Standard 10 – Survey of Instructional Methods, Advanced Organizers and Early Childhood Education

While reading about advanced organizers one might think that this has no bearing on an ECE classroom, as we seldom lecture or utilize graphic organizers. This is not true, as there is a large quantity of teacher presented material in the ECE classroom. When learning about an animal the teacher may present information about the animal and then have extension activities designed to reinforce the material. Advanced organizers can be specifically used to create a flow of information for the children, and while the teachers might view this as a series of lesson plans, they are in fact using advanced organizers in an informal fashion. David Ausubel has developed a method of ECE teaching called the Ausubelian approach, which combines child directed and teacher directed teaching methodology. The lesson would begin with the teacher presenting information through a series of pictures or books or a combination of the two and extending this information through other free activities such as playing with figures or meeting the real animal, looking at picture books and dramatic play. The mini lesson given by the teacher serves as an anchor for learning and prepares the children to learn on their own giving context to the information to be learned. In this approach the advanced organizer would be used by the teacher to plan learning and activities rather than an item you give to the students.

When talking about David Ausubel and advanced organizers, it is possible to come across the idea of using graphic organizers to organize information and thinking. Is it possible to create a graphic organizer for a preschooler to use. Many people have, using a combination of sentence frames and pictures tried to do such a thing. These are most successful when using a flow chart with pictures to describe how something happens for a child, this way it is information that they can ‘read’ on their own and not something the teacher has to fill in for them. Children can make their own flow charts using representational pictures

In addition children can make stories with a graphic organizer helping them to organize their thoughts into first, second and last. It is important to remember when choosing a graphic organizer for ECE purposes that the ideas can be represented by pictures alone, as many preschoolers lack the ability to read. This limits the types of graphic organizers that can be used, as many are designed to be used with words and descriptions or information that can only be conveyed through written word. Labels and single word descriptions can be supplied by an adult if needed to clarify and support reading, but shouldn’t be necessary for the child to use the chart.

Dowell, H. H. (2007). The Ausbelian preschool program: balancing child-directed and teacher-directed approaches. Early Childhood News. Retrieved from http://www.earlychildhoodnews.com/earlychildhood/article_view.aspx?ArticleID=114

Standard 3 – Action Research – Literature Review

I have just finished my research for my literature review. At least I hope I have. I had to do a lot of digging to find enough resources to complete the research. The basic findings that I have found are that very few people do any research at all concerning preschoolers and vocabulary development for ELLs. There is research that correlates to the development of primary school aged children, but not so much to that of the preschooler. There are also lots of techniques that are focused on writing to develop vocabulary. Obviously these will not work in a preschool classroom. I have found a few modifications that will be helpful when focusing on vocabulary building and also some research that shows teaching vocabulary in the native language for a target language is beneficial.

The modifications that I will be making will be more far reaching than I first imagined, and will include lots of teaching strategies that tie to vocabulary increase. These strategies are helpful on their own, but I am hoping that they will be stronger when paired with the PWIM strategy and will anchor the information and provide context for the students, rather than learning vocabulary in an educational vacuum. We will also be focusing on repeating the vocabulary as well as using it in multiple ways throughout the study.

Standard 1 – Moral Issues in Education, McClellan – Moral Education in America

The McClellan text takes us all the way back to the beginning of the colonial period when there was not a public education in place, the colonialists, in order to promote fidelity to the new state decided to create public education that would in turn teach moral values that promoted loyalty to the new state and helped children to be good citizens under the new laws, that were not well reinforced otherwise. I found this interesting as the progression of the moral education of America changed over the years and eventually moral education has been left largely to private citizens and the church. I find this particularly interesting as there is a large separation between church and state that the church basically started public education, though under pretense that aren’t focused on the right to an education for each of us. In the constitution, the original constitution, there is no right or guarantee of free education. Later we all agreed that the right to education was something we should all have and that has been a wonderful thing, though I also think it’s where so many of the issues that McClellan talks about came from because it was an amendment and not an initial right. This means that when we started our schools for the public we had to figure out what was important and why we should be educating and how that should be accomplished.

With the separation of school church and state the focus on STEM has grown greatly and it is apparent now that teachers must tread carefully when talking about morals and especially about religion. I have found that many preschools have values that the teachers are supposed to be teaching, but then many of these are private preschools. When I taught in a state funded program for ECE the focus was academic, and the talk of any sort of holiday was strictly forbidden, up to the federal holidays. The basic tenants of society could be reinforced (don’t hit, let’s all be nice to one another, listening to others and such) but there was to be no discussion that could generally be called ‘moral’ discussion. Just as McClellan says on page 46 “As schools began to teach students the new social, academic and vocational skills required by a complex corporate and bureaucratic order, moral education was forced to compete for a place in an increasingly crowded curriculum.” This is still true today down to our preschools, we are so focused on academics that we don’t focus on helping our children understand what it means to be a good citizen.

McClellan, B. E. (1999). Moral education in America: schools and the shaping of character from colonial times to the present. New York: Teachers College Press.

Standard 10 – Survey of Instructional Methods, Concepts and Facts

What is the relationship of concepts to facts?

Concepts are large ideas. These ideas are often formed from facts, but they take on a broader scope when people also begin to add in opinions. A person who is ‘broad stroke’ often is able to take many facts and create a simple statement, that of a concept that ties all the facts together.

These people who are broad stroke often have the ability to also pick out facts from concepts, because the can see the over arching picture of what is being painted.

It is important when we explain concepts to others that we keep our opinions out of the explanation, as opinion can easily become a part of a concept without that being the intention.

In an educational setting it is important to understand the concepts that apply to what you are teaching as well as the age of the students you teach. In my discipline, ECE, playing is learning. This is a concept that many people have forgotten. I recently was speaking with a teacher from a nearby district, and she teaches kindergarten there. Kindergarten is still ECE. In her class she is not allowed to have play, there is no play and the children are denied crayons. Have we forgotten that children learn best through play? That only academia is important regardless of our children’s developmental level? In our rush to make sure 100% of all children come up to standards we are forgetting how to get them there! It is my intention to ensure that play continues on in my classroom because this concept is important to me and my philosophical beliefs about learning.

Standard 3 – Action Research, Going Places

“What roads did you travel on your way to where you are now? This is a critical question since it is logical to assume that if you take the same road again, it will lead you to the same destination. If we want to end up at a different and better place, it will be necessary for us to take a different route” (Sager, 2011, p. 32).

As you reflect upon the above passage, share your emerging focus statement, adding some thoughts regarding how a study with this focus has the potential to lead you to a different and better place.

It doesn’t make sense to take the same route agian, unless of course we recognize that what didn’t work for some students will/may work for others, and the conditions of the class may differ from the orignial trial of what we were trying to accomplish. I have been working to refine my focus statement and create a question that cannot be answered with a yes/no answer. Currently I am working with “How can the Picture Word Induction Model be modified to enhance oral vocabulary in a preschool classroom?” I have not done this before and as far as I can find, neither has anyone else. Others have modified the PWIM for ELL instruction, and many have used the PWIM with success in the classroom to build sight word vocabulary, but as far as I am able to see, no one is using this method to create larger spoken vocabularies in the preschool classroom.

I think this method has a lot of value, and will help create larger vocabularies than another method. I think the method is going to work with the children so that they discover the vocabulary rather than have it handed to them; though I will be supplying the words in English, as there is no other way for them to find them out, being non-readers. We will be using the words frequently to help move the new vocabulary over to long term memory and use will help the students become familiar with the correct way to use the new vocabulary. There are many possibilities for extention activites that will stem off the PWIM just as you would have in the regular model using the words to learn sight word vocabulary, we will also extend the learning to create familiarity with our new spoken vocabulary. This method can be done a number of times with more pictures than the regular PWIM model, becuase it is a good way also to check if vocabularies are growing and through video we will be able to chart who is contributing, focusing and learn what our next steps are as we move through with this plan.

Standard 10 – Survey of Instructional Methods, Questioning

How is questioning a teaching method?

I have used questioning as a teaching method quite a lot in my work as a teacher. In early childhood education we tend to teach almost exclusively with questions, whether we are soliciting information from the children about their needs, to find out the extent of their learning or as a teaching method, our days are filled with questions.

In the ideology of teaching called ‘constructivism’ asking questions plays an enormous role in teaching. This method of teaching relies on the cycle of inquiry and the cycle of theory building to teach children. The children construct a theory and the teacher pokes holes in the reasoning presented by the child, questioning the logic the child presents to uphold the theory. There are no right answers in this method, the idea is to teach the children to think about their ideas and form new ones if the current theory doesn’t fit into the real world or hold up under scrutiny.

The instructor is a facilitator, asking questions rather than a leader who supplies information. Having used this teaching method, I still employ it heavily today in my classroom as it produces children who think rather than children who parrot.

Last year I had the opportunity to visit the Evergreen Community School, that is a
constructivist school and work with the director of the school Alise Shafer, who  uses questioning as her method of teaching children and produces superior thinkers in her program.

A typical ECE constructivist work session might look like this:

Morning meeting – discussions about what groups are meeting for the day

Break into small groups and work for about an hour – the children have a short meeting about the work to be done for the day, preform the work, then meet and discuss what went well, what was learned, make new plans for the next meeting

Reflection meeting – the children come back together and share what they learned, they also problem solve together and may make new plans for their next sessions

It is a rewarding way to teach and really lets the children learn to listen to one another and helps with the acceptance of others ideas.

Standard 3 – Action Research The Ineffectiveness of Teachers

In the article, Is it Worth It? Reflecting on the Impact of Action Research (Massey & Johnson, 2012), one of the authors, upon considering participation in an action research project, poses the question,

In an era of Common Core Standards, new teacher evaluation tools, and increasing pressure on teachers to ‘get it right,’ opening ourselves up for scrutiny, even scrutiny under our own lenses, is a risk. What happens if our very own classroom data proves our ineffectiveness (Massey & Johnson, 2012)?

What is your own thinking as you reflect upon this very genuine concern?

Massey, D., & Johnson, R. (2012). Is it worth it? Reflecting on the impact of action research. Washington State Kappan, 6(1), 18-20. Retrieved from http://www.pdkwa.org/downloads/PDK_WA-KAPPAN_2012_Fall.pdf

I have found, that in the world of ECE we teach in a fishbowl. People are always in and out of our classrooms observing and scrutinizing us. We are watched by parents (not by choice), administration, coaches, and government authorities like NYEAC, WA DEL and PSESD, just to give a few examples. We also have interns and more in-class support than older grades, so we tend to teach in in-class teams as well as pod teams. This all adds up to a lot of accountability and scrutiny. I haven’t been in a class where I can ‘just shut the door’ in years and I think it makes me a better teacher. This scrutiny of offering up our own research where we haven’t succeeded is risky, but also offers us the opportunity to grow, as long as we learn from it and then can show what we did to succeed after a failure. I have two main thoughts about ‘proving our own effectivness’: 1. Effectiveness isn’t shown in a small space of time or in one instance, but is shown through our inability to help children achieve over time. If you keep not helping children achieve, you might really evaluate what you are doing, and seek to increase your professional skill. 2. I had a professor, who was really a wonderful ECE teacher and has a real passion for ECE and teaching, his name is Cory Gann, and he said that ‘whatever you do with good intentions in the class, can’t hurt the children.’ I strongly agree with this statement. If you are being professional, and consciensous all you can do is hurt, or at least not hinder.

We should calm down about proving our own ineffectiveness, as the likelyhood of that is small, and showing that we aren’t succeeding is a way for us to know what we CAN do as well as what we should not do. We move on from there and just strive to be the best we can be.

Standard 1 – Moral Issues in Education Kessler Text

Kessler’s main point, that I got from the text, is that we need to be sensative to our children as they grow and change. This is done through a variety of methods (explained in the text) but she largely focuses on senior passage courses, that she teaches. She talks about how spirituality or soul is difficult for all children to cope with the idea of and that as they change we must help them recognize and nurture their own souls. This isn’t easy to do or to cope with so it must be approached with patience, understanding, curtiousness, and caution.

There are several sections that are related to guiding children through difficult transitions and ways to help them cope with difficult transitions, through what I call ‘self-revelation’. There are different ways to achieve this and Kessler details many of these toward the end of the book. She talks mainly about school programs but also touches on rituals that are cultural in nature.

I had a hard time relating to this book as it focuses largely on adolescents and the youngest children being paid much attention to in the book are middle schoolers. Kessler very briefly acknowledges that very young children have spirits and can benefit from teachers who acknowledge and build soul in the classroom, but not much more than that. I found a little that will help in my teaching as a preschool teacher, but I think this book would be beneficial to upper grade teachers, though I would be cautious about implementing some of the ideas in the book without permission from administration and parents. I did appreciate the idea that we must all be sensitive to our children and when they share their souls with us not to squash them as she mentioned at location 1897 in the chapter labeled ‘Sharing the Mystery’. The teacher she mentions has a child share an important part of her soul in class and instead of acknowledging this the teacher just calls the next student to read. I have had experiences where my children have shared parts of their souls, even though they are so young, and I think Kessler is right that we must “open our hearts to our students” (location 1906 of 2605, 2000). I have tried to take what I can from this book and implement it into my own classroom and have modified my daily sharing time to help the children be respectful and empathetic to one another. I want the children to feel that our classroom is a safe place and they are loved and accepted by one another.

The message is a good one and relevant in these digital times, but will fit better in a private school than the public forum, that I can see from my experiences.

 

References

Kessler, R. (2000). The soul of education; helping children find connection, compassion and character at school [Kindle version].

Standard 3 – Action Research Areas of Significant Improvement

The school I teach at is a small Korean Early Childhood Education (ECE) school. All of my students share the same first language: Korean. I speak just a tiny amount of Korean, limited to a few short phrases, designed to make teaching easier. My job title is Lead ELL Teacher, and I am the lead teacher and the lead ELL teacher at the school. It is my job to teach these children English. I have been using every non-reading oriented strategy that I can find, and sometimes I feel like the kids are learning so much, but other times I feel like they don’t understand a word I say. The areas that concern me the most right now are, building vocabulary, making our first 3 word sentences,  and staying on topic for 5 minutes!

These areas concern me for a few reasons, one my students are very young, from having just turned 3 to children who are just turning four. Only one child receives English instruction  at home, and I only have contact with the children for five hours a day, three days a week. I have been working with these children for four months and feel like there should be more measurable progress, and indeed some of the children are doing quite well, while others are not doing as well. I would like to bring up the lower end children while pushing up those who are doing well already. I think it would be too easy to pass off the lower achieving students by saying they are young, and they’ll learn in time, rather I would like to see all my students as high achieving and capable of the goals I have mentioned.