Do Not Underestimate Our Youngest Students

I came across a post tonight by Angela Maiers titled: Basics Before Big Ideas? NOT! While I was reading her post I remembered two things. First, I began thinking about our observation of Susan Kempton when she told us about the research showing that kids as young as 2 years old can infer.

The other thing that I remembered, was this graph that I came across in a blog post (Sorry, I can't remember who's blog in order to give proper credit).

While kindergarteners may not be able to read or write at first, they are more than capable of thinking critically and divergently. In fact, they may be better at it than we are!

There has been a big push in early childhood for "developmentally appropriate practice (DAP)". That push has helped more than it has hurt. It has kept standardized testing out of kindergarten and helped to keep the balance from leaning too heavily toward academics. However, some people have taken its meaning too far and made broad position statements that children under the age of 6 should not blah, blah, blah. To me DAP simply means differentiation - every child progresses at their own pace and usually going through the same stages.

While some students (probably very few in actuality) may not be ready for big idea thinking, many are. It is a crime not to provide the opportunity for big idea thinking when many are developmentally ready. Some children (I was one) are whole to part learners. They need to see the big ideas and see how they fit, before they can begin to focus on the individual skills that go into it.

Please do not confuse the inability to read or write with the inability to think!

Another sick day....

With two weeks to go, no more sick days of course I had to get the flu! In return I have sat in bed for three days sipping on Pedialight and reading two extremely empowering books about kindergarten instruction.

Three fourths of the way through Susan's phenomenal book, and Pat Lusche's No More Letter of the Week arrives. Had to dig into it too! I hope that Zach ordered some more books for me to read or it's going to be a long summer ;) I ordered Pat's book after Kathy's visit to another kindergarten school in Denver, and also reading that it is listed under Susan's professional books and articles. It gave great ideas on introducing letters and sounds, incorporating parents, and a ton of ideas for writing and reading centers. I really hope that my fellow colleagues will get their hands on this book :)

Pat Lusche, much like Susan really emphasized leveled readers. From her references and suggestions I see that she uses a lot of Rigby material, maybe the entire series? I saw that Susan also suggested some leveled readers in her book to. Hopefully you are reading this Susan and you could give me a direction to head. We are looking into leveled readers and knowing that all 9-10 kindergarten classes have very, very limited leveled readers where should we start? I have looked into a few reading programs that you can get leveled readers from, but I would like to order non-fiction texts that my kids could get more meaning from. Any suggestions?

I thought that I would throw out one idea I looked into and would like to hear what others think, or what else they have found I could look into....Scholastic: You can get a variety non-fiction leveled readers to go along with our units of study, (insects, our earth, ocean, animals, ect....)