Engaging young children in nature's science lab
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Credit: Erin Brownfield, EdSource
A kindergartner inspects the prickly leaves of an aloe plant at Gabriela Mistral elementary school.
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It's spring, and here in California, we are often blessed with weather that calls us to step out of the classroom and into nature.
In an article for Teaching Young Children, Deanna Pecaski McLennan, PhD, an author and preschool teacher, looks outside and sees opportunities for children to learn about early math and science.
Young children, she writes, "can spend hours engaged in rich, imaginative play using nothing more than the natural materials they find....
Pebbles, pinecones, feathers, and leaves are wondrous and hold so much potential for math and science inquiry!"
McLennan offers specific instructions for making the most of outdoor learning in preschool settings: How to set up engaging outdoor spaces, using natural materials that encourage counting and sorting, and activities like observation and discussion of natural patterns in objects such as leaves and spiderwebs.
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Credit: Erin Brownfield, EdSource.
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According to EdSource's Carolyn Jones, many elementary schools are also seeing the advantages of turning blacktops into "greentops" and creating outdoor learning spaces. In a recent article, she quotes Gerald Lieberman, head of the State Education and Environment Roundtable and an author of the state's Blueprint for Environmental Literacy. "It's easy to have a garden. It's harder to have a learning garden," he said. "Everyone loves gardening, but if teachers are just putting seeds in a pot and saying, 'Look! They're turning into flowers!', that's a missed opportunity. It's got to connect with the classroom science standards."
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Credit: S. Braun
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According to a new EdSource survey of the largest 25 California school districts, o
nly a small number are taking advantage of a state law that allows them to enroll more 4-year-olds in transitional kindergarten.
In 2015, the California Legislature gave districts permission to expand transitional kindergarten to include 4-year-olds as long as they turned 5 before the end of the school year, but with only partial reimbursement from the state. So far, only six of the state's 25 largest school districts offer these programs, known as "expanded transitional kindergarten."
Districts that are not expanding their programs cite a range of reasons, primarily a lack of state funding to cover the costs of the program and a shortage of classrooms to enroll the extra children.
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Credit: Carolyn Jones, EdSource
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At the
International Community School, a public school in Oakland where nearly all the students are English learners and classes are taught in English and Spanish, teachers say that the
Next Generation Science Standards are already having a big impact on increasing students' scientific knowledge and improving their English skills.
Kindergarten teacher Micaela Morse, who spends about an hour a day, four days a week, teaching science under the new standards, said her students' English skills have improved significantly and, most notably, her students seem self-confident and engaged when learning science.
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In a commentary for
Education Week,
Deborah Stipek, professo
r and the former dean of the Stanford
Graduate School of Education, argues that the elementary school "fade-out" of academic gains from attending preschool that have been found in
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Credit: EdSource
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The problem, she writes, is that "
instruction in the early elementary grades is typically not well aligned with -- and therefore does not make effective use of -- the advantages high-quality preschool confers." Stipek believes t
he job of early elementary teaching must be "to build strategically on the gains made in preschool."
Stipek suggests several possible remedies for the "fade-out" effect including careful assessment of incoming kindergarten students' skills to avoid reteaching of material they have already mastered, and alignment of curriculum between preschools and elementary schools.
She also decries how attention to social and emotional learning comes to a stop once preschool is over. "These skills are not just important for relationships with peers and teachers; they also play a central role in learning. Impulse control, for example, is highly correlated with academic skills. A failure to build on the progress in self-regulation and other social skills made in preschool is a missed opportunity to maximize student learning in the early elementary grades."
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In an opinion piece for the
San Jose Mercury News, Muhammed Chaudhry, president and CEO of the Silicon Valley Education Foundation and Jon R. Gundry, superintendent of the Santa Clara County Office of Education, argue that focusing on early math skills should not be forgotten in the effort to improve preschoolers' literacy skills. They write: "A
child's level of math knowledge in preschool predicts success in primary and even secondary school. Moreover, a child's grasp of early math skills can predict later reading achievement even better than early reading skills do."
A new study led by James J. Heckman, a Nobel laureate economist at the University of Chicago, makes a powerful argument for investment in public preschool, according to The New York Times: "High-quality care during the earliest years can influence whether both mothers and children born into disadvantage lead more successful lives." Help paying for high-quality preschool, the study found, is especially important for low-income families because it can "propel generations of children toward increased earnings, better jobs, improved health, more education and decreased criminal activity as adults."
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