Return to: Homepage, Publications, or Newsletters

Table of Contents

• Welcome
• Linkages Between Head Start and the Primary Grades Advocated
• Characteristics of Appropriate Primary Classrooms
• Paradigm Shift Needed in Primary Classrooms
• Reprint Policy
• Constructivism in the Classroom

The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) commends all parties involved in this newsletter venture to promote communication and information exchange among early childhood professionals teaching in the primary grades. Although our Association has always focused on the full span of development from birth to age eight, the majority of members have been teachers working with children from infancy through age five. This past decade, NAEYC has aggressively worked to provide more immediately relevant information and resources to teachers working in the primary grades, and these efforts have stimulated increasing numbers of primary teachers to become active members of NAEYC. The resource that has undoubtedly reaped the greatest influence is our position statement on Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP). In fact, it is not uncommon to hear kindergarten or primary teachers refer to us as "that DAP organization," rather than as NAEYC.

I want to appeal to each reader to take personal responsibility for introducing NAEYC to primary teachers. We can provide you with complimentary copies of our journal, Young Children, and our Resource Catalog (membership information is included) to give to prospective members. Call 1-800-424-2460, and ask for the Membership Department. The majority of NAEYC members became involved in this organization through the efforts of a colleague or professor. One-on-one invitations to primary teachers to join us will greatly increase our shared efforts to improve the quality of all early childhood education for all young children.

Sincerely,

Marilyn M. Smith, Executive Director
National Association for the Education of Young Children

Linkages Between Head Start and the Primary Grades Advocated

The Final Report of the Advisory Committee on Head Start Quality and Expansion has been issued by the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services. Entitled Creating A 21st Century Head Start, the document sets forth recommendations to the federal government, to Head Start parents and professionals, and to other interested citizens. The recommendations are intended to implement the following three principles:

(1) We must ensure that every Head Start program can deliver on Head Start's vision, by striving for excellence in serving both children and families.

(2) We must expand the number of children served and the scope of services provided in a way that is more responsive to the needs of children and families.

(3) We must encourage Head Start to forge partnerships with key community and state institutions and programs in early childhood, family support, health, education, and mental health, and we must ensure that these partnerships are constantly renewed and recrafted to fit changes in families, communities, and state and national policies.

According to the report, "policymakers and practitioners have a greater understanding of the importance of the 0 - 8 period and a new vision of systemic early childhood education reform." The Advisory Committee advocates that high quality comprehensive services be provided from Head Start through the primary grades. It also agrees with the National Task Force on School Readiness that educators and parents need to move beyond a goal of transition "as filling the gap between two different types of programs" and towards a goal "'of ensuring developmentally appropriate education services, parent involvement, and supportive services for children from birth through the primary grades."

As part of its recommendations the Advisory Committee suggests certain action steps, many of which relate specifically to the primary grades. Some of these are:

• Federal education dollars should be used to facilitate school reforms which ensure that gains made by Head Start children are sustained in the primary grades.

• Changes should be made in federal state, and local policies to better meet the developmental needs of children and to support the involvement and participation of their families.

• Head Start programs must help parents to understand how the public schools operate and provide techniques for communicating with teachers and other school personnel, for influencing school policy, and for supporting their child's work at home.

• Joint training and technical assistance should be provided to Head Start directors and staff and to public school administrators and staff on transition. Such training might include the following components:

• how both Head Start and schools can better understand the developmental needs of young children;
• how the early childhood community, including Head Start, can participate in developing state content standards for the early grades;
• how schools can maintain links initiated by Head Start between children and community health services, as well as receive existing health records;
• how both communities can break down perceived barriers to increased communication and collaboration; and
• how both communities can develop the capacity to effectively meet the special needs of children with diverse learning styles.

Single copies of the Advisory Committee's report are available at no cost from the Public Affairs Office, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, 370 L'Enfant Promenade, S.W., Washington, DC 20447.

Characteristics of Appropriate Primary Classrooms

A consensus on what primary classrooms should look like is emerging, as educators and policymakers target the early elementary grades for improvement. Leading experts are now seeking to remedy the neglect which the early childhood years in the elementary school have received as an area of education reform during the last two decades. It is essential that "'in the context of rapidly changing demographics and family structures, this country must find ways to improve dramatically instruction in the primary grades," writes David A. Hamburg, President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York in the foreword to Carol E. Copple's Starting Right: Reforming Education in the Early Grades (Prekindergarten through Grade 3), a report based on a meeting held at the Carnegie Corporation of New York on June 1 and 2, 1992.

During the Carnegie meeting, Penelope Peterson, Professor and Co-Director of the Center for the Learning and Teaching of Elementary Subjects, Michigan State University, presented a list of attributes which became the basis for the characteristics delineated, as follows, in the reports Exhibit 1:

What Should Early Grades Classrooms Look Like?

The Teacher and Teaching

• The teacher does more questioning than telling, lecturing, or explaining.

• The teacher does more listening than talking.

• The teacher encourages and values multiple approaches, ways of thinking, and ideas rather than a single approach, way of thinking, or idea.

• The teacher focuses on the strengths, knowledge, and understandings that children bring to the classroom from their culture, families, and formal and informal learning rather than on their deficiencies or misunderstanding.

Students and Classroom Discourse

• Classroom discourse is more like conversation than lecture-recitation.

• Students' knowledge, thinking, and understandings are made "visible" through oral and written discourse rather than remaining invisible or implicit in written answers to worksheets.

• The students and the teacher use, discuss, and build on students' ideas rather than only using and discussing the teacher's ideas or those in a textbook.

• Students personally commit to, and assume greater responsibility for, their own learning rather than complying with teacher demands or responding to external consequences.

• Students collaborate rather than only compete in solving problems, in reasoning, in their involvement in inquiry, and in written and oral discourse.

Content

• Complex, meaningful problems are posed and challenging, "worthwhile" tasks are constructed by the teacher and the students.

• The focus is on depth rather than breadth of content coverage.

• Knowledge consists of more than just right answers, facts, or information.

Contexts of Learning

• The classroom becomes an authentic learning community rather than assembly line or workplace.

• Students' ideas are respected and valued; students are supported for taking risks, offering ideas, and making mistakes; and teachers as well as students revise their thinking and understandings as they learn together.

• Children's in-school experiences are related to their out-of-school experiences and culture.

- from Starting Right: Reforming Education in the Early Grades
(Prekindergarten through Grade 3), pp. 5-6

A Paradigm Shift Needed in Primary Classrooms

The Iowa and Nebraska Departments of Education have jointly published The Primary Program: Growing and Learning in the Heartland, a comprehensive guide to assist those who are planning learning activities for children in kindergarten and the primary grades. In a collaborative effort, educators from these two states worked for over a year to produce a document which "represents the best of what teachers know about how young children grow and learn". An unique aspect of this endeavor is that the Ministry of Education in British Columbia gave the Iowa and Nebraska Departments permission to adapt and reprint work which had been done in Canada.

The Primary Program is centered on the need for a shift in the way we (administrators, parents, school board members, and teachers) all think about teaching and learning. Young children are physically and mentally active, constantly using language and interacting with people and objects around them, yet the paradigm which guides their schooling often does not recognize that they are physically and intellectually different than adults. Classroom behaviors which are challenging and difficult to deal with may, in fact, be the result of the paradigm of schooling which values quiet, adult-like classrooms.

Authors of The Primary Program believe that:

school needs to be a place where problems are posed and solutions are generated; where mistakes are made and valued as learning experiences; where cooperation is nurtured in the face of conflict; where teachers, parents, and children make decisions together about what is best for the children.

In order for schools to become active and interactive environments, in which adults and children can be nurtured and be successful, there must be a shift from the traditional schooling paradigm to a continuum of change. The Primary Program proposes the implementation of the following shift, adapted from Dr. Patricia K. Arlin's opening address, "New Beginnings," May, 1989, U.B.C., based on Doris Pronin Fromberg's "'Kindergarten: Current Circumstances Affecting Curriculum," Teachers' College Record, 90, pp. 392-43:

REPRINT POLICY

Material contained in Of Primary Interest may be reprinted in other forms, such as books, -newsletters, or journals, provided that a copy of such reprinting is sent to the Colorado Department of Education, and that the reprinting contains the name Of Primary Interest and the fact that this newsletter is published cooperatively by the Colorado Association for the Education of Young Children and the Colorado Department of Education. Permission to make photocopies is not required if the copies are to share with parents, teachers, or students; for library reserve; or for personal use; however, the name Of Primary Interest, as well as the logos of the two sponsoring agencies, must appear on the copy. Additional issues of the publication may be requested from the editor at the Colorado Department of Education.

Constructivism in the Classroom

ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) has published In Search of Understanding: The Case for Constructivist Classrooms, by Jacqueline Grennon Brooks and Martin G. Brooks. Constructivism, the process by which people construct their own understandings of the world in which they live, is the means by which teachers may facilitate a learning environment "where students search for meaning, appreciate uncertainty, and inquire responsibly"

Using constructivist principles to argue for school reform, Grennon Brooks and Brooks formulate 12 characteristics of constructivist teachers. These "descriptors" are based on the authors' interactions with students, on their observations in classrooms, and on the work of such researchers and theoreticians as Arlin, Elkind, Kuhn, and Sigel.

Constructivist teachers:

• encourage and accept student autonomy and initiative.
• use raw data and primary sources, along with manipulative, interactive, and physical materials.
• use cognitive terminology such as "classify," "analyze," "predict," and "create," when framing tasks.
• allow student responses to drive lessons, shift instructional strategies, and alter content.
• inquire about students' understandings of concepts before sharing their own understandings of those concepts.
• encourage students to engage in dialogue, both with the teacher and with one another.
• encourage student inquiry by asking thoughtful, open-ended questions and encouraging students to ask questions of each other.
• seek elaboration of students' initial responses.
• engage students in experiences that might engender contradictions to their initial hypotheses and then encourage discussion.
• allow wait time after posing questions.
• provide time for students to construct relationships and create metaphors.
• nurture students' natural curiosity through frequent use of the learning cycle model.

Although The Case for Constructivist Classrooms is written for teachers of students of all ages, primary-level teachers are a central focus of this audience. Many of the examples provided take place in primary classrooms. The authors conclude by providing six "bold" recommendations, which all teachers need to consider:

1. Structure preservice and inservice teacher education around constructivist principles and practices.
2. Jettison most standardized testing and make assessment meaningful for students.
3. Focus resources more on teachers' professional development than on textbooks and workbooks.
4. Eliminate letter and number grades.
5. Form school-based study groups focused on human developmental principles.
6. Require annual seminars on teaching and learning for administrators and school board members.

The Case for Constructivist Classrooms (Stock #611-93748Y69) may be ordered from ASCD, 1250 N. Pitt Street, Alexandria, Virginia 22314-1453 (703-549-9110) for $13.95 plus a $2.50 handling charge.

This page last updated: December 13, 2007