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Lively Minds
May 5, 2016
The hallmark of successful people is that they are always stretching themselves to learn new things.
-Carol S. Dweck
-Carol S. Dweck
Here are some excerpts from an excellent article, "Lively Minds: Distinctions between Academic versus Intellectual Goals for Young Children," that Lilian Katz wrote for Defending the Early Years:
"Academic goals are those concerned with the mastery of small discrete elements of embodied information, usually related to pre-literacy skills in the early years, and practiced in drills, worksheets, and other kinds of exercises designed to prepare children for the next levels of literacy and numeracy learning. The items learned and practiced have correct answers, rely heavily on memorization, the application of formulae versus understanding, and consists largely of giving the teacher the correct answers that the children know she awaits.... These bits of information are essential components of reading, writing, and other academic competencies useful in modern developed economies, and certainly in later school years. In other words, I suggest that the issue here is not whether academic skills matter; rather it is about both when they matter and what proportion of the curriculum they warrant, especially during the early years.
"Intellectual goals and their related activities, on the other hand, are those that address the life of the mind in its fullest sense... including a range of aesthetic and moral sensibilities. The formal definition of the concept of intellectual emphasizes reasoning, hypothesizing, posing questions, predicting answers to questions, predicting the findings produced by investigation, the development and analysis of ideas and the quest for understanding and so forth.
"An appropriate curriculum for young children is one that includes the focus on supporting children's inborn intellectual dispositions, their natural inclinations. These would include, for example, the disposition to make the best sense they can of their own experiences and environments. An appropriate curriculum in the early years then is one that includes the encouragement and motivation of the children to seek mastery of basic academic skills, e.g. beginning writing skills, in the service of their intellectual pursuits."
Many curriculum books treat teaching as something you do to or for children. Deb Curtis and Margie Carter, bestselling authors in the early learning field, believe teaching is a collaborative process in which you reexamine your own philosophy and practices while facilitating children's learning.
Each chapter in this curriculum framework includes a conceptual overview followed by classroom stories and vibrant photos to illustrate the concepts.
You will learn to create materials and a classroom culture reflecting your values; teach through observation, reflection, inquiry and action; and encourage children to represent their learning in multiple ways, including songs, stories, and drama.
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Comments (2)
Displaying All 2 CommentsPennsylvania, United States
Another thought I wanted to share: we put children into unnatural situations when we separate them from their family members. Since children spend an inordinate amount of time in the care of non-family members, our focus should really be on their care. The children must learn to trust someone who is not mom or dad, and that someone changes yearly if not more often. They must learn to navigate in a world filled with other children their age who are just as egocentric--they can't just plop on the sofa if they need to zone out, they can't just snuggle up with mom when they need some TLC. We expect children to negotiate this world, get along with peers, respect teachers and others, follow the rules, follow the schedule and learn everything they need to know to be reading in kindergarten. Let's focus on their care and nurture and the rest will follow. Why and how did we go so off-track in our expectations for young children?
Pennsylvania, United States
I do believe that 'academic goals' are just part of normal conversation and dialogue with children. Just as we talk with children about what they are doing or creating, we can easily bring the alphabet and mathematical concepts into the conversation. This really shouldn't be that hard. Just the other day with a few of my pre-k students we looked at the word May as it hung above the calendar. One of the children used a dry-erase marker to trace over the letters and then we talked about other words we could make just by changing the beginning sound--day, say, hay---it was natural, fun and not some phony worksheet that the children had no interest in doing--more importantly, they are the ones who initiated the conversation. My calendar is always blank at the beginning of the month. they fill in the numbers and sometimes they make purposeful mistakes to be funny--but this gives us a great reason to talk about numbers, their sequence and even make really big numbers just for fun. It's all so natural as long as you have teachers willing and able to care and converse. It can be playful and fun and still contain fantastic amounts of information presented very organically. " The environment is the curriculum", as Erika Christakis writes in her book: The Importance of Being Little. Stop cramming academics down the children's throats and listen to the children and delve into their world with them.
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