Art of Teaching Graduate Program, Sarah Lawrence College
Jan Drucker, Pyschology Faculty, Sarah Lawrence College
Indhira Blackwood, Director, Child Development Institute, Sarah Lawrence College

When Learning Comes Naturally – Children and Teachers Exploring the Outdoor World
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 2/201
The workshop will feature screening of the film When Learning Comes Naturally followed by discussion on the relationship between children and nature.
Susan Schwimmer, Teacher, Early Childhood Center, Sarah Lawrence College
Hannah Sunshine, Teacher, The Stevens Cooperative School and Fieldston Outdoors Summer Program

Teaching Toward Wholeness: The Aesthetic in Education
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 5/213
This will be an interactive workshop based on an article by the same name published in Encounter Magazine. After a short philosophical presentation, participants will work in small groups to uncover how the forms of dance, theater, visual art, and music can inform their own pedagogy. In conclusion, participants will use art materials to create a piece of work that reflects their own tone of teaching.
Kathleen Kristin Ruen, Faculty, Art of Teaching Graduate Program, Sarah Lawrence College

Drawing, Storytelling and Early Literacy
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 3/221
This workshop will focus on the path to early literacy development in young children, focusing on the drawing and storytelling that contribute to children’s beginning awareness and exploration of reading and writing. We will view together and discuss the film “From Pictures To Words”, made for The Learning Child Series, a collaboration of Sarah Lawrence College’s Child Development Institute and Jonathan Diamond Associates.
Barbara Schecter, Director, Child Development Graduate Program, Sarah Lawrence College
Sonna Schupak, Teacher, Early Childhood Center, Sarah Lawrence College

Prospect Center’s Descriptive Review of a Child: Knowing the Whole Child to Teach the Whole Child
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 4/205
Using the Prospect Descriptive Review of the Child developed by Patricia F. Carini and teachers at the Prospect School and Center, a student teacher (and her host teacher) will present a holistic non-judgmental portrayal of a child through the lens of the five headings of the Descriptive Review. Participants in this session will be active listeners and contributors, sharing thoughts in support of the presenting teachers with regard to the focus they bring to frame the review.
Mary Hebron, Associate Director, Art of Teaching Graduate Program, Sarah Lawrence College
Jerusha Beckerman, Student, Art of Teaching Graduate Program, Sarah Lawrence College

Collective Creativity and Vygotsky’s ZPD
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 6/204
This workshop will explore cutting-edge discoveries about creativity and learning, including Lois Holzman’s thesis that “without creating ZPDs there is no creativity.” We combine Vygotsky’s discoveries on the collective creation of Zones of Proximal Development (ZPDs) with techniques from theatrical improvisation. Come learn to play with these new tools and concepts as we collectively create our own ZPD.
Carrie Lobman, Associate Professor, Rutgers University Graduate School of Education; Director of Pedagogy at the East Side Institute
Gwen Lowenheim, Co-director, The Snaps Project; faculty East Side Institute

Restoring Play-based Education in PreK and Kindergarten: Why and How
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 3/226
This presentation will discuss the long-term research showing the need for play-based learning (a combination of rich content offered in experiential ways, combined with child-initiated play) and how to develop it in an era of standards and testing.
Joan Almon, Founding Director, Alliance for Childhood

The Storypath Approach: Developing Social and Cultural Understanding through Narrative, Imagination and Dramatic Play
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 4/220C
Children’s socio-dramatic play provides rich opportunities for teachers to scaffold and support children’s early literacy learning and language acquisition. Participants will learn practical strategies for building socio-dramatic play scenarios that support language learning through the Storypath approach. Using the elements of story, children are actively engaged in meaningful learning experiences using their imaginations while developing social and cultural understandings.
Margit E. McGuire, Professor of Teacher Education and
Program Director, Master in Teaching Program, College of Education, Seattle University

Urban Environmental Education and Early Childhood Teacher Education: Creating Opportunities for Discovery in Non-Formal Learning Environments
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 3/214
This presentation will describe a collaboration between two teacher educators, one specializing in early childhood education and the other in environmental education, to help early childhood teacher education students learn how to plan and use out-of-school trips to reimagine how non-formal learning environments might be used in work with young children. The presentation will include artifacts (including photographs of field experiences and student work) from visits to Brooklyn Children’s Museum, Central Park, and the Brooklyn Botanical Garden as well as related hands-on activities.
Rebecca Light, Visiting Assistant Professor, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University
Mary Leou, Director of the Wallerstein Collaborative for Urban Environmental Education and Director of the Environmental Conservation Education Program, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University

After School in the School Setting: Fighting for Play
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 4/207
This presentation will address the challenges (in light of the pressures from the drive for meeting standards in schools) of incorporating opportunities for play and exploration into afterschool programs rather than focusing on remediation during this important time of day. Participants will explore options and share knowledge of how to develop a “Playgroup” component for afterschool programs.
Judith R. Valdez, Lecturer, Kingsborough Community College; Director, Children’s Day Camp, Berkeley Carroll School
Linda Lake, Director, Afterschool Program, Bank Street College

Valuing Children’s Approximations: Developing Inquiry-Based Social Studies Projects and Choice Time Centers In Early Childhood Classrooms
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 4/224
This session will help participants understand the important role inquiry studies and choice time centers play in the lives of children. Video segments and photographs will be shared.
Renée Dinnerstein, Early Childhood Consultant

Childhood and Play In Global Settings: A Pedagogical Journey Into Culturally Diverse Early Childhood Classrooms
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 4/219
This cross-cultural presentation provides images from early childhood schools in India, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Maldives and China: five countries that differ from each other racially, ethnically, linguistically, religiously, geographically, and politically. Highlighted are curriculum, activities and materials, the nature of children’s work, and the physical environments of schools and classrooms. My goal is to contextualize within the Asian culture such concepts as perceptions of play, the role of cultural beliefs and tradition in the curriculum, the nexus between play and learning, and the circumstantial challenges to a child-entered pedagogy.
Amita Gupta, Associate Professor, School of Education, CCNY

Keeping Play in the Classroom; Defending Childhood to Parents
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 6/207
There are many different views of the merits and value of play in educational settings. Early childhood educators, child development specialists, school administrators and even politicians cannot seem to agree on the role of play in the classroom, so how can we possibly expect parents to value play when there is such a lack of clarity? Most parents have strong feelings concerning play and childhood, which are often connected to their own cultural expectations of the roles of work and play in life. How can parents become our “allies” in our fight to keep play firmly grounded in early childhood classrooms and other educational settings?
Lorayne Carbon, Director, Early Childhood Center, Sarah Lawrence College

An Introduction to the Reggio Emilia Schools in Italy
Room: North Academic Center 5/215
The Reggio Emilia approach to the education of young children that developed under the visionary leadership of Loris Malaguzzi has roots in the intellectual traditions of progressive education, constructivism, and the Italian postwar leftist politics. There are also important influences of history, culture, and traditions of participatory democracy involving an activist citizenry. The municipally funded infant/toddler and preschools were founded in 1963 and are renowned worldwide for their exemplary practices and philosophy of education. Most explanations of the so-called “Reggio Approach” touch on the image of the child, the role of expressive arts, projects, the environment, documentation, and teacher inquiry and collaboration. In addition to some brief history, this session will focus on images of life in the schools, and examples of publications and student work, to introduce participants to this thriving and dynamic community and the exemplary work they do on behalf of their youngest citizens.
Alexandra Miletta, Assistant Professor, Childhood Education, Mercy College

The Cultural Arts Fair: 12:00-1:45
Over 30 cultural arts organizations representing the five art forms (theatre, dance, visual art, music and media) will be on hand to provide information and material on how to bring quality arts programming into your schools, communities and centers.

Cultural Arts Fair Speaker: 1:45-3:00
Arts in the Classroom: How Best to Select a Partner(s) and Determine What Is Right for Your School
Room: Shepard Hall 250
With potentially hundreds of arts and cultural institutions in the city to choose from, how does a school go about finding the appropriate partner? This workshop will offer key questions to ask arts organizations, share the state mandate for arts education, and develop clear next steps in designing a quality arts program. The arts are a civil right and should be offered to all students, not just some students. As educators we must educate the whole child and the arts are one way to address our many diverse learners. Russell Granet, founder of Arts Education Resource (AER), will facilitate the workshop and discussion. Granet has over twenty years of experience working with NYC arts organizations and the NYC public schools.

PM Sessions: 1:45-3:00pm

Block Building: A Hands-On Workshop
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 3/225
We will build and then “deconstruct” all of the rich learning that goes on through block building and the important role of the teacher. Block building will also be linked to the Common Core State Standards.
Betsy Grob, Bank Street College
Fretta Reitzes, Director, Wonderplay, the 92nd St. Y
Julie Diamond, Author, Kindergarten: A Teacher, Her Students, and a Year of Learning (The New Press)

Supporting Brain Development in a Play Based Early Childhood Classroom
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 3/217
This session will focus on brain development during the early childhood years
(0-8 yrs). We will demonstrate how relationships, activities, and environments within a play-based classroom experience promote healthy brain development. The presentation involves a brief introduction to brain development and hands on exploration of materials.
Michelle Barreras and Mary Quest, Columbia College, Chicago, Illinois

Following Children’s Lead: Addressing District/State Standards and Curriculum in NYC Public Schools through Active, Play-Based Experiences
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 4/222
This presentation describes the progression of studies in two early childhood classrooms that simultaneously address district and state expectations while remaining developmentally-appropriate and exciting for children and teachers alike. The challenges involved in making this happen within the constraints of the public school system will be discussed. Strategies will be shared for how others can do this kind of work.
Mercedes Orozco, teacher and VJ Brijmohan, teacher with PreK students and parents,
PS 36

Singing with Children
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 4/209
This “voice-on” workshop is about singing in early childhood: joys, risks, classroom management aspects, curriculum implications, and the specific challenges for the song leader. Song sheets with guitar chords will be provided for all participants.
Betsy Blachly, Bank Street College

“Can I tell you a question?” Teaching From the Questions of Childhood
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 3/221
‘What’ and ‘how’ and ‘why’ are the beginnings of questions we have all asked of the world – and they are also the very same questions we can ignite over and over again – as we listen to the wonderments of the children we teach, and ask with them – indeed, journey with them through the playful delights of their knowing and imagining. This workshop is an invitation to partake in the spirited give and take of such questions, a reminder of the many visible and invisible poetries at the root of our desire, from childhood onwards, to simply ask a question.
Richard Lewis, Founder and Director, The Touchstone Center for Children

Making the Case for Play
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 2/201
This session will be addressed to parents, teachers, and administrators who find themselves wondering about and working to make the case for the importance of imaginative play in all aspects of young children’s development. We will show the film “When a Child Pretends” and facilitate a discussion of the crucial role such play serves in and of itself and as preparation for later learning and growth.
Jan Drucker, Psychology Faculty, Sarah Lawrence College
Margery B. Franklin, Child Development Institute, Sarah Lawrence College

Programming for Play: New Ideas from New Parks
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 3/222
In this workshop, we will share best practices and lessons learned about new, innovative approaches to parks programming built around a culture of play. We will trace the evolution of programming at Battery Park City Parks and Friends of the High Line, focusing on nature and art as vehicles for imagination and open-ended exploration, and discuss the recent development of the Children’s Workyard Kit, a kit of open-ended play and building materials developed for the High Line by designer Cas Holman. Photographs, activities, and materials combined with discussion, interaction, and exchange with participants will be integral to this workshop.
Abby Ehrlich, Director of Parks Programming at Battery Park City Parks
Danya Sherman, Director of Public Programs, Education, and Community Engagement at Friends of the High Line
Emily Pinkowitz, School and Youth Program Manager at Friends at Friends of the High Line

Invent-A-Wheel – A Hands On Activity About Teaching And Learning Friction, Ramps, Sleds, Rollers And Cars
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 5/213
Participants in this workshop will design and build their own cars and learn how to get their students to think and act like engineers, scientists, writers and artists.
Travis Sloane and Christina Alicea, NYCDOE and City Technology Project at CCNY

Why Play Works: Secret Paths to Self-Discovery
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 4/220A
This presentation explores how children’s literature documents and sustains the value of free play. Award-winning authors and illustrators like David Small, Zibby Oneal, Christopher Paul Curtis, and Erin Stead have been chosen because their picture books, chapter books, and young adult novels demonstrate how play histories of racial, gender and geographic difference translate into careers of creative production.
Elizabeth Goodenough, Ph.D., University of Michigan Residential College

Play and the Natural World: Children and Animals
Room: North Academic Center 2/202
This session focuses on the importance of involvement with nature for children’s development. It features a video screening and discussion of the benefits of children’s involvement with animal care and the similarities between children’s and animals’ need to play.
William Crain, Professor of Psychology, CCNY
Lorayne Carbon, Director, Early Childhood Center, Sarah Lawrence College
Millie Harper, Teacher, Early Childhood Center, Sarah Lawrence College

The Good Childhood”: An Overview of Nordic Perspectives on Caring and Teaching
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 2/203
Despite distinctions between the Nordic countries all five nations are in agreement about basic concepts that constitute “the good childhood”. These may be characterized as Democracy (as a lived experience in schools); Egalitarianism; Cooperation; and Freedom. We will explore these ideas and their implications for teachers of young children based on our experiences at a recent symposium on Nordic approaches to early childhood.
Sara Wilford, Director, Art of Teaching Graduate Program, Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Mathews, Teacher, Child Development Center, Sarah Lawrence College
Therese Reksnes, Student, Art of Teaching Graduate Program, Sarah Lawrence College

Inviting Play, Expanding Learning, Awakening the Whole Child: An Ecological Approach To Transforming The Classroom Environment
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 4/220C
This multimedia presentation features photo and video documentation of a 6 week experimental curriculum to have preschool students design their own classroom environment. It features reflections on the experience by the students in their own words, a chance to play and interact with the specific materials used, and a brief review of some of the pedagogical thinking and planning principles that inspired us.
Diane Boujikian and Evan Miklos, The Randolph School, Wappingers Falls, NY

Matching the Right Book With the Right Child
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 6/204
This interactive session invites educators to discuss the book choices we implement for and encourage from our own students. Recognizing that a just-right book has great value, the session will begin with this focus; together we will consider what else needs to inform our ‘matchings’ of books and readers.
Lisa Von Drasek, School for Children Librarian, Bank Street College of Education
Mollie Welsh Kruger, Reading and Literacy Program faculty, Bank Street College of Education.

Global Visions of Play in Early Childhood Education: Nigeria, Nepal, The Dominican Republic and England
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 5/206
Teacher education candidates from different countries describe early learning environments in their home countries and discuss differences with child-centered pedagogies.
Deborah Ominiabohs, Masters Candidate, CCNY
Sarala Thapa, Masters Candidate, School of Education, CCNY
Edras Santana, Masters Candidate, School of Education, CCNY
Anne Brusatte, Masters Candidate, School of Education, CCNY
Gay Wilgus, Assistant Professor, School of Education, CCNY

Belonging and Connecting: Exploring Children’s Identity
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 5/101
This presentation describes how children can explore their identify and cultural understandings through a project approach. It will include: Play experiences designed to promote children’s engagement and learning in the project; documentation of children’s learning which portrays them as competent, capable and powerful learners, children actively involved in their learning; children representing their learning through a variety of media; involvement of families in the learning journey
Marilyn Hayward, AUSSIE consultant

Creating Play Opportunities for “All” Children
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 3/226
This presentation describes a project with a community group in Bengaluru, India to elicit children’s perspectives on play and then design and create inclusive play spaces for “all” children (including children with special needs).
Sruthi Atmakur, Children’s Environments Research Group (CERG), the Graduate Center, CUNY

Defending the Early Years: How to Advocate for Play in the Era of Standards and Accountability
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 4/219
This presentation will share research about the impact of the Common Core State Standards on preschool programs around the country. It will also discuss the new preschool standards that are now being created and adopted.
Edward Miller, Director, Defending the Early Years

Imaginative Play with the Natural World
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 4/205
This part of the presentation is an interactive opportunity – to play with objects from nature and to reflect on the value of imaginative play with the natural world. How to bring nature play into your classroom will be discussed.
Tom Goodridge and Jamilah Abdul-Majid, CCNY

Art Amidst Science in Antarctica
Room: North Academic Center (NAC) 4/224
In the winter (Austral summer) of 2009-2010, Elise Engler spent two months in Antarctica as a recipient of a National Science Foundation Antarctica Artists and Writers Grant. Her work, through drawing, painting, video and photographs chronicles the entire experience from applying for the grant to time spent in two penguin colonies, at the main research base at McMurdo Station, in the Dry Valleys and at the Amundsen – Scott South Pole Station. Her blog, Elise on Ice, was followed by many, including elementary school students throughout NYC. She is currently working on a book and there are exhibitions starting later this year.
Elise Engler, artist and art educator, CCNY and School of Visual Arts

Here’s a link to the site if you would like to register: file:///Users/Renee/Desktop/march%2010%20conference/In%20Defense%20of%20Childhood%20Conference%20-%20Spring%202012.webarchive

A Field Trip to a Strange New Place: Second Grade Visits the Parking Garage

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P.S. 142 is a high poverty school so close to the Williamsburg Bridge that during recess children can hear the cars above them driving to Brooklyn. Almost all of the 436 students qualify for free lunches.

On the first day of school, when they walk into Frances Sachdev’s kindergarten class in Room 117, most are already behind. By age 4, the average child in an upper-middle-class family has heard 35 million more words than a poor child. Studies have shown that while about two-thirds of kindergartners from the wealthiest 20 percent of households are read to at home every day, about a third of children from the poorest 20 percent are.

Experiences that are routine in middle-class homes are not for P.S. 142 children. When Dao Krings, a second-grade teacher, asked her students recently how many had never been inside a car, several, including Tyler Rodriguez, raised their hands. “I’ve been inside a bus,” Tyler said.

“Does that count?”

When a new shipment of books arrives, Rhonda Levy, the principal, frets. Reading with comprehension assumes a shared prior knowledge, and cars are not the only gap at P.S. 142. Many of the children have never been to a zoo or to New Jersey. Some think the emergency room of New York Downtown Hospital is the doctor’s office.

The solution of the education establishment is to push young children to decode and read sooner, but Ms. Levy is taking a different tack. Working with Renée Dinnerstein, an early childhood specialist, she has made real life experiences the center of academic lessons, in hopes of improving reading and math skills by broadening children’s frames of reference.

The goal is to make learning more fun for younger children.

Earlier this year, Ms. Krings’s second grade visited an auto repair shop where, for the first time, Tyler sat in a car. “I sat in the front seat and then I sat in the back seat,” he said. It made him feel like the star in one of their library books, “Honda, the Boy Who Dreamed of Cars.”

While many schools have removed stations for play from kindergarten, Ms. Levy has added them in first and second grades. One corner of Ms. Krings’s room is for building blocks, another for construction paper projects. There are days when the second grade smells like Elmer’s glue.

Several times a month they take what are known as field trips to the sidewalk. In early February the second graders went around the block to study Muni-Meters and parking signs. They learned new vocabulary words, like “parking,” “violations” and “bureau.” JenLee Zhong calculated that if Ms. Krings put 50 cents in the Muni-Meter and could park for 10 minutes, for 40 minutes she would have to put in $2. They discovered that a sign that says “No Standing Any Time” is not intended for kids like them on the sidewalk.

(They were not ready yet to decode alternate-side-of-the-street parking signs; that’s more appropriate for students with doctorates in hieroglyphics.)

One day last week Ariana Flores said: “We’re going to see a municipal parking garage today. We’re getting a good education.”

When reading, children are taught to make predictions of what is to come in a book, based on a variety of evidence — the cover, chapter headings, foreshadowing. Ms. Krings’s students used their field trip booklets to do the same before their visit to the Delancey and Essex Municipal Parking Garage.

Several predicted that drivers would have to pay to get in.

To be out of school on a sunny winter’s day and walking to a municipal parking garage — it doesn’t get any better than that. Kammi Poom skipped the whole way. Alan Zhao thought it was hilarious to walk like Frankenstein. Evan Nuñez, the smallest, hurried so he could be up front with Ms. Krings.

“There it is,” shouted Julissa Jirmnson. All of them had passed a municipal parking garage before, but few had been inside one. They walked up a ramp, past a blue handicapped zone, orange cones and a red Big Apple sign, then watched the cars coming in. They could see the drivers press a green button and take a ticket, but they didn’t see anyone paying money as they had expected.

In such situations, Ms. Krings recommends consulting an expert, so they asked the man standing in the front booth, whose name was David.

David stepped out, they crowded around, and he said, “They don’t pay to get in, they pay to get out.”

“I knew it,” said Ariana.

“I knew it, too,” said Kammi.

After that, well — there’s too much to tell it all. On the way back they stopped to copy down words from interesting signs. Ariana wrote, “Sprinkler Control Valve Located in Basement.” Jairo Fermin wrote, “Thru Trucks Use Houston Street.”

“I want a decibel level of zero,” Ms. Krings said as they walked back into the school.

For the next hour they did field trip follow-up. Ms. Krings gave them Muni-Meter math problems.  At the block station the boys kept building racing tracks and knocking them over while Yudy He Wu made a municipal parking garage and lined the top with Matchbox cars. They never stopped chattering to one another, which Ms. Krings said was good. “They’re working together to resolve problems and developing their verbal skills,” she said.

When Ms. Dinnerstein first came to the school, staff members ran for cover. One of the miseries of being a teacher is that every year, someone shows up from Tweed Courthouse headquarters with a new plan to raise test scores.

But after four years of academic lessons built around sidewalk trips to the Essex Street Market, the subway, several bridges and a hospital emergency room, Ms. Krings is moved by how much learning goes on.

Daniel Feigelson heads the network of 30 schools that P.S. 142 belongs to. He said that he wished more principals would adopt the program but that they were fearful. “There is so much pressure systematically to do well on the tests, and this may not boost scores right away,” he said. “To do this you’d have to be willing to take the long view.”

Introducing Inquiry and Exploration to a New York City public school

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I was recently asked by the P.S. 142 support network to write something about the inquiry work being done in the early childhood classes of their school. I thought that I would share this with you. Writing it down really did help clarify the work for me! I encourage your questions and thoughts on this topic!

The inquiry project work that I have been doing at P.S. 142 is grounded in the research and practice of Lilian Katz, (former president of NAEYC and founder of the ERIC research center) and also in the work done in the early childhood schools in Reggio Emilia, Italy.

The Project Approach, an outgrowth of Ms. Katz’s work at the University of Illinois, is based on the following beliefs:
∗ All children come to school with the desire to understand their life experiences
∗ All children want to learn
∗ There is a strong interconnection between the life of the school and the real life outside of school, they are not separate spheres
∗ Although students construct their own knowledge, they need the expertise of teachers to facilitate and guide this process of construction
∗ Students have diverse strengths, weaknesses, interests and backgrounds
∗ It is a great advantage to capitalize on these differences to help children learn from one another
∗ Students learn best when they have a positive self esteem and a sense of purpose
∗ Children learn through a mixture of first-hand observation, hands-on experience, systematic instruction and time for personal reflection
∗ Social and emotional skills are equally as important as academic skills and knowledge for student success and classrooms need to be flexible learning spaces that support and adapt to student needs.

Complementing this, the schools in Reggio Emilia (which I have visited twice and where I will be returning to in October, 2012 with a group of literacy leaders such as Ellin Keene, Matt Glover, Kathy Collins and Katy Wood Ray) are founded on the following key features:
∗ The environment of the classroom is important enough to be considered a second teacher and must be organized with this thinking in mind
∗ Children have a multitude of symbolic languages (consistent with Howard Gardener’s writing on multiple intelligences); documentation in many forms helps to drive the curriculum; children can engage in long-term and short term in-depth investigations that incorporate responding, recording, playing, exploring, and hypothesis building and testing
∗ The teacher is a researcher who carefully listens, observes and documents children’s work and the growth of community in the classroom and who is expected to provoke and stimulate thinking
∗ There should be a strong home-school relationship where children, teachers, parents, caregivers and the community are interactive and work together.

In my work at P.S. 142, I have been encouraging the teachers to look and listen carefully to the children throughout the day. When we begin planning for our inquiry projects, the teachers and I first take a walk around the community, thinking carefully about what children see and experience in the world outside of school. We also discuss what inquiry project experiences children have had in the previous grades and how a new project will allow children to build on their new schema. Therefore, children who have had the experience of in depth investigations of the Williamsburg Bridge and then the subway system can logically move on to an inquiry project that focuses on cars and car travel.

Before beginning the project with the children, the teachers map out what we call an Anticipatory Web. This includes the possibilities for exploration on the topic, resources such as books, Internet sites, experts to be interviewed, and field trips to support the study. Possible activities across the curriculum are included. We look at the common core standards and discuss how they can be addressed through the project work.

We are often fixated on understanding and assessing our academic goals for instruction. However, as Lilian Katz has written “a curriculum or teaching method focused on academic goals emphasizes the acquisition of bits of knowledge and overlooks the centrality of understanding as an educational goal. After all, literacy and numeracy skills are not ends in themselves but basic tools that can and should be applied in the quest for understanding. In other words, children should be helped to acquire academic skills in the service of their intellectual dispositions, and not at their expense.”

When the kindergarten, first grade and second grade children at P.S. 142 begin work on an inquiry project, the teacher always begins by brainstorming for all that the children already know on a topic. Often young children, particularly children with special needs, have difficulty articulating verbally what they know and so children have many opportunities to express their prior knowledge in many ways. They can draw a picture, create a model, act out or tell their story. We have found that if children can create an image of their ideas, then this acts as a support for them when the class meets to discuss and record information.

After recording their information on post its, the teacher will usually meet with a small group of children to begin organizing these notes into categories. A few of the post-its are read through together and discussed. Children think about which statements belong together. For example, in the Car Project, children might have said, “Cars have engines” “You can take a car to ride to the country” “Car drivers have to follow traffic rules” “There are seatbelts in cars” “Cars can go fast “I went to Coney Island in a car”. The small group might then organize these statements into these categories. ” HOW CARS CAN GO, WHERE CARS CAN GO, PARTS OF A CAR, RULES FOR CARS. This chart is then shared at meeting time and the entire class then completes this. Using a small group to begin makes the process more manageable for children who would lose focus when presented with too much information.

Referring to this newly formed web, the class then begins recording their questions in the form of “wonderings. These questions will drive the investigation. This year, in one of the kindergarten classes, the teacher was having a difficult time engaging children in formulating important questions for investigation. Because this is the fourth year that she has been doing inquiry projects, she realized how important this step is in the process. Rather than come up with questions herself, she knew that the children’s involvement and curiosity were crucial to tap into. She came up with the idea of creating “research committees.” They had just started an inquiry project about firefighters. The teacher had already collected and shared the children’s drawings and stories about firefighters. She read a few books to them and had a toy firetruck in the classroom. She asked the children to help her list important things that they knew about firefighters and fire engines and listed this on a chart. Then children picked which one they wanted to research. Being on these ‘committees’ supported children in developing important questions!

Last year the first grade began the year with a study of bridges. This was a natural choice based on the location of the school right along the ramp of the Williamsburg Bridge. When winter arrived, they moved on to a subway study, since, on their walks across the bridge, they had noticed the train traveling alongside them. Also many children rode the subway to school. In spring, however, they circled back to the bridge study, this time focusing on moveable bridges. By now, all of the children brought with them much prior knowledge from the first two studies of the year. When the class made a trip to the bridges over the Gowanus Canal, they had the exciting opportunity to stand on the Carroll Street retractile (swing) bridge as it opened. The teacher pointed out the gears and the tracks, relating it to all that they had seen when observing subways. The next day, back in one classroom, a group of children were building a moveable bridge. Before beginning they each drew a plan for the bridge that would be built. When the teacher came over to see the bridge she asked whose plan they used. One child who particularly has a history of acting out behaviors explained how they used “a little of his, a little of his, and a little of mines,” Collaboration was a major challenge for this child but because of the excitement of the investigation and building activity, and his engagement with the topic, he more naturally was able to rise to the challenge of cooperative play.

Recently, one of the second grade classes, as part of their car inquiry project, went on a walking trip to visit the Municipal parking lot on Essex Street. Previously, they had walked through the neighborhood, carefully reading and interpreting the various street parking signs and the muni-meter. The teacher put money in the muni-meter and showed the children what the ticket that came out looked like. At the parking garage the children again observed and interpreted the various signs and symbols letting drivers know where to park, when, where and how much to pay, and when to stop and go. Each child had a personal “trip recording book” that included photographs of different parts of the parking garage. Before the trip they wrote predictions and questions that they would like answered. They took notes at the garage and had time to write reflections when they returned to the classroom.

Back in the classroom, the children broke off into groups. One group went to the block area and began work on building a parking garage, putting up signs and symbols and adding toy cars so that they could role-play “parking garage”. Another child chose to work in the math center, using the pattern blocks to design cars. She recorded how she created her cars, using the symbols for the various shapes. A group of children went to the art center where they used recycled materials to construct cars – some realistic and some imaginary, such as the flying car made from an empty water bottle. After the completed their constructions, they wrote descriptions of the cars. Four children worked with the student teacher on researching some of the questions on the class “Wonderings” chart. They wrote their answers on post-its that they put over the questions to show that they have already been answered. Another group that consisted of a group of children who had more advanced mathematics and reading skills played “What’s The Rule” using a new game that included a set of “Cool Cars” cards. In observing the group, I was impressed with the way that each small group was working with a high level of focus, independence and engagement. I also noted that the teacher was able to maintain an atmosphere of play and also engage children in reading, writing and mathematics.

That afternoon, in the same classroom, the teacher used the muni-meter experience to generate a mathematics problem that the class solved together. She then asked the children to create their own muni-meter problem, write it up, solve it, show on paper how they solved the problem and illustrate their story. As I walked around the room with the teacher, I saw how she was able to use this one recent experience and allow all children to work at their own level of knowledge. Each child’s problem was validated and supported by the classroom teacher. Children were eagerly sharing their math stories with each other at their tables.

 

 

The teachers have been using a template for observing children during centers and inquiry work time that I was introduced to by a Swedish teacher who was visiting Reggio Emilia when I was last there. This is a form that is divided into three sections. Blank forms are kept on clipboards in each center so that the teacher, student teacher, teaching assistant or parent helper can easily access them. The first section is labeled “What do I see?” This is where the observing adult records interesting and worthwhile observations. That is the only section that is recorded at this time, so it doesn’t take a lot of time away from the teacher’s interactions with children during Choice Time. Later in the day, when there is time for reflection, the teacher returns to the observation sheet and completes the next two columns, “What does this mean?” (Interpreting the observations) and “My next steps” (based on what I have seen, what instructional, organization, or social changes should be implemented?)

At the very end of an inquiry project, I spend time with teachers on some self-evaluation. We use an adaptation of an inquiry evaluation form that is in the book Young Investigators by Judy Harris Helms and Lilian Katz. Some of the questions that we discuss (we do this totally through discussion and not by filling in a form) are:
∗ Did the children take responsibility for their own work or activity?
∗ Were children absorbed and engrossed in their work?
∗ Were children strategic learners?
∗ Were the children becoming increasingly collaborative?
∗ Were tasks in the projects challenging and integrative?
∗ How do you use children’s work from the project to assess learning?
∗ How did you facilitate and guide the children’s work?

Based on our assessment discussion last June, this year we decided that a major focus of my consulting work with them would be on documentation. We will consider how to use the documentation of project work to help t plan for whole class and differentiated instruction. We also want to use this documentation to help, strengthen the home/school connections and to provide opportunities for children to become more involved in self-assessment and setting personal goals.

A Wonderful Hum of Activity: Choice Time!

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Since I last wrote about Bill’s kindergarten class, I’ve had the opportunity to visit two of his Choice Time periods.

Oh, what fun I had! Let me share some of the centers that I observed.

The Science Center –The children pretty much set up the center themselves. They took a big plastic bin filled with sand, pebbles, rock and shells off a nearby shelf and placed it on the table. They had all different types of sieves, cups and magnifying glasses. But one thing that’s REALLY special is the microscope that’s hooked up to a computer screen! I was so fascinated by the enlargement of materials and the children had some wonderful conversations. One of the girls at the center was practically jumping with excitement.” I never ever went to this center! Look how many pebbles I got (in the sieve). I never knew science was so much fun!” Bill put out paper, pencils and crayons for the children to record their observations. The paper had a drawing of a microscope as part of the border and I noticed that, after a while, the girls became involved with coloring in the picture, taking some of the focus away from their detailed drawings done from observation and I wondered if this would happen if there were colored pencils available but not crayons. It’s just a thought that I had. I’ll see what Bill thinks about this when we have time to talk.

The Block Center: This year, when Bill set up his room he devoted much more space to the block center and this has had a noticeable impact on the quality of building being done and on the collaborative work that the children engage in. They spend more days working on structures and each day revise and add to the work done by the previous builders. It will be interested to see how the building work starts to reflect the playground trips that they will take as part of their playground study. I think that it might be a good idea for Bill to set up a display of playground books in the center as “inspiration”.

Dramatic Play: Rather than have a traditional “kitchen” set up, Bill stacked hollow blocks against the wall by his meeting area. There’s also a small bookcase that has bins with various ‘props’. The day that I was there, the children first seemed to be building a house. Then one of the boys discovered a sailor hat in the bin and before you could say “presto”  the house turned into a boat, a sort-of houseboat! This changeable environment allows the children free reign in setting up scenarios. Having this center located on the rug also frees up more space in the room for other activities and it gives the children a large area for their dramatic play.

Star Name – Bill has been doing a name study based on the work of Patricia Cunningham. The Star Name Study Center gives children the opportunity to play around with names and letters. They have class lists with photos of each child, blank books, letters, pencils, marker, and paste. I remember observing this center in Bill’s class some years ago and he added alphabet grids for the children to use along with clipboards. I saw the children using these grids to ‘survey’ the class…How many names from our class go in the ‘A’ box?, etc. The children were not told what to do with the grids. They came up with this survey idea on their own. I wonder if he will add something like this to the center this year? When I was teaching kindergarten, I had mystery name puzzles in little clear plastic zip-up bags at the center. I’ll ask Bill if he thinks his children might find the puzzle idea interesting. Perhaps they could make up their own name puzzles on thin cardboard!

Duplos– I was particularly interested to observe this center. It’s an area where I often experienced difficulties. I found that children used the materials to make weapons and that they had a tendency get out of control. Many of the teachers who I work with face the same problem with Duplos and Legos.

On the day of my visit, it was all boys at this center (3). They seemed to be totally engrossed in their constructions. It was parallel play but they were conversing with each other. After a few minutes, one child realized that he wanted a ‘door’ that was part of the other’s construction and it looked like there might be an explosion! However, he stopped arguing and came up with the idea of building a door. This was so interesting to see. I think that as teachers, we sometimes tend to jump in to mediate before giving children time to work things out on their own.

I asked the boys if they would like some sticky notes to write signs for their building and this idea took off for a few minutes.

About midway through the center time, the boys lost interest in their constructions and began throwing the Duplos at each other and around the carpet. Bill had to stop in to calm down the situation. I don’t think it was unusual for this to happen with these particular materials at this time in the school year. I’ve found that if this construction is done on a table, rather than on the floor, the children stay more focused for longer periods of time.

Also, it’s helpful to give them a large cardboard to work on and encourage them to come up with an idea for working together. (i.e. a space station; a playground; a city, etc.) They can have other materials to supplement their construction such a sticky notes, crayons or markets for writing on the cardboard, little figurines and even some books as ‘reference’. Doing this will often encourage more collaborative and inventive play. If it’s on a cardboard, it can be brought to the share meeting after Choice Time, a sort-of mini- celebration.

 

Easel: When I was there last week, there were two children working at the easel. Only black and white paint were out. I wondered about limiting the colors at first, but it actually was quite fascinating to see what the children did with only these two colors. There was a lot of mixing, forming all different grades of grays. Bill had a sponge available at the easel for cleaning the brushes, but Sophie chose to use it for creating all kinds of textures on the paper! The limitation of having only the black and white seemed to open up more experimentation. I can’t wait to speak with Bill to find out if that was his purpose or if the experimentation was a surprise.

Art Center: This was quite interesting because I noticed a different quality of work each week. I’m not sure if it reflected the children who were there or the choice of materials. Let me explain a bit.

During my first Choice Time visit, one boy was intensely working on a “Pirate Map.” He told me that he always plays pirate games and he loves pirates. As he was drawing, he talked his way through the process (“Here’s where he starts. Then he has to go around the island. This is the first treasure. Let me get a yellow crayon for the treasure. Okay. Here’s the second treasure. That’s the big treasure.” He literally spent the entire period working on his map.

At the same table a girl was twisting and gluing paper to make an intricate pop-up picture. She proudly brought it over for me to see. I wondered if she could make a pop-up playground. She wasn’t sure if that would be possible but she thought that she could try it next time. I’m not sure if she followed up on that. I think it could be a brought up at meeting time as a challenging activity that children might want to try. Perhaps she could give a demonstration on how to make a pop-up picture and help out at the center if children seemed interested.

When I returned to obseve this center on my second class visit,  the children were tracing, using cardboard shapes and cutouts. The work at the table seemed, to me,  significantly less personal and creative. Children were limiting themselves to tracing the shapes and coloring them in. The creative and individual use of materials that I saw on my previous visit was not in evidence on this day.

 

Cooking: Bill, like many teachers today, is alone in the room with 24 children. This makes doing activities like cooking or woodworking a real challenge. On this particular day, a mother came in to make gingerbread cookies with the children. She made the dough ahead of time and brought it to school with flour, rollers, and cookie cutters and with all sorts of goodies for decorating the cookies. The children were quite excited and involved with this activity. They were making enough cookies to share with the class.

 

I spoke with Bill about how I believe that the process is even more important than the final product. I suggested that if he could get one parent a day to help out (he thought that he could do that), then he could make something that is worked on all week. For example, I remember making a carrot cake with my class. On the first day the children washed and scraped the carrots. On the second day the children at the center grated the carrots. On the third day the next group began making the dough. The dough was completed on the fourth day and baked. On Friday, children cut and served the cake during Choice Time, made individual booklets about carrot cake, washed all of the utensils, took a survey of who did and did not like carrot cake. It was a class effort. There are many different recipes that can be broken up this way.

When I shared my thoughts about the cooking center with Bill, he excitedly came up with the idea of spending a week making an apple pie. Bill took my suggestion and ran with it! It’s so wonderful that, even though he’s been in the classroom for quite a few years, he’s still open to suggestions and to growing professionally.

We haven’t spoken yet, so I don’t know if the apple pie  happened yet. I’ll update you on this after Bill and I meet.

The Light Box Center: This is an area where Bill and I have different opinions. In his class, the light box is used for tracing pictures, the kind of dinosaur or animal pictures that come from commercial coloring books. The child picks a picture, tapes it to the surface of the box, puts tracing paper over the image and traces along the lines. Then afterwards, many of the children color their traced picture just as they would color in a picutre in a coloring book.

I see the box as an opportunity for children to experiment with color, design, shadow, and translucency. When I visited a school in Reggio Emilia, I saw children using natural materials that seemed to come from the park near the school, moving them into designs on the box and watching how the designs changed as they leaves and pine cones were reconfigured. At a kindergarten class in a school in Brooklyn, I observed children cutting out shapes from different colored tissue paper, layering the paper on the light box and getting excited as they manipulated the papers to change the colors.

The two children at this center most definitely were very involved and focused on their tracing. I asked one of the children what she liked about this choice center. She said that she liked it because she didn’t have to think about anything. She just did it. When she said this, Max, who was working with her, shook his head in agreement.

I shared this child’s comment with Bill later on. I found the lack of thinking disturbing. Bill, however, had a very different take on this. He suggested to me that I consider how the mind is resting while the body is learning a new skill.

I’m curious to hear what other educators think of this. This could prove to be an interesting discussion.

What I totally love about working with Bill is that, even if we disagree on something, I know that everything he does in his class is well thought out and purposeful. He is always considering what is best for the children. Bill understands that children are making important scientific and mathematical connections as they pour, separate and observe the sand and pebbles in the science center. They’re learning about balance, shapes, and measurement as they construct with unit blocks. The children who are making Star Name books are working with letters and sounds. At all of these activities, they are practicing collaboration and sharing.

Bill has also created a marvelous feeling of harmony and community in the room. Clean up time, so often a teacher’s nightmare, was so interesting to observe because, without being told, children offered to help each other get their centers put away – no fuss, no tantrums, no mess!

As I stood to the side, watching the children at their centers, I pulled Bill aside and asked him to enjoy with me the wonderful hum of activity in this room!

DIVING INTO AN INVESTIGATION

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I would love to learn how to swim. I know a little bit about swimming. I’ve seen people swim at the pool and on television when I’ve watched the Olympics. I’ve paddled about in the water and so I know what it feels like to try to swim. I just don’t yet know the technicalities of swimming and I don’t have the confidence to try it on my own. But, if I decide to take lessons, I would hope that the teacher would first assess what I already know before ‘diving’ into the instruction.

In our classrooms, when we want to explore a topic with a group of children, we also want to start with what they know – with their prior knowledge. Of course, we want to be sure that everyone in the group already has some experience with the topic. If we are going to embark on a project exploring bridges, we might want to first give the children some experience looking at a bridge, either on a field trip or at least in reproductions. We might want children to first draw a bridge after visiting or seeing one. Then we want to start asking them what they know about bridges.

(Kindergarten/first grade student in a 12:1:1 Special Education class after the first visit to see a bridge)

When I work with teachers on developing classroom inquiry projects, I encourage them to use post-its (some times referred to as ‘stickies’) when they begin collecting bits of children’s prior knowledge. This often takes place after the first field trip. With young children, teachers might consider doing a sketch along with the words so that the children can ‘read’ the chart too.

By using post-its for recording children’s ideas, rather than writing directly on to chart paper, students can then take an active role in organizing the post its into categories. This is certainly not an easy activity. There’s often disagreement about which ‘facts’ belong together, but this type of discussion really gets children thinking about their ideas and the ideas of their classmates. After observing teachers doing this activity (categorizing the post its) as a whole class lesson and also with a small group, I’m leaning towards working with a small group to get the chart ‘going’ and then sharing the results with the class. Then it can be completed with the entire group participating. Teachers agree that this approach seems to be working best.

After the categories are formed, children can then think of labels for each different grouping. A more sophisticated approach, but possibly too abstract for many young children, could be to think of a question that all of the information in one category answers. For example, “Who uses bridges?” or “what are bridges made of?”

As you can see from the chart “Bridge Ideas”, not all of the children have a true understanding of how bridges are constructed. (“Bridges have strings”). However, it’s important to include this in the initial chart because that gives the teacher an understanding of what needs to be explored to clarify this concept. It seems that this child doesn’t know about cables and the materials that are used to construct bridges and this is something to be explored on field trips and in readings.

This chart will become a living document throughout the study. New understandings will be added, misunderstandings crossed out. It’s ‘messy’ like the study is messy, turning and twisting along the exploration road. It’s not a document to be laminated because that would say, “we are finished with our investigation.’

Because of the ongoing changes that are made to this document, I shy away from the more traditional KWL chart which puts all information into a neatly tied up package. Basically, using a separate chart follows the same idea of gathering prior knowledge and using what children know as a foundation for an investigation. However it sends a stronger message that this is an exploration, which is forever growing.

SING OUT!

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Well if you want to sing out, sing out
And if you want to be free, be free
‘Cause there’s a million things to be
You know that there are
Cat Stevens

“Look Renée, it stopped raining!” Akhira pointed to the window and 24 pairs of eyes followed her finger. Sure enough, the incessant rain had stopped. That meant that we could have outdoor play at last. But for my class, it also meant that at meeting time that morning we would all happily sing “Blue Skies”.

Singing infused my classroom with good feelings. When Vicky had a hard time separating from her dad one morning, we all solemnly sang The Comfort Song – “what should I do if my best friend is crying? What should I do? I don’t know what to say. I take my friend in my arms and I hold her.” Of course we then had to go on and sing verses for our daddy, our sister, our puppy.

Singing has always been a strong tool for building community. During the civil rights movement, in the 50’s and ‘60’s, group singing helped freedom fighters hold onto their courage in the most difficult circumstances. ‘‘The freedom songs are playing a strong and vital role in our struggle,’’ said Martin Luther King, Jr ‘‘they give the people new courage and a sense of unity. I think they keep alive a faith, a radiant hope, in the future, particularly in our most trying hours”.

Community building in the classroom is our first goal as teachers. When we have a cohesive, caring community, class rules seem to easily fall into place. Children help and support each other, bullying becomes practically a non-issue and maintaining discipline is not the teacher’s priority.

Now before I continue, I want to address the issue of voice. Many teachers have told me that they really can’t sing in class because they don’t have good singing voices. Well, my voice is somewhat flat and I have difficulty carrying a tune. That fact never, however, seemed to bother the children in any of my classes. We sang every day and for many different purposes. When we were doing a bridge study we sang, “Love Can Build a Bridge.” During our waterways study we sang “Sailing Down My Golden River.” During the years that Connie Norgren and I had our quasi-team teaching experience (her first grade and my kindergarten shared a double room, did studies together and always met to sing on her rug….but that is another story) Connie taught me many ecology songs (“Think About the Earth”; “The Garden Song”), freedom songs (“Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around”; “Rosa Parks”; “This Little Light”) and songs from many different cultures (“De Colores”, “Que Bonita Bandera”; “Santa Lucia”).

Many literacy skills are well supported when children are engaged in singing on a regular basis. Let’s check out some of them.

Phonemic Awareness: When children sing and clap out songs, they play around with the sounds, segmenting and putting them together, tapping and clapping out rhythms. (Ba-by Be-lu-ga in the deep blue sea; Miss Mar-ry Mack, Mack, Mack…)

Rhyme: There are so many rhyming songs; it’s difficult to know which to list. For starters there’s Down By the Bay, Jenny Jenkins, This Old Man (also a counting song) Singing songs that mix up initial consonants, like Willoughby, Wallaby, bring out lots of giggles but also have children thinking about the sounds of the letters along with the rhymes.

Alphabetic Awareness: Besides the old standby of the ABC song, don’t forget about A You’re Adorable. My class sat in a circle and ‘wrote’ the letters on each other’s backs as they sang. Then we ‘erased’ the letters, turned around and re-sang the song in upper case!

Phonetic Awareness and Spelling Patterns: “I Can’t Spell Hippopotamus” is a song that I have used and it is one of the most engaging activities for practicing spelling patterns. I’ve had children work in partnerships to come up with spelling patterns (pot, hot, not; can, man, fan; play, tray, stay, etc.) that we then incorporate into the song. It’s a game, it’s a song, it’s a spelling lesson, and it’s fun!

One to one word recognition: After children know a song really well (‘by heart’), I put it on a chart and the children can start making connections between the words that they are singing and the words on the paper. Children take turns ‘being the teacher’ and, with a wooden stick, point to the words as the class reads and sings along.
In June, I often celebrated our year of singing by taping the children singing together, making copies of the tape (today it would be a CD!) for each child and adding a sing-along songbook. I recently met a former student, now a college graduate, who told me that for years after kindergarten she listened to the tape and that the family played it and all sang along when they went on long car trips!

So, remember the words from the African spiritual and don’t forget to ‘’sing when the spirit says sing” to bring lots of spirit and joy into the school day!

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