A sound investment

emily
Originally uploaded by Jessi Hagood

"State leaders who have invested in high-quality pre-k for 3- and 4-year-olds understand that it will yield significant returns for their state. States that choose not to invest may find that their children and their economies are not prepared to compete."

Pre-K Momentum Climbs to an All-Time High

State shortfalls shouldn't affect school budgets

"Fifteen states have reported deficits or projected lower-than-expected revenues for fiscal 2008, largely because of the nationwide slowdown in the housing market. But elementary and secondary school budgets will likely be spared from harm unless economic conditions worsen considerably, leaders of NGA and NASBO said at a press conference here today."

Education Week

The new reader

What Makes a Shadow
Originally uploaded by xtinalamb

"We’re just not going to be reading for text anymore,” said Andread Saveri, the Institute for the Future researcher.

“We’re going to be ‘reading’ for movies, graphics, images, digital stories, symbols,” she says. “You may say young people aren’t reading the classics, but 20 years from now, there might be some classic multimedia pieces with video, with hyperlinks. That’s the new edge of literacy.”

Saveri suggests parents blog with their kids, make a YouTube video, jump into the new media - and take books along. “We’ve got to get over our nostalgia,” she says. “Denying your child a rich media world is doing your child a disservice.”

Do books still matter?

If this holds true, in a child's new school world they'll have to learn to comprehend ideas, stories, and concepts through a variety of sources. Multi-sensory learning, where nearly every available ability in a child is opened and taking in information, is a well-known method for permanent learning.

Think of ABC Music & Me as a multi-media language and pre-literacy immersion program. In class, we use a variety of materials to engage a child's learning abilities. Children use instruments to help tell the stories, they listen to audio stories, they contribute ideas, and they retell the stories through pretend-play.

These activities, plus a practical print component in the take home materials works like the bed-time story and reinforces the same literature based activities in class. Each of these components work together to literally engage every available learning ability in a child's developing mind.

Makes me wish I was in preschool again.

The difference is the teacher

Linda's graduation
Originally uploaded by nomad with rebel

"Teachers who received targeted training and technical assistance were able to improve young children’s development of language skills, according to a federal report.

“When it’s paired with mentoring, training in language and literacy can help teachers change the way they teach so they are more focused on helping children improve their language skills,” said HHS Assistant Secretary for Children and Families Wade F. Horn, Ph.D.

“This study also shows that quality training and a good curriculum can make a difference regardless of teacher credentials when it comes to helping children develop critical early language and literacy skills.”

Read more here.

Better teachers = better students. That's why ABC Music & Me includes a monthly teacher training DVD. Each one is designed to show teachers how to instruct that month's language and pre-literacy activities. For example, how to hand out the class instruments and manage on-the-spot conflicts; how to honor each child's contribution and incorporate it, on the spot, into each lesson.

How to use music to help with transitions, clean up throughout the day, and more. The tips are manageable and learnable because the curriculum was created in a preschool classroom, with preschool problems, and expert solutions.

And it shows. I recently spoke with a woman who leads the student teaching lab at Cal Poly Universtiy in California. She said the teachers actually want to prep for the lessons because they feel supported by the training.

Here's what she had to say in her own words:

“The student-teachers in this class feel supported by the training DVDs in the Teacher’s Guides, and they feel that what they’re being asked to do is doable, so they’re willing to put more time into it. And I think a lot of teachers felt they couldn’t do it because they’re not musical, but they can do it …. and they’re very happy about it.”

Dr. Margaret Berrio
Cal Poly Lab Director in San Luis Obispo
PhD in Child Development, Masters in Early Childhood Music