Teaching toddlers early
The West Linn Tidings Jan 24, 2007Gone are the days when kids are not allowed to attend school (kindergarten) until they are either 5 or 6 years old, depending on their age as of Sept. 1.
Enter the era of early childhood education.
For the past three years, the West Linn-Wilsonville School District has conducted a program that is exemplary across the nation.
A number of the district’s programs have been initiated based on the latest research in education, but none more important than early childhood education (ECE), according to Margaret Allen, principal at Bolton Primary School.
Among the more than 8,200 district students are 30 whose ages are between 12 and 36 months. Those students attend school once a week with a parent, while another group of 105 students, who are either 3 or 4 years old, often find their parent as a volunteer in their classroom.
“The district’s pre-school program has been recognized as unique in the state of Oregon and state-of-the-art nationally,” said Assistant Superintendent Thayne Balzer. “Our program is becoming a national exemplar for quality in early childhood programs.”
The district’s ECE program is unique because it is a part of a public school district; it is based on acquiring language skills; it is taught by certified teachers who have specialized in language and early development; it provides support and learning for parents; and it is funded with tuition rather than tax dollars.
Currently, the district offers kindergarten at every one of its primary schools, but the younger students may only attend at Bolton, Cedaroak Park and Boeckman Creek primary schools.
The key to the success of these ECE programs, Allen said, is two-fold: They are literacy/language based and there is maximum family involvement.
“All learning, from this age on, is based on kids’ ability to use language,” Allen said. “It’s all about bringing the kids real-world things and adding to their vocabulary. And the second component that is absolutely critical is family involvement.”
One of the ways families are drawn into the education of their children at Bolton, for example, is what Allen calls “Family Day.”
On those days, everyone available from each pre-school student’s family comes to school for the duration of that day’s classes. Those days include time with the teacher, time with the kids and time for parents to talk among themselves. The adults also are given printed material to help them through the challenges of being a parent-teacher.
Parenting is one of the most difficult jobs anyone can have, Allen said, and the district’s early childhood education program is designed to help parents with that responsibility.
At each activity area, Allen said, there is printed material describing how to work with young children in that activity as well as a list of words to use that will help build their vocabularies.
The ECE program’s root benefit, Allen said, is training parents to be better teachers at home.
“Parents are the foundation,” Allen said. “They are the first and primary teachers for their children. So, if we can help them do that job, they not only help the one that is in pre-school but also their whole family, including brothers and sisters.”
Some statistics help draw a picture of the importance and impact of early childhood education. Of the students who have entered local kindergartens in the past three years who have not attended the district’s ECE program, only about 70 percent met the state’s benchmark standards. But of those who went through local ECE classes, 98 percent met state standards and have not required special education services.
Those parents apparently understand the impact, Allen said, because 87 percent of ECE families attend Family Day.
It was the First Teacher program, where parent and toddler come to school together, that convinced Allen that Family Day would be a good idea.
This alliance between the school and each family has future benefits that Allen has seen in the three years that the district has offered the First Teacher program (12-36-months of age) and the 12 and a half years it has had pre-school classes.
“This gives you a strong partner with your school from the very beginning,” she said. “What you have then is parents coming to your parent organization who already are sold on your school. They want to volunteer and help the school.”
And having kids of all ages at one school, Allen said, helps the school feel more like home to the youngest children.
The foremost method young children use to express themselves, explore their world and learn how to relate to others is play, and ECE teachers use play to help kids learn.
Play at Bolton, for example, is similar to what might happen in anyone’s backyard, Allen said.
“During that play, what’s happening is problem-solving and learning to cooperate and negotiate,” Allen said. “There also are leadership and language skills that are learned through social interaction.”
Research that supports ECE started in the 1960s, but at that time researchers weren’t sure why some kids were early readers. They thought the kids were just smarter.
“But 24 years later, they did the study over,” Allen said, “and this time they looked at the early readers and found out that their moms had large vocabularies and read lots of books to their kids.”
The ECE curriculum is similar at Bolton, Cedaroak Park and Boeckman Creek primary schools, and a professional study group meets each month to keep it that way. The group includes teachers and assistants from each school.
“Our long-term goal,” Allen said, “is to make (ECE) available at every school in the district.”
Comment: This is spectacular. Love to have parents come and play. Miss Amy came and played with Alex the other day and it was pure fun.
1 comment:
Spending time at school with Alex is always fun. However it also lets him know that I am keeping an eye on him, participating with him , and there if he needs or wants me. You'd be amazed at what an adult can learn in a child's school. I recommend that all parents try to spend some volunteer time at school. I even went in my PJs!
Post a Comment