What are Teachers Talking About?



Teachers "speed date", sharing reflections
on play and teaching practices.

During a school year there are many opportunities for teachers to meet - but just because people meet doesn't mean they are talking about something that has the potential to impact teaching. In Somerville, the Early Learning Challenge Grant provides opportunities for teachers to share expertise and get feedback on teaching using critical friendship routines to guide conversations.

Talking about the connections
between literacy and play.

What is unique in Somerville is that these groups are made up of teachers from a variety of early childhood classrooms:  Head Start, Somerville Public Schools, and local center-based childcare programs.

Teachers reflect on video and
talk about new practices.

Teachers in teams such as the Literacy Coaching Group and the Kindergarten Readiness Group are looking at examples of children's learning and this takes many forms - video and photos from classrooms, children's writing and drawing, and anecdotes related to play, behavior, and academic content. These kinds of in-depth conversations about teaching and learning remind us of what children need to be successful in school and how teachers can support children in these areas of development.



After the meetings teachers are not expected to go it alone.  The Literacy Group is supported by the early childhood coach who visits classrooms weekly to support literacy practices. The Kindergarten Readiness Group stays in touch via email.  Teachers want to talk about their work in meaningful ways - having time to meet in collaborative groups with a focus on how to be proactive in classrooms can inspire teachers to innovate. A local group, the Early Childhood Consortium provides opportunities for early childhood educators from the greater Boston area to convene monthly around issues of practice in classrooms and provides support to those who need it.

The meeting of teachers from diverse sites - public, center-based child care, & Head Start creates curriculum and visionary alignment across Somerville. As teachers experience new ways of meeting and talking together about their work, it can become infectious - there is much expertise to share and we look forward to more professional learning communities for early childhood educators.

Mindfulness and Social Emotional Learning - Teachers, Parents, Children

Drifts at East Somerville Community School

As many of us return to school this week we have much to keep in mind.  From watching our steps as we traverse the icy sidewalks, to preparing our classrooms for children who have been out of school for weeks, to helping our own children get back into routines at home. 

This means slowing down, regaining that "first day of school" mindset, and approaching things anew. Some might call this "mindfulness" - a way to regroup and prepare for what lies ahead, both the expected and the unexpected. 

Early childhood educators in Somerville have been practicing Mindfulness in seminars sponsored by the Evelyn G. Pitcher Curriculum Resource Lab at Tufts University. The group met at the Capuano Early Childhood Center once a week this fall to explore ways reduce the range of stresses, deepen resilience, and refine relationships with others and themselves. The seminar continues at the Capuano this winter with Tools for Recapturing the Joy: Resilience Training for Early Childhood Educators. 

Tufts alum Jeff Goding leads the group. An executive educator and researcher with years of experience teaching secular mindfulness meditation techniques, Jeff has recently begun working with Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development to bring the benefits of mindfulness to early childhood educators. 

Through a combination of meditation, yoga, breath work, self awareness techniques, participants are learning ways to strengthen their inner capacities for self-awareness, self-care, and improving the ability to bring their best selves to all that they do, both inside and outside of the classroom.  

Fall participants had powerful experiences:

• "I learned how to be more present in my daily life. How to be more we are and how things impact and affect my time."

• "This course taught me how to handle situations or events to help myself approach the event in a calm her more mindful way. I am hoping to be a better listener."

• "I learned just how negative my daily thoughts really were. Now I notice that I am having many more positive thoughts and I'm aware of my negative thoughts it feels different now."

• "This class gave me useful tips to mentally prepare myself for my classroom, be mindful, aware, be the listener I want to be." 

• "I would love to see this workshop continue...when teachers are mindful and able to work through stressful situations in the classroom they can help children use these techniques."  

Some schools are building mindfulness into daily practices with children (How Mindfulness Could Benefit Your Teaching Practice) and using literature is one way to introduce children to this work (Children's Books on Kindness and Compassion).

Mindfulness work has a strong social emotional component.  Schools in Somerville utilize a variety of social emotional curricula such as Al's Pals and Second Step which focus on recognizing and understanding emotions, developing self-regulation, and developing empathy. Responsive Classroom is also used in many schools as a way to build community, also with a focus on self-awareness and acceptance of others. 

So take a breath - spring is right around the corner.

 

More Snow! Executive Function Part 3 - Transferring Responsibility to Children

Here we are again. Deciding if the timing is right to shovel the car out yet again. So here are More Snow Day Ideas. Also tune into our own Mayor Joe Curtatone's message about shoveling and community spirit. Snowfall is a good time to teach our children lessons about helping others and keeping our community safe. A good time to practice caring. Give young children small scoops or shovels from your beach stuff, bundle them up, and let them try it out.  

Don't forget to enter  your email in the box on the right to subscribe.

And if you do get a moment, here is bit more thinking about executive function and helping children internalize good work habits.

I once was fortunate to hear Elena Bedrova and Deborah Leong speak about their work when they were developing their Tools of the Mind curriculum. Their work is based on the theories of Lev Vygostky, a Russian scholar who lived in the early 20th century.  His theories are largely based on the idea that learning occurs through our relationships with others, and that socialization and play are key areas for young children's learning and the development of self-regulation (See Boss of the Paints, Executive Function Part 1, and Executive Function Part 2). Bedrova and Leong pointed out that often we mistake compliance for self-regulation.  We all want good behavior from children, but sometimes what we see is really teacher or parental regulation, not self-regulation.

Cover of necklace workplan, decorated by child. See centers in
background with materials ready to go.

I  worked with a student teacher last year who wanted to avoid children waiting for adult signals to move from one math center to the next. Some children finished sooner than others leading to behavior issues for those who waited with nothing to do. Some children needed more time to complete work, leading to frustration.  She developed a math menu where children wore necklaces with the activities on them and checked off what they had done as they moved.  There were also always activities that children could go to if they had finished everything and these activities reinforced concepts teachers wanted to solidify. 

      All children have the same list but complete at own pace. Teachers

      can add activities to individualize. Children color in shape when an 

      activity is complete.  Teachers check daily to see how children are 

      progressing. 

"Workjobs or Workplans" is not a new concept as this 1972 publication Workjobs illustrates.  Check out the photos in this classroom.  Looks fun! Such approaches individualize & differentiate instruction and allow children freedom of movement and self-pacing. Small notebooks, clipboards with checklists, etc. help children keep track. Everyone is working at their own pace, on content that is right for them, and teachers are freed up to move in and out of groups to help where needed.  

• Activities need to be well demonstrated at meeting time to ensure children know what to do.
• Repeating activities over a few weeks builds expertise. 
• Having activities that need no demonstration give children something engaging to do without adult direction. 

This is what self-regulation looks like and this is different from the compliance behaviors we see when all children are working in a workbook at the same time for the same amount of time.  This strategy is also good for chores and homework in your home.  Think about where and how you do your best learning.  Your children need the same thing.

Building and Supporting Resilience in Our Community

Enter your email in the space on the right to automatically receive the blog each week. While this blog often goes out to various listservs, entering your email ensures that you will get it and can pass it on. In addition, today is another snow day so check out last week's blog for things you can do at home with children.

As we gear up for another round of shoveling and dealing with the headaches of the increasing snowfall this seems like a good time to talk about resilience.  

The Early Childhood Advisory Council (ECAC) is a group of stakeholders who meet monthly to discuss how best to support children and families in Somerville.  They spent September-January closely examining key issues and reporting on what is going on in their agencies.  Amid discussions about transportation, food insecurity, housing, sleep, play, mental health and physical well-being, quality early education, immigration, and out of school opportunities, a topic rose to the surface - building resilience and supporting families dealing with stress.

The ECAC will spend the rest of this year engaged in advocacy and action related to resilience. This is an opportunity to re-visit the “The Campaign to Nurture Resilience in Somerville: Helping Kids Thrive” - an effort by Somerville Family Learning Collaborative (SFLC) ten years ago.  The concept of resilience has always been key to supporting Somerville families in raising their children to be successful in school and life. Now we want to extend the concept of resilience to the entire community - agencies, schools, and the city as a whole.

Amy Bamforth, Early Childhood Mental Health Specialist at SFLC, spoke to the group in early January and helped define and dispel some myths about resilience. We watched a short video called Supporting Resilience packed with information. Consider sharing it with your colleagues, friends, or local municipal representatives (city council, school committees) and talking about it with them. 

RESILIENCE IS - A universal capacity which allows a person, group or community to prevent, minimize or overcome the damaging effects of adversity. It includes:

• Our inborn capacity for self-righting and for transformation and change.
• A process of connectedness, of linking to people, to interests, and ultimately to life itself.
• The ability to defy negative predictions as a function of meaningful protective factors or interventions
• The capacity to bounce back overcome adversarial factors from challenges typically predictive of failure.
• An ecological phenomenon. It cannot be developed by sheer will power within the at-risk person; it is developed through interactions within the environment, families, school, neighborhoods and the larger community.

This last bullet is really important.  Resilience isn't all "nature".  Rather it is cultivated through the connections and relationships we build in our communities, in our work together.  And resilience can be "status quo" - sort of a stabilized state, out of crisis.  But there is also "transformational resilience" that involves bigger changes in people's lives. This means looking for and building on personal strengths in individuals, families, schools, and communities. 

Turns out there are some specific things we can do together.  The Center for the Study of Social Policy's Strengthening Families Initiative has a nice summary of Protective Factors we can foster and tap into to help children and families move towards resilience. They are:

• Parental Resilience
• Social Connections
• Knowledge of Parenting and Child Development
• Concrete Support in Times of Need
• Social Emotional Competence of Children.

Whether our work is in schools, social service agencies, municipal offices, health care, etc. we must ask ourselves:

How do I foster protective factors in my daily work with children, families, and citizens? 

What does building resilience look like in schools?  In government agencies?  In hospitals and doctor's offices? 

Finally, Amy Bamforth also shared a checklist from “A Guide to Promoting Resilience in Children: Strengthening the Human Spirit: by Edith Grotberg, 1995. Here are a few of the items that parents, teachers, and others who work with and serve families should think about.

The child has someone who loves him/her totally (unconditionally).
The child has someone outside the home she/he can tell about problems and feelings.
The child is praised for doing things on his/her own.
The child can count on her/his family being there when needed.
The child knows someone he/she wants to be like.
The child believes things will turn out all right.
The child is willing to try new things.
The child likes to achieve in what he/she does.
The child feels that what she/he does makes a difference in how things come out.
The child can focus on a task and stay with it.
The child has a sense of humor.
The child makes plans to do things.

The Early Childhood Advisory Council meets the first Tuesday of each month from 10:00-11:30 at the SFLC at the Cummings School at 42 Prescott Street in Somerville.  For more information email lkuh@k12.somerville.ma.us. Hope to see you there!

Snow Day! Snow Day?: Things To Do When We Can't Go Outside.

The possibility of a snow day can be exciting. People stay inside, spend time with family, and everything moves at a slower pace.  We get a reprieve from the rush of daily life.
However, this lovely image can be very different when there are young children to take care of - especially when weather (or even illness or school breaks) forces us inside for several days.  

A blanket on the floor creates a place for
art.Note the tiny amounts of fingerpaint
placed on small papers for each child.
Just the right amount for little hands and
less mess.

In-Home and Family Childcare Providers know first hand how to help children be engaged throughout the day and we can borrow ideas from them to get us through the days inside. Thanks to the Somerville Family Learning Collaborative, the Parent Home Visiting Program, and the Beautiful Stuff Project for the great ideas!

You don't need a lot of special equipment or furniture to make a space for children to play and do projects. A shower curtain, sheet, plastic table cloth, a blanket (see left), or a paper grocery bag cut open work fine. This turns any space into a play space that is contained and protects areas where you don't want an activity happening. 
Blankets and cushions are  perfect for making forts and hiding spaces. Places to Play at Home has great ideas.

Check the recycle bin.  Egg cartons, boxes,

and masking tape make great sculptures.

Drawing in coffee grounds.

Box tops (shoe box or other) and 

masa harina, cornmeal, salt.

Also think kitchen:  Fill the sink with water or better yet, bring in some snow from outside.  Tongs, basters, add cups, containers, toys and things that can float or be buried in snow.  Eye droppers with colored water for colorful water or snow.  Pull up a stool next to the sink and roll up their sleeves.

The links below contain ideas of things you can do, often with materials you already have, to keep little bodies and minds busy.  

No mess collage - contact paper and bits of

fabric, paper, etc. From SPS Smile Program.

Somerville Early Education Pinterest Site

Recipes to Make at Home

Things to Do on a Snow Day





December flashback: Here are the links from the December blog on non-toy gifts for the holidays and there are great ideas for things you can do at home:

Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children's Entertainment (TRUCE) has some great ideas for family fun at home or at school using easy to find materials.  Ideas for forts, cardboard boxes, socks, playdough, etc. with materials readily available at home.  

Martin's Big Words, Our Big Questions

A few years ago, when I was planning anti-bias curriculum for my preschool classroom and working at the Eliot-Pearson Children's School at Tufts University, I was introduced to the book, Martin's Big Words by Doreen Rappaport, illustrated by Bryan Collier.  Wonderful in its simplicity and complexity teachers and parents can read the full text or just the "big words" which stand alone as powerful reminders of what we must focus on to ensure equity and fairness for all. The Somerville Early Education Pinterest site now has some ideas related to this book and Anti-Bias Education.

Approaching topics related to injustice, prejudice, race, class, gender, and differences in ability is all part of Anti-Bias Education.  "Anti-bias work is essentially optimistic work about the future of our children" (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010). It involves helping children to learn about how they are different from and similar to others. While not easy topics, children are uniquely attuned to equity issues - they know what is fair and what is not.  When approached thoughtfully, Anti-Bias Education has many possible entry points.   Why focus on Anti-Bias Education?  Because: 

• Parents want their children to have every opportunity to succeed.  
• Teachers want to meet every child's needs.  
• People charged with stewardship of education initiatives want to support children and families. 

Towards these ends we have to ask ourselves some big questions.  And we have to come up with some big answers.  Here are some of the big questions Somerville will be grappling with this year and an introduction to some groups you may or may not be familiar with.  

In the coming months this blog will take some time to focus on anti-bias curriculum, culturally responsive teaching, and how various groups are working to create access, equity, and quality programming for families and children in our city. 

Some big questions:

The Kindergarten Readiness Group:  What do children need to know and be able to do to be ready for school and how can we promote play-based curriculum to support readiness in the face of academic pressures?
(This professional learning community is a group of teachers from Somerville Public Schools, Head Start, and community center-based early childhood programs.)

The Early Childhood Advisory Council:  How can we build resilience and support families dealing with stress? 
(This group of critical stakeholders in Somerville is hosted by the Somerville Family Learning Collaborative, SomerPromise, & Somerville Public Schools and meets monthly to talk about supporting children and families. It includes representation from organizations that provide services related to education, health, the arts, housing, early intervention, community-based early childhood programs, mental health, physical well-being, food security, out of school programming, home visiting, playgroups, homelessness, dual language learners, etc.)

The Early Education Steering Committee:  What does it mean to provide a universal kindergarten readiness system that prepares children and families for success in school and beyond?
(This steering committee oversees the Early Learning Challenge Grant and meets monthly to engage in critical long-term and short-term strategic planning with a focus on universal kindergarten readiness, quality programming, quality teaching, and family engagement. It includes representatives from Somerville Public Schools, the Somerville Family Learning Collaborative, Center-Based Programs, Head Start, Tufts University, and SomerPromise.)

Martin Luther King Day reminds us of some tremendous achievements and how much work we still have left to do. Take some time this day to think about what you stand for, how you might move forward, and who your partners will be in creating change.



Anti-Bias Resources:

Download of the first chapter of Anti-Bias Education for Young Children & Ourselves
http://www.naeyc.org/store/files/store/TOC/254.pdf

Teaching Tolerance
http://www.tolerance.org/critical-practices

Teaching for Change
http://www.teachingforchange.org/programs/anti-bias-education

Executive Function Part 2: Tools to Support Choice Making & Self-Regulation

In Part 1 of this series on executive function I wrote about how to organize shelving to help children make choices and how to demonstrate choice making.  In this post we will talk about tools that support choice making at school and at home.

When you work in schools, whether the children know you well or not, they will tell you things that are important to them.  As you kneel by a table to watch children playing with counting cubes it is not unusual to have someone turn to you and say something like "I have a dog." or "It is my brother's birthday." Recently I was walking with some children to the cafeteria and a boy whispered to me with a great sense of pride, "I am the table wiper. That is my job."

In my house we had a job chart on the refrigerator.  List of kids names down one side, jobs across the top.  The jobs changed each week.  Instilling personal responsibility through meaningful activity gives children the chance to internalize motor planning skills and experience confidence.  Sarah Ward notes that adding "er" to a verb can help children to visualize themselves doing that activity. Instead of "Wipe off the table." you could say, "You are the table wiper." or "We need a table wiper today."

An important aspect of executive function skills is the ability to make decisions and engage in purposeful, meaningful work. This helps children organize their thinking and develop self-control and confidence.

However, opportunities for children to engage in self-directed activity can be scarce. What opportunities do children have to make choices that involve decision making, accompanied by important motor planning experiences such as carrying materials, making choices from shelves  - and not simply have things put on tables for them? 

Think buffet, not full service restaurant.

But before we choose our entrees or get started on our jobs we have some things to do.

Asking children to choose and engage in activities without first demonstrating how to handle materials and clean up can result in a chaotic atmosphere at home and at school. Play the "Clean Up Game" to model.  Have the children watch you take out several materials. Put them on tables or on mats on the floor or the rug.  Ask children to watch carefully to see if they can remember where you got things. (At home, emptying the dish drainer or dish washer is a great activity.) Then ask for volunteers to put things back. Demonstrate how to carry trays, tubs, chairs, etc.  Show children how to handle materials carefully whether it is a small laundry basket at home or a tub of blocks at school. (Have small children put their thumbs on top of the edges of a tub or tray or plate when they carry things for stability).

Responsive Classroom techniques use Guided Discovery Elements to introduce everything from water color paints, to dictionaries, to crayons, to the scale in the video: 

• Introduction, Naming, & Care of Materials
• Generating and Modeling Ideas
• Exploration
• Sharing of Work

See You Tube for examples of this process - Guided Discovery of a Balance. Notice that the teacher is on the floor with the children.  I think this lesson is actually a little long and requires too much wait time for most children, but the elements are there.

Montessori teachers also do very thorough large and small group presentations of materials from dollhouses to specific didactic materials and You Tube has some examples as well.

To learn more about executive function see The Art of Control, a great resource for classroom and home ideas.

Now for the buffet - Choice Boards are one way to help children make choices once they have finished a center or required activity, or can be used for your free choice time to help children put closure on play and make decisions about what to do next.

There are lots of different versions of these.  Sometimes the "boards" are in the actual areas of the room where children "sign in and out" of a playspace by putting a card or tag with their name on it on the board near the area.  No more spaces on the board means that area is full. Here are some Choice Boards from a very quick Pinterest surf.



Healey Head Start

This choice board uses pictures of children and Velcro backing for photos and for the actual activity cards. Notice that there are a potential of 4 spaces at each center but some are covered with a black square indicating that fewer children can go to that activity.  Also note that there are really three types of choices here:

1. Static areas, such as "blocks" or "easel"
2. Discrete activity  at a table such as "magnets",
3. Dynamic area that has many choices within it such as "writing center" or "math shelf" or "art area".  These last type of choices give children practice making decisions about what they  might want to do within a particular content area.

The choice board below is painted homosote (really inexpensive from the hardware store), small cup hooks, and paper key tags for children's names. Each card represents an activity of one of the three types mentioned above.

Important is that when a child finishes one activity and cleans it up (or at least prepares the  materials for the next person in some way), they must return to the board before going to the next activity.  For many children this is an exercise in self-regulation.  It forces them to think:  "Am I finished?"  "What must I do to make this area ready for my friends?"  "What do I want to do next and how will I get there?" 



Small key tags with children's names on them

are moved from hook to hook by children as they

decide what to do next.

Child Study and Development Center, UNH

Like everything else, the choice boards also need a full introduction and modeling.  But the resulting self-regulation will be worth it.  I also advocate for having children approach the choice board by "child" not by "activity".  So I never say, "Who wants to go to blocks today?" That simply puts me in the position of choosing for children and creates overt competition.  Instead I ask, "Who thinks they know a few things they might want to choose today?  Remember if an area is full when I call you, make a different choice and you can change choices when there is space."  The children's pictures or key tags are on a small mat in front of the choice board and children are called to make their choice.

 

 

Think about how you  might want to start off the new year with a job chart or a choice board and help children become "builders", "sweepers", "dishwasher emptiers" "counters" and "readers".

 

Happy New Year and more posts in January!