The Kindergarten Curriculum - Research Paper Example

The Kindergarten Curriculum Although young children always seem to be just playing in schools, it takes a lot of work to design their curriculum if they are to acquire and develop the necessary skills they need in their development. Kindergartners experience several and rapid changes in their physical, cognitive, social, emotional and moral development. They are in transition between early childhood into the middle childhood stage and much is expected of them. Being eager learners, they have the capacity to absorb much so adults around them should prepare the learning environment to optimize their potentials (Eliason & Jenkins, 2008). One big step is to design a developmentally appropriate, integrated curriculum for them. The appropriate kindergarten approach stems from the constructivist theories of Piaget and Vygotsky. Chaille (2008) argues that constructivism believes that children are constructing knowledge on their own and the learning environment considers and respects that. “In a constructivist classroom, children are constructing an understanding that they are building their own theories and constructing their own knowledge through interaction with a knowledgeable adult and other children” (Chaille, 2008, p. 5). It has much value in helping children use their minds well. Constructivist curriculum helps promote thinking, problem-solving and decision-making in children making them flexible and creative thinkers (Cromwell, 2000). Constructivist programs do not adhere to totally teacher-directed strategies, as most behaviorist schools do. This way, when children create their own learning through hands-on experiences, they retain concepts better and are more motivated to gain and develop skills. Schweinhart & Weikart (1999) presented studies that evidenced the long-term benefits of child-initiated learning in early childhood programs, as such activities help them develop social responsibility and interpersonal skills as they grow up. The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) is an association that sets standards for high quality programs for children. It advocates developmentally-appropriate practices to ensure that children are exposed to the best conditions to thrive in their learning (NAEYC, 2005). NAEYC recommends an integrated curriculum for young children. Littledyke (2008) has defined integrated curriculum as such: “Integrated curriculum thus refers to the use of several different strategies across several different domains and encompassing project and process approaches for holistic learning and development designed to support meaningful learning for children” (Littledyke, 2008, p.21-22). The principle of curriculum integration pertains to a form of instruction that provides learning experiences that combine content areas across multiple disciplines collectively. The initiative to integrate curriculum began when John Dewey proposed that curriculum be linked to real-life experiences and organized around activities that interest and engage children actively. Dewey asserted that children’s interests naturally progress into appropriate learning activities and extend to various areas of study. As implied by the NAEYC guidelines for appropriate curriculum , the concept of integration can also be attributed to the integrated nature of development; that is, development in the different domains does not occur in isolation; rather they influence one another (Bredekamp and Rosegrant, 1992). An integrated curriculum allows the young child to perceive the world around him more clearly. Furthermore, it provides opportunities for in-depth exploration of a topic. Learning has a thorough coverage, it provides more choices and therefore more motivation to learn and greater satisfaction with the results. It promotes more active learning and an opportunity for the teacher to learn along with the children and model lifelong learning. It is also a more efficient use of student and teacher time (Brewer, 2001). An integrated curriculum consists of a number of strategies that can be applied to deepen meaningfulness and support conceptual development (Bredekamp and Rosegrant, 1992). At one glance, the integrated curriculum shows the coverage of what the children learn in school. It advocates natural learning, as it follows children’s interests and not imposes the concepts that they need to learn. It follows that the skills they learn become meaningful to them, as it sprouts from their own interests. It can present a number of possibilities and directions that the class can take. It can touch on multiple subject areas at a time and be designed to cover all subject areas (Language Arts, Science, Social Studies, Math, Arts, Music & Values) while developing all developmental domains in the child: Physical, Social, Language, Cognitive, Emotional & Aesthetic with the concepts and activities planned out. For the teacher, an integrated curriculum is a good planning device that offers much flexibility. If the children lean toward another way other than what the teacher had expected, the integrated curriculum quickly guides her as to how to integrate it to a related concept so the flow does not disrupt learning. One cannot underestimate or overemphasize the richness of the integrated curriculum. It is a great tool to help teachers and a great way to maximize the learning potentials of their students. A thematic organization is a model in which skills, facts, materials, activities and subject-matter knowledge are integrated around a unifying theme (Brewer, 2001). Themes provide coherence and allow young children to understand meaningful relationships across subject and skill areas. Using themes as an instructional tool organizes learning around basic concepts and ideas, and creates a general framework that serves as a basis for relating content and processing information from a range of disciplines. Examples of themes that can integrate the subjects are Animals, Family, Food, etc. Early childhood curriculum should incorporate play in its design. Play is essential to children’s learning, as it is one effective approach to captivate their interest. Teachers should take advantage of this and plan challenging learning environments to support their students’ learning through planned play activity. Aside from this, the teacher also needs to know how to support their spontaneous play and help them develop their language, communication skills and other developmental skills through interesting and fun play-like activities. Moyles et al (2001) claim that ironically, a learning environment that relies much on play leads to more mature forms of knowledge, skills and understanding. There is evidence to suggest that through play children develop high levels of verbal skill and creative problem solving capabilities The Kindergarten curriculum aims to develop the child holistically by providing a variety of activities to develop skills in all areas of development. It should target goals in physical, socio-emotional and cognitive development. Kindergartener’s motor skills also develop in accordance to their developmental needs. This means, the older they get, the more things they are expected to do, so they develop physical skills to be able to do such tasks. Younger children’s fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination and body coordination are much less developed and more awkward than their older peers. As they grow, they also need to gain more control of their fine motor muscles to enable them to do more things with their hands, such as cutting, drawing and writing. With regard to their gross motor development, as children grow older, they need to be able to move their large muscles in more well- coordinated movements so they are able to do more challenging things with their bodies such as skipping, running with agility, dancing with flexibility, tumbling and the like. Socially, there are children who may be inherently shy or gregarious, as is likewise dictated by their genetic make up or as an effect of exposure to shy or gregarious parents. However, the Kindergarten curriculum provides them with more opportunities to be with other people and learn to deal with different personalities. Kindergarten children belong to Piaget’s Preoperational Period which marks the time a child becomes able to represent objects and knowledge through imitation, symbolic play, drawing, mental images and spoken language (Brewer, 2001). The Kindergarten curriculum aims that Kindergarteners become more discriminating with their senses that they know which ones to use to gain more information about things. As their brains develop, so do their capacity and skill for focused attention. With age, their attention spans improve, making it less distractible. Sustaining attention depends on the child’s temperament, if the task is self-chosen and interesting to them, and the presence or absence of interference. One of the main goals of the curriculum is to help children focus their attention more on things that they need to in order to learn what they need to know, and get better at ruling out the things that may distract their focus (Eliason & Jenkins, 2008). The curriculum also aims that children learn more effective cognitive processes. Being more comfortable in their previous knowledge of things, they may discover short-cuts in thinking of these and incorporate it into new learning. The more effective processes definitely cuts down the time it takes to process incorporated information (McDevitt & Omrod, 2004). Specifically, the Kindergarten curriculum aims for children’s cognitive skills to be honed in academics, perception using various senses, language and communication, problem solving, critical and creative thinking. Language Arts comprise 4 elements: Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening (Brewer, 2001). It is recommended that all these elements interplay to come up with a comprehensive literacy approach. Eliason & Jenkins (2008) report NAEYC’s (2005) standards in Literacy development. Curriculum should provide varied opportunities for children to read and be read to. Books should abound in the early childhood environment and children must be able to enjoy books of different kinds, songs, rhymes and routine games and having planned activities with picture books, wordless books and books with rhymes. They should have activities that expose an familiarize them with printed words, eventually learning to read words, sentences and simple books. Children should also be able to write and/or dictate their ideas. NAEYC likewise advocates that children are provided with multiple and varied opportunities to develop phonological awareness as they learn to identify phonemes through various activities including writing and games. Eliason & Jenkins (2008) agrees with Worth and Grollman (2003) that an early childhood curriculum should include a science program to hone children’s inquiry skills such as questioning, exploring, observing, describing, comparing, sorting, classifying, ordering, using tools, investigating, making predictions, gathering and interpreting data, recognizing patterns, drawing conclusions, recording, working with others, sharing, discussing, and listening (Worth & Grollman, 2003). It is important to allow children to discover answers to their never-ending questions through exploration. NAEYC (1995) claim that skilled early childhood education teachers “understand that direct exploration of materials and meaningful phenomena is the cornerstone of science for young children” (p. 83). Traditional classroom activities such as reporting in front of the class, showing pictures related to the lesson or filling out textbooks pale in comparison to concrete experiences such as touching a real, live dog, conducting plant experiments or cooking activities. The concrete interactions and experiences with the real world helps children retain learning better because they have actually experienced learning using most, if not all their senses. Mathematics is part of everyday life. Children see it in numbers, counting, in telling time, in measurements, in ordering of sequences, etc. Very young children will benefit greatly if both the home and their school settings will support their mathematical explorations. Teachers and parents may share simple tips or activities with the children to encourage mathematical learning. Parents may learn play-like approaches to assigning home chores to children such as letting them count place settings and set the table according to the number of people who will have dinner. They may also involve children in cooking or baking and letting them follow the recipe and add the correct measurement of ingredients, exposing them to units such as 1 cup, ½ cup, ¾ tablespoon, etc. In doing practical and fun activities like these, the children get to view mathematics in a more positive light that they become more open to learning more about it. Lack of conservation skills is also characteristic of this stage. “Conservation is defined as the knowledge that the number, mass, area, length, weight, and volume of objects are not changed by physically rearranging the objects.” (Brewer, 2001, p.318). That is why it is important to give concrete materials to young children when teaching a math concept since that is how they understand things better. They need to be able to see things concretely first before they can be translated to abstract thinking. Mathematics is a hierarchical discipline where concepts build on previous concepts and more often than not, need full understanding before proceeding to the next, more complicated concept. (Ruthven, 1987). The appropriate Kindergarten curriculum provides children with several opportunities for creative expression. Being exposed to a variety of art forms at a very young age is opens several possibilities for children to discover where their innate talents lie. Children are naturally creative, as they do not have as much inhibitions in their creative expression. Research suggests that the child reaches a peak of creative functioning during the early childhood years, usually around four to four and a half years of age. (Torrance, 1965). A sharp drop follows when the child begins elementary school, perhaps due to school demands of conformity, accountability and academics. Smith and Carlsson (1985) found out that creativity re-emerges as cognitive skills develop to meet those school demands and peaks at age ten or eleven, and then begins to decline again at the onset of puberty. With this in mind, it is important to stress creative development in the preschool and Kindergarten years, and the most effective avenues for this is the various art forms – visual arts, dance, music, drama, prose and poetry (Eliason & Jenkins, 2008). Consistent with constructivist philosophy is the project approach that can be very appropriate to apply to this curriculum. Projects are sets of activities with ideas mostly contributed by children and supervised by the teacher. It truly takes the children’s lead in investigating matters that interest them. “Projects provide experiences that involve students intellectually to a greater degree than the experiences that come from teacher-prepared units or themes. It is the children’s initiative, involvement and relative participation in what is accomplished that distinguish projects from units or themes” (Helm & Katz, 2000, p. 2). Projects ensure the maintenance of student interest in a particular concept. That is why it is essential to follow their lead when it comes to choosing themes or concepts to investigate. “It is only when children are curious, absorbed and interested in a topic that the benefits of projects are realized. Children benefit from the added opportunity to initiate, investigate and follow through on their interests. (Helm & Katz, 2000, p. 4). Finally, how does one assess learning with the developmentally-appropriate Kindergarten curriculum? NAEYC supports authentic assessment instead of the traditional pencil and paper standardized tests to determine what and how much children have learned. Wiggins’ (1991) description of what authentic assessment should be is that it involves “engaging problems and questions of importance and substance in which students must use knowledge (and construct meaning) effectively and creatively (p. 39). Thus, it involves the use of higher-order thinking which is far useful in the long run than mere knowledge of information which most traditional assessment methods measure. Consistent with constructivist philosophy, authentic assessment entrusts the reins of learning to the students. They “are required to provide rigorous intellectual commitment and perseverance, and teachers must continually connect student’s previous and current knowledge to the emerging curriculum. The relevance of curriculum to student interests therefore cannot be planned, because the learners’ interests and experience cannot be assumed nor completely evaluated in advance” (Wescombe-Down, n.d., n.p). This gives the students more power in the acquisition of learning. Using prior knowledge, they are encouraged to invent their own solutions and try out their own ideas and hypotheses with the able support of their teachers. This way, they can indulge in concrete experiences that focus on their interests. The process of searching for information, analysing data and reaching conclusions are considered more important than learning facts. Designing a Kindergarten curriculum entails much brainstorming and consideration of many factors. These include the age and skill levels of the children, the availability of resources, the possibility of implementing the activities, support of parents and the community and the experience and skill of the teacher, among others. Although it seems to be a herculean task, the creation and implementation of a high quality, developmentally appropriate Kindergarten curriculum goes a long way in empowering children with the necessary concepts and skills essential to surviving a competitive, globalized world they will join in their future. References Bredekamp, S and Rosegrant, T., (eds), (1992). Reaching potentials: Appropriate curriculum and assessment for young children, vol. 1, National Association for the Education of Young Children, Washington, DC. Brewer, J. (2001). Introduction to early childhood education preschool through primary grades, 4th ed. Massachusetts: Allyn and Bacon. Chaille C. (2008), 'Big Ideas: A Framework for constructivist Curriculum', in Constructivism across the Curriculum in Early Childhood Classrooms, Pearson Education, Sydney Cromwell, E.S. (2000), Nurturing Readiness in Early Childhood Education: A Whole-Child Curriculum for Ages 2-5, 2nd edn, Allyn & Bacon, Needham Heights, MA Eliason, C & Jenkins, L. (2008). A practical Guide to Early Childhood Curriculum (8th edition). New Jersey : Pearson Education, Inc.   Helm, HJ., & Katz, L. (2000), 'Projects and Young Children', in The Project Approach in the Early Years, Teachers College Press, New York, Lambert, E.B. & Clyde, M. (2000), 'Program planning for 3-5's: A spherical framework', in Rethinking Early Childhood Theory and Practice, Social Science Press, Katoomba Littledyke, R. (2008) Early Education Philosophy and Practice Topic Notes. University of New England. McDevitt, T.M. & Ormrod, J.E. (2004) Child Development: Educating and Working with Children and Adolescents, Second Edition. Pearson Education, Inc. Moyles et al (2001) Statements of Entitlement to Play: A Framework for Playful Teaching Buckingham, Open University Press NAEYC (2005) Early Childhood Program Standards and Accreditation Criteria: The Mark of Quality in Early Childhood Education. Washington D.C.: NAEYC. Ruthven, K. (1987). Ability stereotyping in mathematics. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 18(3), 243–253. Schweinhart, L.J. & Weikart, D.P. (1999), 'Why curriculum matters in early childhood education', in Annual Editions: Early Childhood Education, ed.K. Menke Paciorek & J. Huth Munro, Dushkin, Guilford, Conn Smith, G., & Carlsson, I. (1985). Creativity in middle and late school years. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 8, 329–343. Torrance, E.P. (1965) Rewarding creative behavior. N.J.: Prentice Hall. Wescombe-Down, D. (n.d.), “Constructivism, mainstream teaching and scientific knowledge from the classroom perspective.” Retrieved on April 30, 2010 from http://www.unisanet.unisa.edu.au/11788/science1/constructivism/MSMSASTA05. doc Wiggins, G. (1991) “Task” Design Ideas, Principles and Guidelines. Geneseo, NY: Center on Learning, Assessment and School Structure. Read More