Tips and resources to support children birth to age five
Early Learning Curriculum and Activities
Discuss the ideal curriculum, current trends, and recommended activities for newborns.
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Permalink Reply by Nhi Tran on -
PLAYTIME FOR CHILDREN
Parents and educators who favor traditional classroom-style learning over free, unstructured playtime in preschool and kindergarten may actually be stunting a child's development instead of enhancing it, according to a University of Illinois professor who studies childhood learning and literacy development.
Anne Haas Dyson, a professor of curriculum and instruction in the U. of I. College of Education, says playtime for children is a "fundamental avenue" for learning, and attempts by parents and educators to create gifted children by bombarding them with information is well-intentioned but ultimately counterproductive.
"That approach doesn't appreciate the role of play and imagination in a child's intellectual development," Dyson said. "Play is where children discover ideas, experiences and concepts and think about them and their consequences. This is where literacy and learning really begins." Read more here...
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Permalink Reply by Nhi Tran on
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PROGRAMS THAT IMPROVE CHILDREN'S MENTAL HEALTH
* The Good Behavior Game, in which elementary students compete for rewards such as extra free time by acting appropriately in class, significantly reduced aggressive behavior in first graders. Students who participated were less likely to smoke or be aggressive in middle school and less likely to abuse drugs or alcohol as young adults.
* Positive parenting programs, in which parents learn to use praise and rewards to encourage good behavior and rely less on harsh punishments. Children of parents in one such program, the Incredible Years, were less aggressive. Preschoolers and first-graders whose teachers used the method were rated more socially competent and had fewer behavior problems.
* The Clarke Cognitive-Behavioral Prevention Intervention, which focuses on helping teenagers at risk for depression learn to cope with stress, reduced episodes of major depression.
* The Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS) program, which teaches elementary and preschool children about emotion, self-control, and problem solving, significantly reduced conflict and depression.
Read more here.
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Permalink Reply by Nhi Tran on
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EARLY FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING
Can kids learn anything if they are exposed to a subject for only half an hour a week, with no homework? When it comes to learning another language, educators say yes.
Foreign language instruction is considered more important than ever as the nation's demographics and national security issues change and the world's economies become intertwined.
"They eventually pick it up," said Spanish teacher Lisa Vierya . No homework is required, but students are encouraged to practice. First- and second-graders receive 30 minutes of instruction a week; children in grades 3 through 5 have two 30-minute classes weekly.
A different approach is used in Susanna Winebrenner's second-grade classroom at César Chávez Spanish Immersion Elementary School in Prince George's County. There, students receive instruction in Spanish and English virtually every day; subjects taught in Spanish are Spanish language arts and social studies.
"We are teaching literacy," said Principal José A. Taboada II. " We are not talking just about learning Spanish. When you learn a second language, you are also learning how to learn other languages, and not just the spoken language -- the language of mathematics, the language of computers. Your mind opens."
"If students start younger, it is much easier to match the language level with the student's development level," Sugarman said. "In kindergarten, you do colors and numbers and 'My name is.' That's what you do in early stages of foreign language learning. Student are doing things interesting and relevant to them.
Ultimately, experts say, the real key is not the instructional method but the instructor.
"The quality of the teacher is the single biggest factor in foreign language learning," said Catherine Ingold, director of the National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland at College Park. 2/16/09 - Read more here...
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Permalink Reply by Erin Okuno on -
Don't forget the Foundation's two publications: Ten Simple Ways to Encourage Learning and Getting School Ready.
Libraries also have a ton of ideas and helpful ideas. The Early Learning Public Library Partnership has this helpful brochure.
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Permalink Reply by Nhi Tran on
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HOW AND WHEN TO TEACH READING
We all know that learning to read is a very important step for any child to make, but how can we be sure that we are offering children the best introduction to this skill. In the following article, Roger Hurn unpicks some of the issues currently under debate.
Professor Kathy Sylva, a leading researcher into pre-school education, caused quite a stir last summer (2005) when she told a Social Market Foundation think-tank that four-year-olds should not start reading in reception classes. Professor Sylva felt that teachers of reception classes would be better employed teaching their charges social and behavioral skills. She argued that children would be better equipped to master the complex skills required for reading if they have first learned to concentrate and listen.
Perhaps it is rather stating the obvious to say that all children need to be able to concentrate if they are to make significant progress with reading. However, the key question raised by Professor Sylva is: when is the right time to teach children to read?
What’s the answer?
Unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this. Children develop at different rates but research from the National Research Council, 1998 has shown that children should be being prepared for reading well before they come to school. This is because the first three years of a child’s life are critical for the development of a child’s brain and it’s during this time that children develop most of their capacity for learning.
Why is this?
Children are born with over 100bn brain cells called neurons. These neurons form connections, called synapses, which make up the wiring of the brain. Children’s brains work on a ‘use it or lose it’ principle and only connections that are regularly activated will continue to function effectively. So, depending on the amount of intellectual stimulation the brain receives in the early years, it can gain or lose up to 25% of the synapses it has. Therefore, the opportunity for creating the foundation for reading and, indeed all other learning, begins at this time (Smith, 2004).
Is a child’s ability to learn to read dependent on their intelligence?
A child’s ability to learn to read isn’t just determined by their innate intelligence. As Howard Gardner (1993) has shown, intelligence is not fixed at birth but dynamic. The brain benefits from exercise and stimulation and it is when very young children’s brains are exposed to experiences and sensations that they develop the new neural connections that make learning to read possible.
Parents and carers can stimulate their children’s brains so that they will be receptive to learning to read by talking, singing, telling nursery rhymes, showing and sharing books and reading aloud to their children. In fact, the children of parents and carers who treat the process of learning to read as a form of entertainment, rather than as a task to be mastered, tend to have a greater facility for reading than those who don’t (Dawson, 1994).
Moreover, according to the National Research Council (1998), in the same way that children develop language skills before they can speak, so they can also have literacy skills well before they are able to read. In the light of what we know about how the brain develops, we can see why children who are read to and exposed to books and language games from an early age are more likely to develop into good readers when they come to school than those who aren’t. However, this leads us on to consider what research can tell teachers about how to teach reading effectively.
Isn’t the National Literacy Strategy the answer?
The fact is that the teaching of reading has never really been grounded in research. According to the Reading Reform Foundation, the whole National Literacy Strategy is based on a compromise of methods, with no attempt made to subject the programs advocated to evidence-based testing to discover what are the most effective methods for teaching reading. Indeed, the House of Commons Education and Skills Select Committee report, Teaching Children to Read (2005) supports this view. In fact, the Committee called for the National Literacy Strategy to be reviewed as, in their opinion, it isn’t based on sound research. The government has responded and a review is now being undertaken by Jim Rose.
So how should teachers teach reading?
Jim Rose, in his interim review of the National Literacy Strategy (2005) has been careful to avoid what he describes as a ‘futile debate’ over which strategies are most effective but he does recommend that synthetic phonics should be the first strategy teachers use, as it ‘is the most effective, systematic approach to teaching reading.’
However, not everyone agrees that synthetic phonics is the answer to teaching children to read. Critics point out that English spelling is full of irregularities and that children must be given a comprehensive selection of strategies to decode text successfully. They also argue that an over-emphasis on synthetic phonics distracts children from engaging with books. Even advocates of synthetic phonics can’t agree on exactly how to teach it, as Mike Baker points out in his BBC report ‘Phonics: Strategy but no consensus’ (December 2005).
This lack of consensus is further exacerbated by the findings of a new research study undertaken by Warwick University and led by Dr Jonathan Solity, which claims that children can master the basics of reading by learning just 100 words. (TES, 9 December 2005). The researchers argue that children who are taught these 100 words find it much easier to cope with real books and make sense of the new words they encounter, rather than by memorising the 150 words at KS1 and a further 100 at KS2, as currently recommended by the National Literacy Strategy .
Moreover, there really isn’t much comfort to be had for those who rely on reading schemes as Dr Solity (2003), in a paper delivered to a DfES phonics seminar, also highlighted the work undertaken by the Early Reading Research, which seriously questions the effectiveness of teaching children to read by using reading schemes.
Where do we go from here?
So, despite Jim Rose’s wish to avoid being dragged into a debate over how to teach children to read, it looks as if the battle will continue to rage for quite some time yet. However, he has agreed to investigate Dr Solity’s research and take its findings into account by the time he makes his final report. Yet, while all this is going on, teachers still have to help children achieve the Early Learning goals of ‘Exploring and experimenting with sounds, words and texts; reading a range of familiar and common words and simple sentences independently and knowing that print carries meaning and, in English, is read from left to right and top to bottom.’
Perhaps the best way to do this is to draw on what research has taught us about how the brain functions. To become good readers children need to be stimulated and excited by the reading process, as when a child’s brain learns a new concept or skill, it creates a new neural network for it. This network can only be reinforced by repeated use and the best way to do this is to find fun ways of practising the new skill. This causes the brain to produce pleasure chemicals (endorphins), which naturally motivate the child to go on learning (Skelton, 1999). Therefore, when children are given the chance to learn to read in this way, they become focused and highly motivated learners.
So, Professor Sylva’s earlier assertion that reception teachers shouldn’t teach children to read, isn’t really relevant if we look at teaching reading as an enjoyable activity, which has the power to engage even very young children by using the way that their brains are naturally programmed to learn (Smilkstein 1993).
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Permalink Reply by Nhi Tran on
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Watching television does not make babies smarter, according to a study released this week in the journal Pediatrics, adding to existing research that challenges the usefulness of baby educational videos and DVDs.
A pediatrician recommends using blocks, puzzles and books to entertain the baby rather than TV.
Educational DVD and videos geared towards enriching babies and toddlers, such as "BabyGenius," "Brainy Baby" or "Baby Einstein," which proclaim to "encourage discovery and inspire," have no benefits, researchers said.
This echoes a similar finding published in the August issue of Pediatrics. Researchers from the University of Washington and Seattle Children's Hospital Research Institute found no evidence of benefit from baby DVDs and videos and suggested that it may be harmful. Infants who watched the videos understood fewer words than those who did not watch them.
"You're teaching 4- or 5- or 6-month-olds how to watch TV," he said. "They're learning to watch TV. The more they watch as they get older, they're snacking in front of TV, they're exposed to snack-food commercials, which inspire them to eat even more and sit even more. It is a cumulative effect of many, many factors."
"The best thing for our kids is to provide them with stimulus that we know is positive for their brain development," Rich said. He suggesting activities like reading, singing, interacting and stacking blocks to help children.
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Permalink Reply by Marta Wilson on -
Why not go to the source to answer questions why when ,and how to teach babies to read? Glenn Doman was a pioneer of field of child brain development. He founded The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential in 1955. He worked with brain injured children. His work led to vital discoveries about the growth and development of well children.
I'm a mother of 19 months old baby. I'm following Glenn Doman program since my boy was 4 months old. Now he knows how to read. My baby learned that by teaching him phonics. He is well behaved baby with curiosity to discover everything around him. His memory is amazing! Maybe we should ask more parents about the influence of early learning on their babies and toddlers. You can check my website and see how my baby is developing..
http://earlylearning-eaton.blogspot.com/
Have a great day
marta
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