Quotes From the Book
Family structures are also shifting. Today, children may live in a variety of family arrangements—two-parent families, single-parent families, blended families, extended families, families with opposite-sex parents and families with same-sex parents, adoptive families, cohabiting families, and foster families. Overall the percentage of children living in two-parent households has decreased, while the proportion of young children living in single-parent homes has risen significantly. In 2016, 68% of children in the United States under the age of 17 lived with two parents. Of these, the vast majority (90%) lived with their biological or adoptive parents; the other 10% lived with at least one stepparent (U.S. Census Bureau, 2017). Approximately 28% of children live with only one parent. Of these, 24% live with their mothers and 4% live with their fathers. Another 4% of young children live in families headed by a grandparent (see Figure 2). Grandparent-headed households are found in all socioeconomic groups, all ethnicities, and all geographic locations in the country, with more than 4 million children living in intergenerational households. (p. 6)
Societal demands for more academics and a “back to the basics” philosophy have contributed to high-pressure practices like those just described. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, an initiative aimed at improving learning opportunities for all children, K–12, became law in 2001. Although the goals of NCLB were desirable, some applications were less positive, especially for young children. NCLB was replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2016. ESSA preserves the spirit of NCLB while reducing federal oversight and allowing states to identify long- and short-term goals. State goals must address proficiency on tests, English-language proficiency, graduation rates, and closing gaps in achievement. With an emphasis on academic performance many teachers feel pressured to focus on skills they believe are not in the best interests of young children and were considered too advanced for children of this age in the past (Bassok & Rorem, 2014). Consequently, more young children find themselves sitting at desks, filling out worksheets, and taking tests to get into kindergarten or first grade. Child advocates are alarmed at what they view as an erosion of childhood and the “miseducation” of the youngest members of society. Students report significantly more anxiety when completing high-stakes testing related to initiatives such as NCLB than typical classroom testing (Segool, Carlson, Goforth, Von Der Embse, & Barterian, 2013). Physicians report a dramatic increase in the numbers of young children who visit them for stress-related illnesses and conditions. Nationwide, people who understand child development warn that children are being hurried into functioning in ways that do not match their natural modes of learning (Miltner et al., 2012; NAEYC, 2009). All of this has signaled a need to describe what practices really are best for young children and what practices detract from helping children succeed in school and in life. (p. 27)
One basic premise of early childhood education is that children learn through repetition. (p. 62)
Ineffective praise is general, repetitive, and not genuine. It evaluates children, compares them with one another in unfavorable ways, links their success to luck, and tends to interrupt their work and concentration. (p. 64)
On the other hand, effective praise is specific, acknowledges children’s actions, and compares their progress with their past performance. It links their success to effort and ability, is individualized to fit the child and the situation, and is nonintrusive. (p. 64)
Because of the developmental principle of mastery and challenge presented earlier in this chapter, children learn best when teachers provide experiences just beyond what children can do on their own but within what they can do with assistance from someone whose skills are greater. This forward momentum represents higher-order learning. (p. 74)
children who experience no challenge beyond their current level of functioning will fail to progress in their understandings and abilities. (p. 75)
...you are building a connection to the real world and a foundation for later application (p. 161)
Consider the following situation. The children are waiting at the door to go outside. Mr. Martin, their teacher, has promised a smiley-face sticker to children who wait patiently and do not push. Adrianne, who is at the back of the group, wants to be first but quietly stands in place because she wants the sticker. Her behavior is regulated by the promise of the reward, not by concern for her classmates’ rights. Under these circumstances, Adrianne will probably follow the teacher’s directions at least when he is present. However, because she has no internal basis for following the rule, Adrianne may resort to pushing if she thinks the teacher is not looking or on another day when no sticker is promised. Adrianne illustrates the basic problem with adherence. Children who depend on external controls must be monitored constantly. They behave appropriately only in situations in which physical or verbal assistance is readily available and in instances in which the threat of punishment or the promise of a reward is obvious. When such controls are missing, the possibility of misbehavior is great. Having no other means for understanding right and wrong, children lack the self-direction necessary to act appropriately on their own. (p. 180)
Rewards can lose their power over time. What is rewarding on Monday may not be rewarding by Friday. Rewards may have to get bigger and bigger to maintain their impact. (p. 188)
One area in which some early childhood educators struggle is the effective assessment of incoming kindergarten children to determine whether they are “ready.” Some school districts develop their own tests or use those that are on the market. In some cases, these tests are used inappropriately for the purpose of identifying the “best candidates” for elite and gifted elementary programs. For example, in some areas of the country, parents pay careful attention to kindergarten tests required by the “top” schools and hire tutors to prepare their children for a specific entrance test. Saying that it has now become an “endless contest” in which administrators of such schools can hardly stay ahead of parents corrupting the process in order to get a coveted seat for their children, Dr. Samuel J. Meisels, a noted early childhood education expert, is encouraging schools to abandon these tests. (p. 216)
Pressure to achieve greater “educational accountability” has gradually spawned widespread approval of such practices as “teaching to the test” (if not the actual test) and placing heavy emphasis on worksheets, drills, and other inappropriate teaching strategies in early childhood classrooms. All these practices have been designed to raise scores because of the erroneous assumption that high scores on standardized tests equal high rates of learning by the children taking the tests. School districts are being rated increasingly on whether children’s performance is competitive within a county, state, nationally, and even internationally. Even though standardized tests are constructed so that 50% of children will likely test above the mean and 50% below, no community finds having too many children (even 50%) in the bottom category acceptable. Concern abounds in some districts where there is a growing mismatch between instruction and children’s experiential backgrounds and developmental levels. Educators complain about greater pressure to alter the curriculum and instruction to fit assessment, rather than assessment being used as a tool to measure learning. As a result, children’s well-being in some of our centers, schools, and communities is being disregarded in the drive toward greater accountability. (p. 229)
Is it a one-shot-only test that would be insensitive to a young child’s learning spurts and regressions? (p. 230)
If family members feel embarrassed about their English skills, one strategy that is sometimes helpful is to share how you wish you could communicate in the parents’ language. (p. 249)
For instance, male involvement in children’s education is associated with higher achievement among children and with social competence (Berger & Riojas-Cortez, 2016). Conversely, father absence is associated with poor academic achievement and higher school dropout rates (Hennon et al., 2012). (p. 266)
For example, music education appears to strengthen word decoding and phonological skills and may even aid in learning a foreign language. Dance helps to improve visual–spatial skills, and enacting stories strengthens verbal skills. There are clearly benefits to including art in the curriculum. (p. 285)
For example, connections between music and math are well known (Geist, Geist, & Kuznik, 2012). Music uses patterns such as repeated melodies, rhythms, and refrains. The rhythmic qualities of music help make math concepts meaningful because children learn to notice a pattern and predict what comes next in the pattern. (p. 285)
Overuse of praise can actually decrease a child’s motivation. (p. 301)
Children tend to like and respect the familiar so multiple exposures set within the familiar framework of what they are learning will be beneficial. (p. 303)
Treat books as priceless gifts and each illustration as a gem to be treasured. (p. 303)
Evidence indicates that children who are most effective in coping with normal stressors (e.g., getting up and dressing in time for the school bus, being disappointed once in a while, or being left out of a play opportunity) learn how to deal effectively with the larger issues. Also, children who can find or generate more alternatives for coping usually do much better and build confidence in managing stressful situations. (p. 321)
Resilience is not the same as invulnerability. It is the “capacity to rise above difficult circumstances, the trait that allows us all to exist in this less-than-perfect world while moving forward with reasonable optimism and confidence.” (p. 322)
Nothing adults say is as important as what children see them doing on a daily basis. (p. 322)
Play provides children with opportunities to problem-solve, socialize, exercise leadership and following skills, and build communication skills. It allows them to engage in give-and-take with their peers and reduce tension. It also provides them with a chance to experiment with controlling people and objects. (p. 322)
Neuroscience has also exposed a number of myths about how the brain functions, including the following (Wolfe, 2010):
We only use 10% of our brains.
Listening to Mozart makes babies smarter.
Some people are more “right brained,” and others are more “left brained.”
A young child’s brain can manage to learn only one language at a time.
Everything important is determined by age 3.
There are brain differences by race. (p. 344)
Thus, children should be encouraged to think creatively and divergently (in many directions) as well as convergently (centered on already-known facts) in their problem finding and problem solving. (p. 353)
In infancy, children become increasingly sensitive to the sounds, rhythm, and intonation of language around them. Scientific research has documented that the development of human language is a built-in, genetic predisposition that is hardwired into the brain (Chomsky, 1965). (p. 380)
The speed of language acquisition in young children and how they pick up vocabulary and syntax is one of “nature’s marvels” and strong evidence of a biological basis (Tomlinson & Hyson, 2013, p. 60). (p. 380)
The critical difference in children’s language development lay in how often parents talked with their children, as well as the quality of that talk (Bredekamp, 2017; Morrow, 2012). (p. 380)
Alexander, at age 2 years, is already attuned to three languages. His maternal grandmother has come to the United States from Hungary to live with the family and care for him while his parents work. Because his grandmother speaks little English, the language she and Alexander have begun to share is Hungarian. His favorite playmate is a slightly older toddler who lives next door, Hao Hao, whose primary language is Chinese. When crossing the street on the way to the playground with his grandmother, his friend Hao Hao, and Hao Hao’s mother, Alexander remembers and repeats his grandmother’s warning: “Vigyázz . . . kocsi! [Careful . . . car!].” At the playground, when he shares a sand toy with Hao Hao, the Chinese child’s mother reminds him to tell Alexander, “Xiè-xie [Thank you].” Alexander looks thoughtful for a moment and then repeats the words over and over to himself softly as he fills his pail with sand, “Xiè-xie, xiè-xie.” That evening, when asked by his grandmother, “Megfürdik? [Take a bath?],” he shakes his head and responds, “Nem [No],” and then looks at his English-speaking father and says, “No!” just to be sure everyone understands that he is not yet ready to begin his bedtime ritual.
Even with a variety of multilingual influences, Alexander’s English language development at age 24 months is right on target. His receptive vocabulary (i.e., the number of words he understands) contains over 300 words. His expressive vocabulary (i.e., words he uses to express himself) is clearly not as large but clearly shows an upward trajectory as he internalizes and expresses a number of new words each day. He is also becoming aware that he can use language with different people for various purposes (Halliday & Webster, 2016):
To satisfy his needs and wants (instrumental language)
To control others (regulatory language)
To create interactions with others (interactional language)
To express his personal thoughts and opinions (personal language)
To create imaginary worlds (imaginative language)
To seek information (heuristic language)
To communicate information to others (informative language)
By the time Alexander is 5 or 6 years old, he will have a remarkable, adult-like grasp of the grammar, syntax, vocabulary, noun phrases, meaning, and pronunciation that make up his primary languages. He will accomplish all this without ever being consciously aware of language forms and structures. (p. 381)
The significance of children having plenty of experience with and understanding the rhyming process prior to and in kindergarten cannot be underscored enough, and you will want to emphasize its importance with parents, encouraging them to read nursery rhymes and rhyming picture books with their children at home. (p. 385)
Those with little phonological awareness before elementary school become severely disadvantaged and perform significantly more poorly in reading. They may learn letter–sound associations but be unable to read or spell unfamiliar words. Evidence indicates that children with well-developed phonological awareness eventually develop greater automaticity, which allows reading to become much more fluent and speedy (Paris, 2011). (p. 385)
The skill of detecting sounds in language depends wholly on the child having developed good listening skills. It is supported when children have ample opportunities to engage in meaningful conversations with adults, have interesting books read to them to enlarge their vocabularies, and play with other children in ways that require speech to be used to express their ideas. (p. 386)
We know that children’s knowledge about the alphabet as they enter kindergarten is also one of the best predictors of eventual reading achievement. Alphabetic awareness, which is also called the alphabetic principle, includes children developing letter-name knowledge and being able to recite the alphabet in order, which supports letter–sound correspondence (Paris, 2011). (p. 386)
Sometimes teachers and family members worry about children’s revisiting certain themes as they move from the 3-year-old room to the 4-year-old class or from kindergarten to first grade. Thinking children may get bored or will not learn anything new, they need to remember that children learn through repetition. Each time children participate in a given theme, they glean new insights and skills from the experience. In addition, the projects and activities that evolve out of a theme will vary from one year to the next as children build on what they know to investigate new aspects of the topic. Consequently, repeating some themes from one year to the next is an effective instructional strategy. (p. 555)
Societal demands for more academics and a “back to the basics” philosophy have contributed to high-pressure practices like those just described. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, an initiative aimed at improving learning opportunities for all children, K–12, became law in 2001. Although the goals of NCLB were desirable, some applications were less positive, especially for young children. NCLB was replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2016. ESSA preserves the spirit of NCLB while reducing federal oversight and allowing states to identify long- and short-term goals. State goals must address proficiency on tests, English-language proficiency, graduation rates, and closing gaps in achievement. With an emphasis on academic performance many teachers feel pressured to focus on skills they believe are not in the best interests of young children and were considered too advanced for children of this age in the past (Bassok & Rorem, 2014). Consequently, more young children find themselves sitting at desks, filling out worksheets, and taking tests to get into kindergarten or first grade. Child advocates are alarmed at what they view as an erosion of childhood and the “miseducation” of the youngest members of society. Students report significantly more anxiety when completing high-stakes testing related to initiatives such as NCLB than typical classroom testing (Segool, Carlson, Goforth, Von Der Embse, & Barterian, 2013). Physicians report a dramatic increase in the numbers of young children who visit them for stress-related illnesses and conditions. Nationwide, people who understand child development warn that children are being hurried into functioning in ways that do not match their natural modes of learning (Miltner et al., 2012; NAEYC, 2009). All of this has signaled a need to describe what practices really are best for young children and what practices detract from helping children succeed in school and in life. (p. 27)
One basic premise of early childhood education is that children learn through repetition. (p. 62)
Ineffective praise is general, repetitive, and not genuine. It evaluates children, compares them with one another in unfavorable ways, links their success to luck, and tends to interrupt their work and concentration. (p. 64)
On the other hand, effective praise is specific, acknowledges children’s actions, and compares their progress with their past performance. It links their success to effort and ability, is individualized to fit the child and the situation, and is nonintrusive. (p. 64)
Because of the developmental principle of mastery and challenge presented earlier in this chapter, children learn best when teachers provide experiences just beyond what children can do on their own but within what they can do with assistance from someone whose skills are greater. This forward momentum represents higher-order learning. (p. 74)
children who experience no challenge beyond their current level of functioning will fail to progress in their understandings and abilities. (p. 75)
...you are building a connection to the real world and a foundation for later application (p. 161)
Consider the following situation. The children are waiting at the door to go outside. Mr. Martin, their teacher, has promised a smiley-face sticker to children who wait patiently and do not push. Adrianne, who is at the back of the group, wants to be first but quietly stands in place because she wants the sticker. Her behavior is regulated by the promise of the reward, not by concern for her classmates’ rights. Under these circumstances, Adrianne will probably follow the teacher’s directions at least when he is present. However, because she has no internal basis for following the rule, Adrianne may resort to pushing if she thinks the teacher is not looking or on another day when no sticker is promised. Adrianne illustrates the basic problem with adherence. Children who depend on external controls must be monitored constantly. They behave appropriately only in situations in which physical or verbal assistance is readily available and in instances in which the threat of punishment or the promise of a reward is obvious. When such controls are missing, the possibility of misbehavior is great. Having no other means for understanding right and wrong, children lack the self-direction necessary to act appropriately on their own. (p. 180)
Rewards can lose their power over time. What is rewarding on Monday may not be rewarding by Friday. Rewards may have to get bigger and bigger to maintain their impact. (p. 188)
One area in which some early childhood educators struggle is the effective assessment of incoming kindergarten children to determine whether they are “ready.” Some school districts develop their own tests or use those that are on the market. In some cases, these tests are used inappropriately for the purpose of identifying the “best candidates” for elite and gifted elementary programs. For example, in some areas of the country, parents pay careful attention to kindergarten tests required by the “top” schools and hire tutors to prepare their children for a specific entrance test. Saying that it has now become an “endless contest” in which administrators of such schools can hardly stay ahead of parents corrupting the process in order to get a coveted seat for their children, Dr. Samuel J. Meisels, a noted early childhood education expert, is encouraging schools to abandon these tests. (p. 216)
Pressure to achieve greater “educational accountability” has gradually spawned widespread approval of such practices as “teaching to the test” (if not the actual test) and placing heavy emphasis on worksheets, drills, and other inappropriate teaching strategies in early childhood classrooms. All these practices have been designed to raise scores because of the erroneous assumption that high scores on standardized tests equal high rates of learning by the children taking the tests. School districts are being rated increasingly on whether children’s performance is competitive within a county, state, nationally, and even internationally. Even though standardized tests are constructed so that 50% of children will likely test above the mean and 50% below, no community finds having too many children (even 50%) in the bottom category acceptable. Concern abounds in some districts where there is a growing mismatch between instruction and children’s experiential backgrounds and developmental levels. Educators complain about greater pressure to alter the curriculum and instruction to fit assessment, rather than assessment being used as a tool to measure learning. As a result, children’s well-being in some of our centers, schools, and communities is being disregarded in the drive toward greater accountability. (p. 229)
Is it a one-shot-only test that would be insensitive to a young child’s learning spurts and regressions? (p. 230)
If family members feel embarrassed about their English skills, one strategy that is sometimes helpful is to share how you wish you could communicate in the parents’ language. (p. 249)
For instance, male involvement in children’s education is associated with higher achievement among children and with social competence (Berger & Riojas-Cortez, 2016). Conversely, father absence is associated with poor academic achievement and higher school dropout rates (Hennon et al., 2012). (p. 266)
For example, music education appears to strengthen word decoding and phonological skills and may even aid in learning a foreign language. Dance helps to improve visual–spatial skills, and enacting stories strengthens verbal skills. There are clearly benefits to including art in the curriculum. (p. 285)
For example, connections between music and math are well known (Geist, Geist, & Kuznik, 2012). Music uses patterns such as repeated melodies, rhythms, and refrains. The rhythmic qualities of music help make math concepts meaningful because children learn to notice a pattern and predict what comes next in the pattern. (p. 285)
Overuse of praise can actually decrease a child’s motivation. (p. 301)
Children tend to like and respect the familiar so multiple exposures set within the familiar framework of what they are learning will be beneficial. (p. 303)
Treat books as priceless gifts and each illustration as a gem to be treasured. (p. 303)
Evidence indicates that children who are most effective in coping with normal stressors (e.g., getting up and dressing in time for the school bus, being disappointed once in a while, or being left out of a play opportunity) learn how to deal effectively with the larger issues. Also, children who can find or generate more alternatives for coping usually do much better and build confidence in managing stressful situations. (p. 321)
Resilience is not the same as invulnerability. It is the “capacity to rise above difficult circumstances, the trait that allows us all to exist in this less-than-perfect world while moving forward with reasonable optimism and confidence.” (p. 322)
Nothing adults say is as important as what children see them doing on a daily basis. (p. 322)
Play provides children with opportunities to problem-solve, socialize, exercise leadership and following skills, and build communication skills. It allows them to engage in give-and-take with their peers and reduce tension. It also provides them with a chance to experiment with controlling people and objects. (p. 322)
Neuroscience has also exposed a number of myths about how the brain functions, including the following (Wolfe, 2010):
We only use 10% of our brains.
Listening to Mozart makes babies smarter.
Some people are more “right brained,” and others are more “left brained.”
A young child’s brain can manage to learn only one language at a time.
Everything important is determined by age 3.
There are brain differences by race. (p. 344)
Thus, children should be encouraged to think creatively and divergently (in many directions) as well as convergently (centered on already-known facts) in their problem finding and problem solving. (p. 353)
In infancy, children become increasingly sensitive to the sounds, rhythm, and intonation of language around them. Scientific research has documented that the development of human language is a built-in, genetic predisposition that is hardwired into the brain (Chomsky, 1965). (p. 380)
The speed of language acquisition in young children and how they pick up vocabulary and syntax is one of “nature’s marvels” and strong evidence of a biological basis (Tomlinson & Hyson, 2013, p. 60). (p. 380)
The critical difference in children’s language development lay in how often parents talked with their children, as well as the quality of that talk (Bredekamp, 2017; Morrow, 2012). (p. 380)
Alexander, at age 2 years, is already attuned to three languages. His maternal grandmother has come to the United States from Hungary to live with the family and care for him while his parents work. Because his grandmother speaks little English, the language she and Alexander have begun to share is Hungarian. His favorite playmate is a slightly older toddler who lives next door, Hao Hao, whose primary language is Chinese. When crossing the street on the way to the playground with his grandmother, his friend Hao Hao, and Hao Hao’s mother, Alexander remembers and repeats his grandmother’s warning: “Vigyázz . . . kocsi! [Careful . . . car!].” At the playground, when he shares a sand toy with Hao Hao, the Chinese child’s mother reminds him to tell Alexander, “Xiè-xie [Thank you].” Alexander looks thoughtful for a moment and then repeats the words over and over to himself softly as he fills his pail with sand, “Xiè-xie, xiè-xie.” That evening, when asked by his grandmother, “Megfürdik? [Take a bath?],” he shakes his head and responds, “Nem [No],” and then looks at his English-speaking father and says, “No!” just to be sure everyone understands that he is not yet ready to begin his bedtime ritual.
Even with a variety of multilingual influences, Alexander’s English language development at age 24 months is right on target. His receptive vocabulary (i.e., the number of words he understands) contains over 300 words. His expressive vocabulary (i.e., words he uses to express himself) is clearly not as large but clearly shows an upward trajectory as he internalizes and expresses a number of new words each day. He is also becoming aware that he can use language with different people for various purposes (Halliday & Webster, 2016):
To satisfy his needs and wants (instrumental language)
To control others (regulatory language)
To create interactions with others (interactional language)
To express his personal thoughts and opinions (personal language)
To create imaginary worlds (imaginative language)
To seek information (heuristic language)
To communicate information to others (informative language)
By the time Alexander is 5 or 6 years old, he will have a remarkable, adult-like grasp of the grammar, syntax, vocabulary, noun phrases, meaning, and pronunciation that make up his primary languages. He will accomplish all this without ever being consciously aware of language forms and structures. (p. 381)
The significance of children having plenty of experience with and understanding the rhyming process prior to and in kindergarten cannot be underscored enough, and you will want to emphasize its importance with parents, encouraging them to read nursery rhymes and rhyming picture books with their children at home. (p. 385)
Those with little phonological awareness before elementary school become severely disadvantaged and perform significantly more poorly in reading. They may learn letter–sound associations but be unable to read or spell unfamiliar words. Evidence indicates that children with well-developed phonological awareness eventually develop greater automaticity, which allows reading to become much more fluent and speedy (Paris, 2011). (p. 385)
The skill of detecting sounds in language depends wholly on the child having developed good listening skills. It is supported when children have ample opportunities to engage in meaningful conversations with adults, have interesting books read to them to enlarge their vocabularies, and play with other children in ways that require speech to be used to express their ideas. (p. 386)
We know that children’s knowledge about the alphabet as they enter kindergarten is also one of the best predictors of eventual reading achievement. Alphabetic awareness, which is also called the alphabetic principle, includes children developing letter-name knowledge and being able to recite the alphabet in order, which supports letter–sound correspondence (Paris, 2011). (p. 386)
Sometimes teachers and family members worry about children’s revisiting certain themes as they move from the 3-year-old room to the 4-year-old class or from kindergarten to first grade. Thinking children may get bored or will not learn anything new, they need to remember that children learn through repetition. Each time children participate in a given theme, they glean new insights and skills from the experience. In addition, the projects and activities that evolve out of a theme will vary from one year to the next as children build on what they know to investigate new aspects of the topic. Consequently, repeating some themes from one year to the next is an effective instructional strategy. (p. 555)