The debate over the roles of play and academics in kindergarten is not new. While my first response to this tired argument is always that it is a false dichotomy, a more specific challenge has recently entered the arena and therefore deserves a more specific response.
The Serve and Return of Responsive Interactions
I loved playing volleyball in high school. I took pride in being a scrappy player. “Ball first, body second” was the motto that led me to be colorfully adorned with bruises all over my elbows and hips during each season. It’s also the reason I wound up in the ER (twice) for stitches in my chin. In my view, the ball wasn’t unplayable until the second it hit the ground. Up until that point, I did everything I physically could to get my body to the ball.
Maybe We Should Teach the Way They Learn
In America, we currently have this idea that our children are struggling academically so the answer lies in pushing them more and more, at earlier and earlier ages… If our children are struggling academically, it does not make sense to make them do more of the same things that are failing them and from a younger age.”
What I’m NOT Saying When I Speak About Developmentally Appropriate Practice
When I get the chance to speak to groups about DAP I cover a lot of ground.
I talk about things like: [Read more…]
Teaching Children the Way They’re Meant to Learn: Read Along Section One –What if Everybody Understood Child Development?
A Tale of Two Studies: What We Know About Children and What We Do
In 2005, Dr. Walter Gilliam, a researcher from Yale University, released a study examining the expulsion rates of preschoolers. That’s right — expulsion. As in kicked out. Dr. Gilliam found that in his large, nationally representative sample of prekindergarten programs, preschoolers were being expelled at THREE TIMES the rate of students in grades K-12.
Are preschoolers really three times as difficult as their older counterparts?
I don’t think so.
There are many factors that contribute to this elevated rate of expulsions. Gilliam outlined several in a presentation he made at an NAEYC conference in 2009. (*Slide presentation now located here.) All deserve our consideration as we create quality early childhood programs, but two in particular catch my attention. [Read more…]
First Friday Q&A: How Do You Help Teachers Understand DAP?
I received a fantastic question for First Friday Q&A:
I was reading your article on DAP and was impressed. I am running a preschool in Mumbai, India and would like to conduct a workshop for my teachers on DAP . I would like to understand how I can help teachers understand what is DAP and what that means in their classrooms.
I love speaking on this topic — but that’s part of the problem. I talk about this for an hour and just cover some of the basics. So what I do I say with just a few minutes? Here’s where I’d start: