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| Music and fun |
I see faux activity-based curriculum and I shudder.
I have written in my blog: *Thank Your Teachers, several posts about full-day kindergarten.
The Ottawa Carleton District School Board (OCDSB.ca), where I taught for 25 years or so, has been debating, with parental input, on how to manage full-day kindergarten (ages 4/5) with parents who need day care. The provincial government has been spending a lot on this initiative.
I am really opinionated about this and totally against it.
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| dress-up |
Having taught Junior Kindergarten and all the grades up to gr. 8, including many split-grade and special education classes, I do not believe that keeping a child in a school-based institution from age 4, all day, up to grade 12 is a good idea. Too much politics in education these days. Politically driven agendas and decisions. The costs to taxpayers for full-day kindergarten are incredible, too. Trustees were also expected to vote on adding five more full-day kindergarten classes, at a cost of $750,000.
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| Reading buddies: gr. 4 read to K This is great pre-reading interest-based learning. |
Parents have choices, from nursery school to non-profit, for-profit day care, or home day care. There is a huge myth that children in school will learn more. Research does not support this notion. It supports play-based learning.
Worksheets
Children are being coerced to do homework/worksheets in JK, when many are unable to hold a pencil properly or well. Pre-reading and pre-writing skills do NOT look like this! Fun for some, but not a prerequisite to writing and small-muscle coordination.
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| This is art: doing a free drawing. This is representation of an experience. This is pre-reading: having a scribe to write your story. |
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| Pre-school 'worksheets' this is NOT learning |
Play-based Learning
I have a degree in Early Childhood Education. I know what Play-based Learning is all about. It is NOT these wrote exercises. Children need to be drawing freely, drawing what they want, when they want. The whole premise of play-based learning is choosing the activity: the dress-up centre, puzzles, books, art activity, not teacher-directed activities. Teachers haven't mastered this in the education system in many circumstances.
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| open-ended nature studies -a teachable moment possible in day care |
Play-based learning means integrating the Key Experiences in early childhood: active learning, exploration, using language (receptive and expressive), classification, seriation, numeracy, literacy, spatial relations, temporal relations, representation of experiences and ideas.
Research-based Decision-Making
The Kate Hammer, at the Globe writes:
Ontario’s program is the most ambitious because it includes four-year-olds as well as five-year-olds, and aims to bring before- and after-school care as well as year-round child care to every school.
But it will be years before there’s conclusive evidence as to whether the investment of billions of dollars by the Ontario Liberal government in full-day kindergarten is justified.
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| Sand play! |
Yes, we have. But it isn't new. We do more research in education and we ignore much of it, as well. The pendulum ever swings in curriculum design.
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| normal drawing development begins with the mandala a universal trait open-ended, free drawing |
Education vs. play-based learning
We know how the 1965 Head Start programs in the US failed to show an impact in many circumstances. These programs work for high-risk kids, ESL kids, kids without the basic background knowledge, and pre-literacy knowledge and education of the average family. But Head Start is a far cry from full-day kindergarten.
Program Costs
The cost of day care to working class families can be exorbitant. OCDSB is suggesting $26/day for before and after-school care. What happens in summer, when kids should and can hang out, away from an institution? We need intimate, caring caregiver sites, where children are treated like children, not students. This is where the best learning takes place. I've seen it in day care, home day care and early learning centres. I have seen little of it in school-based institutions.
7 comments:
Gee, I wish you would tell us how you really feel! Seriously, this is so right on the mark in my opinion. My grand son(4) was going to a pre-school taught by a young teacher who had a couple years teaching in a middle school. She knew nothing about early education but felt free to worry young parents about the inadequacies of their children's reading and writing skills. Yikes!
I was seeing my granddaughter do a lot of those pre-cut lessons and sticker type art work last year. That really bothered me. When I asked her to draw her favorite animal for me, she said she couldn't do it and wouldn't even try at first. I've voiced my objections to my daughter. I'm glad that she's now enrolled her in a class with less children and 3 teachers. It's expensive, but so much better.
I only vaguely remember those days, now that my girls are all grown up, but I think that kids should have the opportunity to stay at home, which is totally denied them in this country, unless a family is willing to take a radically reduced standard of living... I think my girls did just fine with half day JK and SK.
Your fifth paragraph is the one that caught my attention.Until you put these activities together, I hadn't thought about how irritating they were to me and for many kids they must have been brutal.
I enjoyed your post even though I have been retired for 14 years and did not teach kindergarten.
Excellent points to back up your point of view.
I know my point of view is different. I work with a very effective Head Start program in the States. The Director is very dedicated and the teachers provide a learning environment that allows the children to learn by exploring and experiencing rather than rote activities. I have done multi-year followup studies as the children move through he grades, and those who experienced this quality preschool program did better than their peers who did not have the same opportunity. - Margy
Interesting, Margy, but this isn't anywhere near Head Start quality! Head Start does nothing for the average child. This is billions of dollars for kids that are not necessarily at risk. And teachers untrained, except for in-service, in preschoolers - far different than and ECE degree. Primary education is very different than preschool. This is a slap-up day care pretending to be education. The system is crowded and the proper testing, training, assessment and interventions are simply not there.
I spent so much time with JK and K, and time in preschool, day care settings when student teaching, Judy. I found that the kids who most needed subsidized day care were the children of the working poor, whose families needed the interventions possible. THink of it, each day a parent has an opportunity to have a mini-parent/teacher meeting. Teachers have an opportunity to watch for at-risk kids. In such settings they get the best care, we had case conferences. Parents had opportunities to learn parenting skills. This isn't what every family needs. It's what at-risk kids deserve. My kids did well in day care. My grandkids are thriving in it. Quality care, with caring families. Not billions for full-day K for kids who need consistent, quality care.
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