Yardsticks

POSITIVE ATTRIBUTES—THE SENSATIONAL SIXES

No one is more industrious than six-year-olds. They take on every activity, at home and at school, with unbridled enthusiasm. Work is completed in no time at all, though quantity, not quality, is the measure that counts for sixes, along with trying new things. Being first to read a new book, spell a new word, make a new friend, play a new game…all matter a great deal to sixes.

Children at six love surprises and treats from their teachers and parents. A note in a lunchbox, a message from the teacher, is special each time one appears. Sixes also love jokes, silly songs and guessing games. Their vocabulary is expanding at a rapid rate and their minds are like sponges, soaking up new facts and ideas constantly. At this age, conversation cannot be contained, nor should it be; theirs is an out-loud world. The talk is constant and contagious—in the classroom, the car, and right up to bed time. There is so much to report on and tell the grownups about! They might not know everything there is to know about butterflies or rain or addition or measuring or “Knock Knock” jokes, but they love to talk about what they do know.

Children at this age love to be outdoors, whether to learn a game in physical education, play at recess, go on a field trip, or check on the weather. They love their classroom jobs and get excited to see what their new job will be each time their teachers changes the assignments. Likewise at home, they enjoy having a family job as long as it changes rather frequently. Novelty seems like a birthright to sixes—except when it comes to bedtime routines, to which they generally like to cling.

First grade was named for sixes, who love to be first at everything possible. That’s why teachers rotate line leaders and meeting leaders, message readers and door closers (because the next best thing to being first is being last). The enthusiasm of six is delightful and exhausting. It’s an age that, with so much going on, goes by in a wink.

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POSITIVE ATTRIBUTES—THE FEISTY FIVE-AND-A-HALF YEAR OLDS

There is a discernable turning point in the fifth year where the focused, centered, rule-following kindergartener becomes the full-fledged explorer. A growth spurt is beginning that will last through the sixth year. “Stretching” is a good word for this age.  At home and in class, children are often stretching the truth, testing the rules, seeing what they can do on their own as they become more confident and self-assured.

Like children at 2½ , children at 5½ can be oppositional. But this is more a sign of cognitive and social growth than anything else. Children are much more prone to want to figure things out for themselves rather than to get them right, which was a main focus just a few months before. Learning and social interaction get more complicated and confusing. There are more mistakes, tears, and semi-tantrums over best friends or following directions because children are engrossed in the discovery of the way they think the world should work for them.

Such willfulness and sensitivity are positive attributes at this age. But five-and-a-half-year-old behavior can be confusing and upsetting to parents and teachers who do not recognize this developmental shift with some awareness and sense of humor as they watch and listen to their older five-year-olds want to take on the world.

This is a time when good question-asking is one of the best parent and teacher tools around. It gives children choices that help them to follow routines from the strength of their own decision-making, rather than struggling with an adult directive. So, “Would you like to finish picking up your clothes before or after your snack?” may work much better than “Pick up your clothes or there will be no snack.”

“Do you remember where the counting blocks go?” may be more successful than “Put the counting blocks in the bin, now.”

“How long do you think you’ll need to finish your journal page?” may create less anxiety and more productivity than “You have two minutes to finish that page in your journal.”

There are, however, social and cultural differences in the way parents address their children to get them to follow directions. Some families are used to things being very explicit and authoritative; others are used to things being more open-ended.

Teachers should be sensitive to these differences, but at this particular age in classroom settings, choice is a universally useful tool to advance learning. Maximum learning happens when children have opportunities to “approximate” and discover right answers and right behavior, with the guidance of adults. This sense of having discovered something on your own is the “Aha!” experience that creates young scientists, artists, and problem-solvers in math and in life.

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POSITIVE ATTRIBUTES—THE PHENOMENAL FIVES

Oh, what fun to be five! Busy and loving every moment of it, it seems five-year-olds may be the happiest people on the planet. Each day is a brand-new adventure, and if the structure of life around them is strong, they’re good to go.

Fives are actively and selectively receptive, as they take in the world through their senses. They see, smell, hear, touch, and taste just about everything, but their secret is that they do so one thing at a time. Fives are focused—they operate in the “near field” of life. This provides them the gift of detail. They do not see just the butterfly, they see the wing of the butterfly, or its proboscis uncurling into a flower, having snuck up on it and squatted down quietly to watch for as long as the butterfly pauses in flight.

The butterfly is a good metaphor for five, for children at this age are active and go from one location to another for food and sustenance but pay careful attention to what they’re doing wherever they land. When they need a rest, they’re not afraid to take it. I was surprised during a recent classroom visit that even this late in the school year I saw three children at the end of Quiet Time, after recess and lunch, who had to be awakened from sleep by their teacher.

Every location in the classroom and at home appears full of possibilities. And fives know how to get the most out of each possibility for as long as it holds their interest. Play, of course, offers endless potential and is the five-year-old’s primary occupation. The adults may call it something else, like “Choice Time,” but five-year-olds know what they are doing. Usually whatever five-year-olds are doing can hold their attention for a half hour or even more if we give them that kind of sustained time. Their imagination will shut out the outside world and create a “play nest” in which their minds feel safe and engaged.

You can observe this focus easily when you see a five-year-old working alone with a bunch of Legos or a lump of clay. But also notice how secure a small group of fives feels wrapped up together in the housekeeping corner or building with unit blocks.

Fives adore their teachers and parents and significant adults. They expect that the grown-ups will create the safe boundaries, tell them what is happening next, where they are going and if they are there yet. Fives are literal. In Kindergarten last week a teacher was leading a class activity to make thank you cards for volunteers who had helped out in the classroom. She wisely asked, “So, children, what do you think the word volunteer means?” There was a slight pause. It was the children thinking.

“Like when the man said, ‘can I have a volunteer from the audience’?” offered one boy. Many other children then chimed in with similar accounts, immediately accepting their colleague’s definition. The teacher acknowledged each of these and then skillfully scaffolded their thinking to other connected concepts of “helping out”. The children caught on.

“I volunteer when I pass out the paper,” said a girl, as she drew her thank you card showing just that. Everyone was happy to make a card for the people they remembered who had come to their class. And the big word, volunteer, took on different specific meanings as the cards emerged from their minds onto their papers.

Ah, but such focused developmental bliss does not last forever, for these children are about to enter the exciting world of discovery and opposition of five and a half. Stay tuned.

Photo copyright Beth McConnell, 2006.

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The Fabulous Fours--Lily's Learning Pad

Speaking of positive attributes, my wife and I, Nana and Papa, have been the recipients of all this fabulous four-year-old stage of development has to offer…from our granddaughter, Lily, now 4.9 years old.

Optimism isn’t a big enough word to hold the indomitable spirit of this child, but it communicates the idea. Every time we turn around or sit down there is a new personality or role standing, or dancing, before us. Doctor Lily, Nurse Lily (her mom is studying to be a nurse), Pharmacist Lily enters our living room with baskets or a baby carriage full of supplies to set up the hospital, office, or pharmacy, depending on…well, we’re not quite sure what the choices depend on. Dancer, queen, animal groomer, writer, scientist, gardener…the list goes on.

Lily’s imagination fuels her life, engages her mind, helps insulate her from rough patches, her older brother’s teasing (naturally), and other real-life disappointments and sadnesses. She is also blessed with a magical preschool environment in which she is able to explore who she is and is becoming. She explores in the mirror of her peers and in the company of careful, caring, and nurturing adults who open the door of learning each day with happy spirits and well planned schedules and activities.

We’re on the way to preschool, to preschool, to preschool

We’re on the way to preschool, to preschool today.

We’re driving up the mountain, the mountain, the mountain

We’re driving up the mountain, to preschool today.

Lily and I have made up these and a score of other verses that we sing together on the days I drive her to school. Oh, how to capture and bottle this enthusiasm for learning, as our children grow and develop! For Lily has not yet learned or heard that she is not capable in some area of learning. She sees herself as a writer and reader and scientist and healer. And she is. Just as for her fabulous four-year-old peers, the world awakes each morning especially for them, fresh and new and exciting.

Preschool is the first real “college”: “a group of people, usually of the same profession, who have agreed duties and rights” (Encarta Dictionary). Here’s my wish list for all “Colleges of Childhood”:

 

AGREED DUTIES

o      Take turns as song leader,

snack passer-outer, partner

o      Share

o      Pick up

AGREED RIGHTS

o      Safety

o      Play

o      Friendship

o      Learning

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Positive Attributes—The Fabulous Fours!

It’s so great to be around four-year-olds. In general, they are some of the happiest and most fun people on the planet. Their interest and energy is mercurial. They throw themselves into nearly every activity with enthusiasm and a sense of purpose. They move from activity to activity with a sense of abandon, often forgetting to pick up after one activity as they give in to their excited focus on what’s next. To say that they are eager is an understatement.

Everything about four-year-olds signals rapid development. Their bodies and minds are in accelerated growth mode. Somewhere during this year we notice how tall they have gotten, how clothing and shoe sizes have changed. Just as they are often trying on new clothing sizes, they are also trying on and taking off different personalities, roles, and interests. This they do with an amazing sense of imagination and humor. Nothing is more fun and delightful to a four-year-old than pretending. They are equally interested in playing grown-up roles of doctors and firefighters, mommies and daddies, dancers and soldiers, teachers and students, as well as fairies and princes, lions and tigers, super heroes and monsters.

Imaginative play is one of the best avenues and critical for the development of a child’s understanding of right and wrong, early application of social rules, and manners. Whether they’re playing by themselves, with an imaginary friend, or with one playmate or a small group, you can watch and listen to them “directing the play,” telling themselves or others out loud what to do and how to behave. They sometimes can seem especially “bossy” (particularly with their imaginary friends), but this assertiveness is positive rehearsal activity for learning acceptable limits and for learning how to be a real friend and helper.

Fours especially love to play out of doors. Expansive play space matches their expansive sense of self. They are quite literally and physiologically drawn to the horizon and love to run and ride, pull, dig, and climb. Their expansive horizons for learning new things are enhanced by the opportunity for outdoor play.

It’s hard to miss the rapid expansion of vocabulary at four, a key indicator of intellectual and cognitive growth. Fours are trying on new word outfits all the time…nonsense words, rhyming words, unacceptable words, gigantic words, words that grown-ups say, nonsense babble that babies say, sounds that animals say, languages that other people speak, imaginary languages that fairies speak.

Four-year-old activity is a special language, too, full of statements about what they’re trying to learn. They want to try on jobs—at home and in the classroom—setting the table, passing out things, leading grace at table or a game at circle time, being the teacher, being the parent.

They like feeling independent, but when they want our help they want it eagerly and immediately: a push on the swing, a snack, help with making a letter look right, knowing if this is the right foot, tying a shoelace, getting us to play with them. They look up to us and they are constantly trying out who they are with the models we present to them. Parents and teachers can see and hear themselves in their four-year-olds by the ways they hold and move their bodies, their gestures and facial expressions, and the very phrases and nuances of tone of voice and choice of words. These are some of the more endearing qualities of four.

For more of the challenging attributes of fours, you can read a thorough account in my book, Yardsticks, Children in the Classroom, Ages 4-14 available from the Responsive Classroom website. If you have questions about your four-year-old or four-year-old behavior in school settings, feel free to post a question, thought, or comment here on the blog.

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Positve Attributes--Earliest Thoughts

The idea of spending more time thinking about and attending to children’s strengths and positive attributes at each phase of their development can provide a refreshing perspective on our jobs as parents and educators. It helps us see what we can learn from our children, rather than what we need to do to fix them. In fact, this is probably the greatest single message and contribution to education and parenting from the field of child development…watch your children!

The art of observation was the basic tool of the first scientists in the field. Jean Piaget developed many theories at the beginning of his work by watching his own children grow and develop. Arnold Gesell watched children in nursery and laboratory settings and pioneered the use of cinematography to record the progressions of physical development. Maria Montessori and Lev Vygotsky were keen observers of children’s behavior and modes of learning and carefully taught their students how to observe children at play and work in school settings.

Today, we have more sophisticated observational protocols to record and analyze children’s development through the use of video techniques as well as scientifically normed and validated scales and benchmarks. Brain research and use of brain scans is giving us new insights into the way the child’s mind develops. These understandings provide new insight into why children develop as they do and what we can learn from attending to the positive attributes marking each phase of development.

“Inside the Baby’s Mind,” a powerful article by Jonah Lehrer that appeared in many newspapers recently, highlights the positive mental attributes scientists are beginning to discover about children’s thinking in infancy. This article provides fresh insight and evidence that even in infancy the developing mind is mapping and building vital and enormously positive attributes. Reading this article reinforced two things for me: first, the critical importance of preserving childhood and childhood activity, and second, as parents and teachers, learning to let the children’s interests and ways of seeing and navigating the world guide us as we guide them into their futures.

In my next post I’ll begin to share my ideas about ways we can attend to children’s positive attributes during the school-age years, starting at age four.

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CHILDREN’S STRENGTHS AND POSITIVE CHALLENGES: DEVELOPMENTAL EXPECTATIONS

As parents and teachers we are keenly interested in knowing and understanding everything we can about our children as they grow and mature. We cannot help but wonder if certain behaviors are typical or normal at the age or grade in school our children are currently navigating. Often we may find ourselves most attentive to what we may perceive as negative or inappropriate behavior or possible deficits we suspect in learning abilities or personality and social or emotional development. Even physical development comes under close and critical scrutiny.

As we compare our children with others in their same age range, it’s natural for us to create a kind of mental ranking about where one child falls in our understanding of what is appropriate at a certain age or grade. Is she behind or ahead academically? Too shy or too bossy? Is he “keeping up” with his peers socially? How does her height compare to others in her class? His weight? Is she a leader or a follower? Why does he behave like this? When will she outgrow that?

We worry about and compare siblings in our own families, the children in our classrooms. This normal way of observing and measuring sometimes keeps us from seeing more of the strengths children are exhibiting and developing at every age and from appreciating all the positive aspects of the social and cognitive learning challenges they face.

For the next several blog entries I’m going to focus on and extract from my book, Yardsticks, Children in the Classroom, Ages 4-14, some of the particular developmental strengths and positive challenges children present at different ages and in different grades. In reading these reflections, I hope you’ll find yourself smiling as you recognize developmental assets your children are exhibiting and that you’ll find moments of rich understanding and appreciation from focusing on the positive.

I look forward to your questions and comments.

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Summer Camp and the Responsive Classroom® approach

I received an email from a reader recently inquiring about the application of Responsive Classroom^® practices to summer camp. The reader had found reference in my writing to the fact that some of the foundational ideas for the Responsive Classroom approach were drawn from camping practices and wondered about how Responsive Classroom practices might now be useful in return.

The many well-developed details of Responsive Classroom practice today certainly have utility in any situation in which we’re working with groups of children. But there’s much to extrapolate by just looking back at some of our original linking of summer camp and classroom “innovations” over 25 years ago.

Here’s part of my email reply:

Yes, it's true, a major metaphor for Responsive Classroom practice in schools is the rich tradition of summer camp. Isn't it amazing how in a week or two a camp can create community, rules, traditions, ceremonies, and life-long memories? The core practices that make a camp (or classroom or school) great, I believe, are these:

n       Relationships—kids go right to their cabins, meet their counselors and counselors-in-training, know the name of their cabin, find their bunk, and learn the path to the bathroom.

n       Environment—kids get the lay of the land; go on a hike around camp, maybe draw a map or have a scavenger hunt. They go with their cabin group, they deepen their relationships with their new friends as they go—right away. Perhaps they get a camp T-shirt the first day.

n       Safety—Rules for safety are laid down by counselors first thing. On the first tour of camp, they learn where the poison ivy is? Can they identify it? Where are the camp boundaries? What are the waterfront rules? Where’s the nurse's cabin? What are the rules for calling home? All the "practical life" necessities to know about your new community . . .

n       Fun through ceremony and traditions—Does the cabin group have a cheer? A song? Learn it quick, we'll need to yell, sing, shout it out at dinner in the dining hall. First night of camp there's always a counselor skit in the mess hall, a campfire with singing, a welcome ceremony, or some other “we always” ritual. On the last night, there’s a major closing ceremony, special ways of saying goodbye, plans to meet again . . . 

n       Clear, unchanging routines and schedules, posted in cabins and in common areas—Everyone knows what's happening today, what camp-wide events will be featured this week. Daily: Flag raising ceremony, meal traditions and chores, favorite activities, down-time for reflection, special events, sharing of artistic creations, new songs and skits, writings, accomplishments.

When all these ingredients are mixed together well, a community can be created in a week that lasts for generations. The same can be said for an individual teacher's classroom or an entire school.

A key to mixing the ingredients well is the amount of time provided for bringing the staff together before camp begins. Time is needed for training and bonding the young adults and senior staff who will be the models and who will pass on the skills of summertime and the values of the camp to their young campers. The best camps devote several days or a week to this training, knowing how critical it is to camp success.

Schools would increase their success and productivity, I am convinced, by building a week of such clearly focused adult community building into the teacher and staff contracts at the beginning of each school year.

We could be more proactive in making sure that all school personnel are conversant with policy and procedures for establishing the new school community each fall. We could make sure all school personnel had clear, common understandings of values, schedules and routines. We could give all teachers a chance to talk at length with last year's teachers of incoming classes.

If we took the time and the care to do these things, we would enrich the beginning-of-school experience for all children and their teachers and move more deeply and smoothly into the academic and social curriculum of school each year.

Photo: Stephen Eastop for The Portsea Camp

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Teaching and Learning about Paradox: The Hidden Curriculum at the End of the School Year

Paradox – a statement or situation that seems to be contradictory,
 but in fact is or may be true.

The end of each school year presents itself to teachers, students, and parents in endless contradictions, stark and glorious contrasts of seeming absurdity and meaning-filled traditions and rites of passage.

With less than a month to go to the final day of school, with Little League and softball dominating daylight savings time’s late lingering light and later bedtimes for families, state data gurus schedule the NCLB granddaddy math, science and history exams.

Each year in June, as children celebrate and share their academic, musical, artistic, and social accomplishments in their classrooms and schools with classmates, teachers, and parents, documenting the power of a small group of people to model the best principles of our democracy, we simultaneously and deliberately dismantle what we have created only to begin all over again in September.

While over and over again we hear that one of the most significant variables in helping struggling students stay engaged in learning and keeping them in school is a relationship with at least one significant adult, each June we shuffle the deck to ensure that these students will need to go looking for another such anchor in September.

The close of the school year is about endings and beginnings. Elementary school is like a five or six act play; middle school, a three-act; and high school, a four-act. As Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts” (As You Like It, Act II, Scene VI).

These annual school cycles teach us different truths about teaching and learning and are embedded in the greater life cycle in a way that offers us the recurring possibility for deep insight into welcoming new beginnings and honoring meaningful conclusions in all aspects of our lives.

My favorite image of the paradox of the end of the school year is the famous mobius strip with its mystery of no beginning and no end; a form so simple any kindergarten child can learn to construct it out of a strip of paper with one simple twist and a piece of tape…and so complex as to go on forever.

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Spring transitions call for more structure, not less

As highlighted in my last blog entry, it’s that time of year when there’s more to do then there is time to do it. No one feels the anxiety of this more than the children in our classrooms, and the children who feel it most intensely are those facing the greatest challenges.

Whether we are a parent of one of these most needy kids or one of their teachers, we’ll begin to see what I call “summer anxiety” bloom earlier in spring in them than in the other children. As when we see a crocus emerging from the snow or the first daffodil, we’re often surprised to see the behavior of our early harbingers of things to come.

Perhaps from a rough start at the beginning of the school year, this child has made significant progress academically and socially, thanks to the combined efforts of teachers, staff, and parents working and communicating together around puzzling academic struggles and the ups and downs of friendship patterns. The child has shown courage in reaching out to a new student who has come into the class and finally seems to have a close classmate.

But not long after spring break, many of these gains, on the surface, seem to disappear. Old patterns of work refusal and anger on the playground surface. When the new friend plays with other classmates, the child refuses to come in from recess.

This is a signal, a red flag if you will. With the keen adaptive sensitivity that so many of our neediest children possess, the child who has benefited so remarkably from the clear structures, supports, and predictability of classroom routines and practices has sensed that the structures are disappearing. Things are beginning to feel different. There’s too much going on. The teacher seems distracted; she doesn’t have as much time to pay attention to the child.

As adults, we may not sense the increased level of our own anxiety in this season as quickly as these children sense it in us. In a way, they’re our barometers, and we’d do well to watch and listen to what their actions are telling us.

Essentially, the message is that in the last weeks of the school year we need more structure, not less. This is the time to tighten up so that we do not lose all that we’ve gained. We need to make sure we can take time during these final weeks to cherish each of the children we’re about to pass on. So, paradoxically, we must go back to beginnings, help children remember all the basic rules of our classroom, of kindness, of academic rigor, of how to be good school citizens in the halls, on the playground, in the cafeteria.

And we must do this “back to basics” work even when it’s too hot and we have to take tests on a day on which we also have softball and we’re trying to arrange the end-of-the year field trip. Our extra effort will benefit all the children. Most especially, it will benefit those children who came to us struggling a little (or a lot) academically or socially, children who do not know who will care for them or even where they will be living when school gets out in June.

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Spring Transitions

Pretty much no matter where you live or teach or where your children go to school, this time of year, and in some cases, this particular week, marks the beginning of many annual rituals and transitions full of difficult dilemmas and wonderful paradoxes.

In some school districts, children are just returning from a week of April vacation or returned not too long ago from a spring break. The end of the school year is in sight, yet there’s still an enormous amount of academic ground to cover. In our state, AYP assessments in mathematics, in particular, loom in May, not to mention science, history, etc. Meanwhile, baseball, softball, and other wonderful springtime family pursuits are ramping up into full gear. Homework becomes a challenge at home, attendance at after-school homework help sessions drops off, and classroom engagement requires thoughtful lesson planning -- to put it mildly!

Many wonderful traditional end-of-the-year events need careful planning, too: the spring concert or play, the “Step-Up” days to give children a chance to see what it will be like in next year’s grade (while they try to pay attention to learning this year’s skills!). And don’t forget the big end-of-the-year culminating field trips and, oh, yes, field day, the PTO family picnic and . . . did I forget anything?

In the midst of all this busy business, teachers must also be attending meetings to think about next year’s curriculum and next year’s classes (including in many cases what and where they will be teaching), while at the same time finalizing their reports and report cards on this year’s class to provide the best summary of the year for parents and next year’s teachers.

As all this wonderfulness whirls around us, we should pause and, for the sake of the children, work very hard to plan time in every school day (and at home) to slow the pace. We need to give children time for meaningful reflection about all the wonderful things they’ve learned (and are still learning) in their classroom this year, what a wonderful learning community they’ve built, what strong skills they’ve acquired. We must remember that the children are living in this moment. This time right now is a piece of their childhood memory under construction. Handle with care.

For terrific resources on planning for this time of year, go to the Responsive Classroom^® website: www.responsiveclassroom.org. There you’ll see that the April 2009 newsletter has a number of articles related to this topic. While you’re visiting, also use the search bar on the site to Google “last six weeks of school” for a host of other great ideas!

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