Preschool Simi Valley: Emergent Literacy Skills in Preschool, continued

Preschool Simi Valley has updated their curriculum to facilitate learning in elementary school.

Preschool Simi Valley: Although there are countless examples of preschoolers learning how to read, most of the instruction in early childhood education focuses on pre-reading and pre-writing or emergent literacy skills. These precursors to actual reading and writing develop through cognitively challenging talk, exposure to rare words, shared book reading, reading to students using dialogic reading techniques, play, and use of playful activities to stimulate learning. A study was conducted to evaluate preschool emergent literacy learning activities and determine how they affect student outcomes. Researchers found that small group, teacher led, specific literacy instruction was most effective in teaching alphabet naming, letter-word recognition, and vocabulary growth.

Because of new understanding about preschool Simi Valley education and the significant differences from traditional preschool curriculum, more research is needed in this area to support and educate early childhood teachers and determine a set of ‘best practices’ that will make an impact on the reading scores of fourth graders. Educational experts write that there are several emergent literacy skills acquired in preschool and kindergarten that are consistent predictors of later reading success. It is clear that preschool teachers need to do more than “teach” social and emotional skills to do their part in boosting standardized test scores in public school. Teachers at Leap & Bound Academy in Simi Valley do this consistently year after year. Call for a tour today.

Early Childhood Education and multiple learning styles.

Early childhood education must facilitate multiple styles of learning or risk losing the interest of early learners.

In early childhood education it is more important than in any other grade to incorporate the tools needed to teach to multiple learning styles (See Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences). I am reminded of the cartoonish idea of trying to herd cats – it’s just not possible. And trying to teach a preschooler how to do math when that is clearly not something they want to do is much the same. In early childhood education, the trick is to make learning fun and integrated so the children don’t know they are actually working. Instead of trying to teach them math by counting dots, we read books about numbers, count teddy bears and hops on the floor. We color pictures of flowers with corresponding numbers and go on nature walks to find a certain number of rocks. And, there are, of course, many counting songs to sing!

Howard Gardner made a breakthrough in early childhood education (and all levels of education, for that matter) when he came up with his theory of Multiple Intelligences. He has found that there are nine (and counting) different ways people learn: through hearing, reading, doing, interacting with others, thinking – both intrapersonal and existentially, art and music, mathematics, and the natural world. A well rounded person will be able to learn through any style but most of us tend to gravitate to one or two in particular. As we get older, we are expected more and more to be able to conform to all styles of learning. Not so with early childhood education – it’s like herding cats! Preschool teachers have to have many tricks up their sleeves to keep the short attention span of young children engaged. Check out Leap and Bound Academy Simi Valley at Cochran and Stearns to see great teachers in action.

Simi Valley Childcare: Emergent Literacy Skills in Preschool

Abstract: Simi Valley child care facilities need to update their curriculum to facilitate learning in elementary school.

 Simi Valley Childcare: Last year, only one third of the nation’s fourth graders read at a proficient level or better and the same number read at a basic level. This means that one third of all fourth grade students in the United States cannot read and this number has not changed much since 1992, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Federal programs base the funding they dole out to school districts on the performance of the students in that district. This forces schools to dig deeper to find ways to improve these dismal statistics. Since 1997, states have set standards of learning in every subject for every grade level down through kindergarten. Now schools are looking to Simi Valley child care to help increase student performance and, because preschools have traditionally been a place for young children to play and socialize, much research is being done to determine what, and how much, preschoolers should be expected to learn.

In the course of a study into the beliefs of preschool teachers regarding print literacy instruction, some challenges facing school districts were found in their efforts to raise scores. First, preschool teachers do not have a consistent understanding of how and when children learn to read and write and some have no understanding. Second, preschool teachers are not uniformly knowledgeable about literacy; this includes information from how a student should hold a pencil to the cognitive development in a child’s brain. And, third, there is a huge variation in classroom practices and none of the participants in the study knew if their form of instruction was the best way to foster print literacy. Understanding and changing the beliefs of preschool teachers is important because of their relation to practice. Teachers must know what they are doing and why they are doing it in order for learning to take place. To be continued…