The Crazy Pre-K Classroom

As a Mom to two boys 11 and 6 and as a Pre-Kindergarten teacher I have seen first hand the successes and failures that children experience based on their early childhood experiences with language. My oldest son was diagnosed at 4 with receptive and expressive language disorders, he spent over a year 3x per week in language therapy to build his language skills. Receptive language disorder is the inability to keep words that you have heard and expressive language disorder is the inability to retrieve and say those words. You can see where we had a big problem on our hands. Not only could Conner not retain words but he also could not find them in his brain to say them. If you think of the brain like a filing cabinet it is as if his words were filed in the wrong drawer and were lost when needed. There was no specific language in our home, objects were described as "things" and this often lead to frustration for Conner when he could not describe what he was trying to say. His lack...

I just came across a post form Mrs. Trayer at Teaching Gifted Kinders that struck a chord with me. She was expressing some frustration with the current state of teachers being evaluated upon test scores and not having time to reach their gifted students. I have to say that I agree and would add that we are doing a disservice to all of our children by "dumbing down" instead of setting high expectations. I teach in a private school with an advanced curriculum. We are approximatly 1 year ahead in curriculum standards of public schools. Which means I truly teach Kindergarten just to 4 year olds. I see many advantages to setting high standards even with young children. I believe in making my lessons appropriate for all through small group instruction and differentiated instruction which I know those of you in public school do as well. However I see one difference that I can make that many of you do not have the opportunity to. Planning challenging, high level whole grou...

      I have met many people who do not believe children who are 4 can or should be taught academically to read well and fluently. If you met me 7 years ago you would find a person who agreed, but I have to say over my last few years of teaching my mind has been changed. The Pre-K program I work for used to be play based and then very decidedly went academic based. A huge change for the better of our children, here are 10 reasons why children need an academic pre-Kindergarten program. 1. Don't let your local public school tell you that your child needs to know nothing when they get to kindergarten, most children are loosing invaluable learning time if teaching is postponed till they are five. Developmentally children should know their letters, sounds, numbers and some words before they go to formal school. Plus, those who attend an academic pre-kindergarten ar more likely to be given a chance in the gifted and talented program in the public schools becasue the...