Judith Schickedanz on improving preschool instruction
Catherine Snow’s comment ("From Literacy to Learning," HEL, July/August 2005) that preschool educators are ill prepared to support children’s language development and comprehension skills struck a chord. As a literacy consultant to several Early Reading First projects, I see firsthand the baseline skills of preschool teachers. Even in these projects, which provide exceptionally high levels of professional development and training, changes are needed if we are to see any significant improvement in children’s learning.Consider the verbal support for word learning required in a story-reading context. The classic children’s book Make Way for Ducklings, for example, includes the words “island” and “headquarters.” It is all too typical for preschool teachers to explain island as “something with water around it” and headquarters as “a place where everyone gets together and has meetings.” Of course, many things are surrounded by water (e.g., boats, castles with moats), and people gather and meet in many places that are not headquarters (e.g., churches, town halls, convention centers, schools).
A similar lack of attention to detail is seen throughout the preschool day. For example, during a small-group activity with live earthworms, a child asked, “When’s he gonna change?” Her teacher replied, “These worms don’t change.” That was that. Several weeks earlier the children had observed caterpillars change into butterflies. The child who inquired about the change in this worm was no doubt thinking about her previous experience. Her teacher’s literal answer did not provide information about differences in the way these two creatures develop.
Yet another example of the failure to provide an instructional response occurred in the midst of a word-clue game. The teacher gave this clue: “This is something that keeps our body dry when it rains.” Quickly, a child said, “Boots!” The teacher replied, “No, not boots.” A second child offered, “A hat.” The teacher replied, “No, not a hat.” At this point, the teaching assistant said, “Do you think maybe you should tell them that what you are thinking about is not an item of clothing?” The teacher repeated this information: “What I’m thinking of is not an item of clothing. It’s something we hold over our heads when it rains.” Suddenly, a number of children shouted, “Umbrella!”
Similar problems come up in curriculum design. Consider a science lesson on absorbency of materials. To start, the teacher brought out trays with bowls of water, eyedroppers, and mounds of items for a group of five preschoolers. Children were to sort the items into two plastic tubs, one for items that absorb water and one for items that don’t. The teacher tried to show children how to use eye-droppers to moisten the items, saying, “Squeeze and let go.” But this prompted some children to squeeze and drop their eye-droppers. Soon, children abandoned the droppers and drifted into dramatic play (e.g., washing dishes, playing in a bathtub), and the teacher gave up teaching the intended content, or anything else.
When the teacher complained that preschoolers are not ready for science experiments, I suggested redesigning the activity for a second group the next day. Small squeeze bottles replaced eye-droppers, and the children were given only one or two items at a time. To start, the teacher picked up a piece of lamination film and placed it on a block standing on end, explaining, “This block is my house; the lamination film is my roof.” She squirted water to produce “rain,” which ran off into her tray. Next, each child assembled a block house and created “rain” with a squeeze bottle. After they played for a while, the teacher collected items and distributed sponges for mopping trays. After collecting the sponges, the teacher provided a second demonstration, squirting water on top of a Duplo block and then wicking it off using a tightly rolled paper towel. Intrigued, the children tried it themselves, then attached the wet Duplo blocks to dry ones to determine whether the blocks had changed size. Then, the teacher dripped water onto a piece of dry sponge. Children watched intently as each wet spot swelled, then dripped water onto their own dry sponges and watched them swell. And so it went. At clean-up time, children were offered choices of items from a tray, to see which would wipe the table dry. These instructional changes made the activity more playful and also more teacher-guided.
Why do so many preschool teachers have difficulty providing instruction? In part, it’s because they are “ill-prepared,” as both Snow and Stipek ("Early Childhood Education at a Crossroads," HEL, July/August 2005) suggest. Can we overcome that? I think so. In my early literacy work, I am seeing promising results in projects that use video recordings and verbatim transcripts of instructional episodes. In meetings with their coaches, or in study groups with other teachers, coaches, and a literacy consultant, teachers discuss children’s behavior and their own teaching behavior, including their verbal interactions. The changes in the quality of teachers’ talk have been fairly dramatic in some cases.
In addition to serious reflection about their own teaching, teachers might also benefit if curriculum guides included information about children’s actual questions and comments, along with their suggestions for questions to ask during or after reading the stories a curriculum provides. Teachers are told to “respond” and “discuss.” Never, however, are there transcripts of children’s responses, which often reveal misunderstandings. And never is there information about how a skilled teacher might guide a child toward greater understanding. These kinds of resources situate teachers within real instructional contexts and provide powerful instructional demonstrations.
Funding for curriculum development outside the commercial publishing arena is also sorely needed. Commercial publishers typically designate researchers as “authors” but rely on their own, often unqualified, writers to fashion the content into instruction. We need to utilize the instructional design skill of experienced teachers if we are to answer Stipek’s call for more knowledge about teaching subject matter and more effective application of this knowledge.
Dr. Schickedanz, a professor at Boston University in the Department of Literacy and Language, Counseling and Development, is the author of Much More than the ABC’s (NAEYC, 1999) and co-author of Writing in Preschool: Orchestrating Meaning and Marks (IRA, 2004). Dr. Schickedanz serves on IRA’s Commission on Early Childhood and as a literacy consultant to several Early Reading First projects.
