 Why? This webinar is brought to you by the Pre-K Third Grade National Work Group. I'm Chris Maxwell, Director of the New Schools Project, a Pre-K through Third Grade Initiative at Erickson Institute in Chicago, Illinois. My role today is to serve as the moderator, moving the transition between our four presentations. I will also facilitate our closing questions and answer sessions. Let me start by sharing our participation guidelines. We can move forward, Chris. And I do hope that each participant will be an active participant. First, just know that as a participant, you are on mute today, but there are several ways you can actively engage with the presentations we provide. First, prior to each presentation, you will see polling questions on the screen. These are brief questions that will be shown for about 20 seconds with an opportunity for you to click on a response, and then the combined responses across all participants will show up for about 10 seconds as we move into each presentation. We also invite you to post questions as you listen to the presentations across the webinar. To post questions, you can enter these in the chat box on the right of your screen. We'll keep track of those questions as we move forward through the webinar and answer as many as we are able to during the question-and-answer session. Finally, another way to participate is by listening, following, and responding to the webinar on Twitter at pre-k.third. So as we begin, please be reminded that this is the fifth in an eight-part webinar series for the full schedule. You can go to our website, which is listed on the screen, for the pre-k through third grade national workgroup. Our focus today in this fifth webinar is on pre-k through third grade curricula. Through the presentations, we'll highlight the key considerations in selecting and developing high-quality curricula for pre-k through third grade. As we move into the webinar, as all of us know, pre-k through third grade curricula are really at the center of all our work as early childhood educators and educators within the kindergarten and early primary grade. Obviously, high-quality teaching and learning are shaped by many complex factors, but we do know that cohesive high-quality curriculum is an essential part of the architecture for effective instruction that is both intellectually challenging for young children, but also informed by what we know about young children's development. Given this importance of high-quality pre-k through third curriculum, as I mentioned, we really are what I see as a very pivotal point in considering pre-k through third grade curricula. Global disparities and global concerns about the quality of curricula that all children have access to. We also know, particularly in our own country, that we're concerned about disparities for children of color and children from low-income backgrounds in terms of the curricula they have access to as compared to children who come from more highly resourced backgrounds. Very often, I think most of us see children of color, children from low-income backgrounds being exposed to lower-level skills, lower-quality curricula without the intellectual challenge and the emphasis on development that we would like to see as we think about high-quality curricula. And as a part of this, in considering early childhood pre-k third curricula, we know that we have a lot of work to do in aligning these curricula to support continuity and ongoing learning progress for all children and that we also know we have much work to do as we begin to span the historically separate perspectives and cultures of early childhood in k-third education. So with that, in terms of where we are headed today, our presenters, and as I mentioned, we have four presenters today, will zoom in on pre-k through third grade from different related lenses. Our first two presenters will look at domain-specific curricula in literacy and math. While our second two presenters will look at what are often referred to as more domain general considerations across the curriculum. What unites all four perspectives and what unites our intent in providing this webinar is a commitment to bringing excellence to the curriculum for all young children. With that, we will move to our first polling question. Christie, as I mentioned, you have 20 minutes to look at this and a quick 10 minutes to look at the results as we begin to introduce our first speaker. All right, it looks like we have many administrators in the room with us, in the audience with us, and also a large percentage of teachers. I would like to now introduce our first presenter, Julie Russ, comes to us from the Harvard Graduate School of Education where she is the research manager for language diversity and the Literacy Development Research Group. As we move toward Julie's presentation, we will present another polling question. As this question states, as district-wide literacy reform initiatives are provided, what might you guess that teachers rank as most important? Collaboration with teacher. With that, let me invite you to spend some time thinking with Julie about comprehensive literacy curricula supporting teachers and children. Julie, are you with us? Hi. Can you hear me? We can hear you. Great, thanks, Chris. Waiting for your first slide and you are on. It's in your hands. Okay, so as that polling question showed, actually, in the study that I'm referring to, not only did most teachers rate the comprehensive curriculum materials as the most important professional support provided, but 100% of teachers rated that as the most important. And, of course, I chose that question because this is a webinar about the importance of curricula and care settings in classrooms. But I also want to note here that it is, of course, part of a package. These different professional supports together are what made the difference for teachers, but it's worth reminding ourselves that strong comprehensive curricula materials are key and fundamental ingredients for supporting teachers as professionals. And yet, while so many teachers find this to be such an important part of their professional development and their professional support, in many settings, teachers are expected to both design and deliver high-quality literacy instruction. And this is just too big of a job for most. And so they're pulling from all different places to try to knit together a daily and year-long plan for teaching and learning without the support of a comprehensive literacy curriculum. And then in other settings, leaders want to select a quality curriculum and support a setting-wide instructional effort, but don't have access to the guidance that they need. And so with these two issues in mind, really, then I'm going to start talking a bit about what we know about children's literacy development and then how the science of development bears on the importance of a literacy curriculum and the qualities to look for when selecting one. Christie, next slide. Thank you. Oops, one ahead. That's okay. So first, what do we know about children's reading and language development? Well, this timeline shows typical milestones in children's reading development. And I thought it just made sense to begin a conversation about literacy curricula here because it highlights the larger developmental context in which successful reading resides. And this timeline, I think, reminds us that reading and how it develops is really much bigger and broader than how we typically conceptualize it. And I think you'll see that it's really a lot about language because language is the foundation for eventually being able to read for understanding. And so you'll notice that over time, children are accumulating word knowledge. As they learn more words, there's this snowball effect, such that the word knowledge that they're amassing is making them able to learn more new words and deepen their knowledge of the words that they already have some knowledge of. So that by the time children are eight or nine years old, if they're going to be able to keep at least with the demand of the school curriculum, they need to be learning about 3,000 words each year. So you can imagine if this timeline continued through age 18, you would see that by that time, a late adolescent has learned on average 50,000 words. And they need to be able to use these words in their speech and in their writing and while reading. So broadly speaking, we see that a developing reader's dirty involves both learning the code of reading, the letters and sounds, and the ability to read the words on the page and spell the words they're writing. But it also involves developing the language and knowledge necessary to understand and communicate complex ideas. And so the challenge for educators then is to support this rapid developmental process. And any early childhood teacher will tell you that this is not a small task and it takes a lot of work for teachers and children. Next slide. So what does this have to do with promoting children's literacy development using a curriculum? Well the good news is while this is a really large challenge to support this rapid developmental process, it's certainly not an insurmountable one. So think about the fact that for instance, children are spending about 15 to 20,000 hours of their lives in classrooms in care settings. So the good news is we have enough time to make a real impact but at the same time those hours are really precious, especially important for children who come to school needing significantly more opportunities to develop the language and knowledge they'll need for academic success. And I think we're all here because we know that if we don't support children's healthy development early, we're setting them up for a hard road ahead. So we have to honor the fact that this challenge is possible, but designing and delivering cohesive and rigorous daily instruction to support and promote literacy development is just this really big job. And so we meet the challenge in large part by setting up teachers for success. And so we need to be sure we're providing educators with the kind of support that they need to create a truly high quality setting for development. Next slide. So where does the curriculum fit into addressing the challenge of this rigorous daily instruction to promote rapid language development? Well, a comprehensive curriculum is a key support mechanism, a key platform for supporting good teaching, particularly when we're thinking about supporting instructional improvement at scale. But recognizing the importance of providing teachers with curricular support is really just this first step. We don't want to just decide a curriculum is important so we're going to put a curriculum in teachers' hands and have that be the one with the glossiest pages and the best sales pitch. We want to be sure that we're promoting quality by providing a resource that is quality. And so if we're going to sort of boil it down, we think of these three attributes that make up quality in the young child's learning environment. And so specifically we want to select or assemble a curriculum that promotes literacy experiences that are rigorous, cohesive, and engaging. So I'm going to go through each of these in turn. So first, let's just talk a bit about that first one, increasing instructional rigor. Now this is going to mean a big shift in how we think about and approach literacy instruction. I think this shift is largely one from teaching reading skills to teaching content and promoting content learning. And so again, if we're expecting this big shift in teacher's instruction, we really need to provide them with a curriculum that supports this instructional change. And part of that is sort of showing what a rigorous curriculum might look like and knowing what to look for when you're selecting or assembling one. And so this diagram just gives one idea of what that might look like. It's going to be a curriculum that embeds code-based instruction. Again, this instruction in letters and sounds and word reading in language-rich and content-rich units of study. So a really quality curriculum is going to be one that's similarly explicit and purposeful in how it guides teachers in promoting literacy skills and in promoting literacy knowledge. And so rigorous instruction within this Pre-K to 3 continuum has a lot to do with making sure that classroom serving our youngest children aren't just thinking about sort of a lock step progression from skill to skill, but more moving towards this integrated instructional core. So the second piece of a quality curriculum that I wanted to highlight here is this idea of promoting cohesion. And I'm highlighting this feature in particular because one common issue is a school or a care setting or a district will have lots of pockets of fabulous learning and teaching. But because there are different instructional approaches and programs in use or a lot of variation in capacity, the larger learning environment is to be frank, experienced by many children as disconnected. So these learning experiences don't tend to add up the way they need to. And actually this can be most striking when we think about children who are changing their learning settings, maybe from early care to kindergarten where there's little continuity between the two. And so a quality literacy curriculum therefore builds the kind of instructional cohesion that children need to accumulate skills and knowledge over time. So it provides children but especially also teachers with cohesive learning and teaching experiences and supports consistency across classrooms. And actually it's just worth noting here that it can also really help teachers and specialists within the same setting provide a coherent learning experience for children who are receiving additional services. We sort of avoid this chaotic model of different ways of teaching and learning for the same child who's experiencing difficulties. So the last element of a quality curriculum I just wanted to talk a bit about here is to sort of thinking about a curriculum that's engaging. And while in part that's a given it's worth just bringing that up in a conversation about a curriculum because one of the hardest parts about this whole process of promoting reading and language development is that it's really hard to build a classroom that's able to genuinely use play-based inquiry and collaboration as a way to promote learning. So educators really need clear steps and quality materials to create a literacy-enriched learning environment that has both the structures and routines in place that can make play not just fun for children but also really productive. And the wide variety of books and visuals and materials that help to create a developmentally appropriate and responsive learning environment are all part of what can be seen as a really quality curriculum for the early childhood setting. So the last key attribute of a quality and comprehensive literacy curriculum is one that does this tricky job of merging rigor and strong teaching with lots of play to create an engaging learning environment. Okay, so just to sort of recap and make sure that I'm practicing what I preach and I know that this piece of the webinar is as cohesive as I can make it. I just want to sort of tie this all together and quickly summarize the main point that we want to keep in mind when thinking through the what, how, and why of literacy curricula. So first, we want to remember that there needs to be a tight link between what we know about literacy development and what makes for a quality literacy curriculum. And so because oral language is key for academic success and because promoting and supporting language development is both hard to do and requires this considerable shift in what typical teaching practice is, a comprehensive literacy curriculum is really crucial for supporting both teachers and the children that they're serving. And as I just outlined, when selecting or assembling a quality literacy curriculum in your setting or in your site, you want to think really hard about how the resources you're providing to teachers are supporting them to build a rigorous, cohesive, and engaging learning environment for children. And that's it. Thank you so much, Julie. I think as we move forward, well first I want to note that it looks as if we've solved some of our minor technological issues and our slides are advancing in a very healthy way. We shift from language literacy to mathematics. I want to introduce our next speaker and then we will have a brief polling question before he moves into his presentation. The focus shifts now from language literacy to mathematics that matters in the early school. We have with us and let's do our quick polling question and I will introduce Doug Clement who comes to us as the Kennedy Endowed Chair in Early Childhood Learning and as a professor from the University of Denver. So as you are making your polling selections and we see the results, we want to thank Doug for being with us and transition to him for Pre-K curriculum that matters in Pre-K through third grade mathematics. So teachers' knowledge, we heard from Julie that support for teachers was a very important building block upon that essential high quality curriculum and it sounds as if our poll here or that out in people's perspective. So we will shift now to Doug Clement. Doug? So can you hear me okay? Is that about the right volume? I hope so. Let's go to the first slide then. Can people hear me alright? Yes Doug, we can hear you just fine. Great. I was having trouble with the technology here so I'm just checking. Let's start. It's interesting that almost 50% of you thought that one of the main difficulties or challenges for this is teachers' knowledge of mathematics. That's definitely true. We need to probably get more rigorous about our thinking about mathematics because students have so much potential that often isn't realized. Let's take a look at this third grade teacher in Western Connecticut who was doing subtraction with borrowing. She was reintroducing double digits subtraction with borrowing and put 64 take away 28 on the board. Advance please. And she started her instruction by saying now you can't take 8 from 4 so advance please. A key third grade Boiner classroom interrupted her and said yes you can. 8 from 4 is negative 4. Advance. And 20 from 60 is 40. And negative 4 and 40 is 36. Now this solution was never talked to that boy. This solution in fact was probably never done by anybody in Western Connecticut previous to this boy. It was an original mathematical creation of a third grade boy. That's the kind of fundamental and fascinating thinking of which kids are capable. That if we increase teacher knowledge for both the mathematics and the ways the children learn and develop their own mathematical thinking we can get more kids thinking like key. Advance one of the ways that we've done that tried to do that is with the common core. The common core state standard initiative is probably familiar to many people. The thing I want to emphasize here is very simple that for the pre-k through grade 3 strands the two most important domains are number and arithmetic and geometry and spatial reasoning. Number and arithmetic include subitizing the quick instance recognition of small, the number in small sets. For instance, if I put up three fingers very quickly and didn't give you time to count them all of you would recognize the depth 3. Counting in a more fundamental way than we often teach it. And arithmetic addition and subtraction multiplication and division eventually. And the geometry and spatial reasoning not just naming shapes but thinking about shapes analyzing shapes, composing shapes, decomposing in other words putting them together to make other shapes and taking them apart. And spatial reasoning being able to do mental slides in terms of development. What might you miss if you knew the common core as just a list of standards is that learning trajectory stands at the core of common core. We actually wrote the learning trajectory before we wrote the common core standards that you see. And the learning trajectories are coming out little by little and they're going to constitute part B of the common core as soon as those are evident and fully edited. And I think those are more important to helping teachers because teachers who succeed at teaching curriculum need a path for developing concepts and skills. Teachers who succeed at innovative curriculum don't just cover certain topics but build kids through something like a learning trajectory. Next slide. This is confirmed by the National Research Council report and the report of the President's Council for Teaching Mathematics called Boundations for Success that I was involved in writing a few years ago. So let's look at learning trajectories really briefly. I wanted to show you a video technologically that's not questionable. I'm going to try to at least paint a picture for you with words as much as I can. Learning trajectories has three parts. There's a mathematical goal we want kids to achieve. There's a developmental progression of the levels of thinking through which kids path on their way to achieving that mathematical goal. And there are correlated instructional activities connected to each level of thinking are the kind of activities that the search shows health development, the following level of thinking. Next slide. So if you think about it, for instance, the instructional path there has been a lot of research on instructional paths down at the bottom left of the slide. And that's had a connection to the Common Core Standards. Likewise, there's been research on mathematics that leads to some knowledge of curriculum and there's been research on levels thinking that has led to some effects as in the blue line. And there's some overlap between those. But a scientific approach to learning trajectories leads these three parts together so that standards, curriculums, and assessments all come from a common base of the same learning trajectories, the same scientific space. Next slide. So let's talk through a learning trajectory for a number very quickly. Our goal for young children is accurate, confident, object counting, and then for older children getting into more and more counting based arithmetic. The developmental progression for that is very interesting because that's okay, you can show off. It's very interesting because what happens is most people understand the kids learn row counting or verbal counting first. Many teachers understand but that's not enough to have a kid say 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. You can't be able to keep those words in one to one correspondence in other words saying one number for each object they're counting. What some teachers miss is that even though you keep one to one correspondence to get to the end children might not understand that the last number words tells how many in the set. That might seem an obvious idea to you and me but many teachers Julie Theron and I have worked with have said that that is the main thing that they stopped doing. They stopped accepting that if the kid could just point the object and count that they understood enough about counting. They would do things instead like say count how many here and the child would say 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. They would say good and then they'd cover those things. How would it be with a child and say how many? And if the child constantly knows there's six there's some indication that they understand the next level of thinking, the cardinality principle or how many is ideal. So what would we do with that? Instructional activities have to be developed for each of these levels. Let's go to the next slide. I'm going to show you just a couple of counting games and try to give you an illustration of how the instruction follows those simple couple of levels that I laid out which are just three of over 20 levels that go 3k through grade 3. Next slide. So in an early row of those games, row of race games for instance, children might count those two objects at the bottom left and then have to move their marker on those two. Right away you've already got several skills developing. You've got the one-to-one correspondence, the verbal counting, the one-to-one correspondence and they have to recognize how many they've put out. And they also have to be able to move up and connecting those two different number worlds, the worlds of the dots and the worlds of advancing jumps, movements along the path that already builds a stronger concept of number next slide. But we don't stop there. We want to keep developing. We want to make sure they can count different kinds of objects. So in the next game what they do in row of race sheet counting is to count the sides of the shape and have to move that many along the path, linking the two most important domains, number and geometry. Next slide. And in the next one, this is the number choice game. You choose which number you want to use. That's already a good skill. What's the bigger number? Amazingly difficult for kids is, for instance, NOVA 9 is more than 7, even when they can do the verbal counting and they haven't established that as a mental number line. Here though, they can pick the larger number most of the time, but not all of the time. Because in this particular case, do you see where the rocket chip is? Because the child knows that blue spaces are forward action spaces, in this case picking one is smarter because when you land on the five action space, you go forward five more. So we always want the kids thinking. Next slide. How do we develop next? Well, we want to build a counting based arithmetic next. So here's the basic definition of arithmetic. On the previous slide, there were two sets of dots and one counts through the first set and then through the second set and you move that many. Next slide. But we don't want the kids to stop there. So kindergarteners who aren't there or for sure, for graders, we want them to not just count all all the time, we want them to develop counting based strategies for arithmetic. So in this game, you see the nine and you see the four, but the nine is a numeral. So you can't just count one, two, three, four, right? You could, but it's much better more likely and encouraged to have kids say nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, and then move that. Next slide. Building on that counting based arithmetic, we next move through two numeral so the kids actually have to do a lot more of this processing in logistically or through counting strategies. Next slide. And then moving up into second or third grade, we'll go on to the next one. There you go. And excellence in addition choice game, exactly like the choice before. This is actually still first grade. I got mine out of order. Sorry. This is actually still first grade. Could do this. You pick two numeral, add them together, and use it. Again, most likely, the five and the three in most cases, but if five and the three, you let them land you on a red backwards action space, or if the five and the two get you on a forward action space, you should make a different choice. Therefore, we always have to keep thinking. Now, here we go finally into second grade or third grade here. Now what you have to do is you're on 18. You roll, so to speak, or not. But notice how we've hit the numerals above. We want the child to count on 9 from 18. Unlike paper and pencil games, one advantage of this being a computer version here, in this case, and incidentally, we always have the kids play computer version and hand sign version simultaneously. But one advantage of the computer version is not only did it give kids instant correctness to be there, but we can hide the numerals above. So kids can just point and count 9 more and then read off the number they actually have to do the mental arithmetic. Next slide. And next again. So in our building blocks project, when we've used those kinds of learning trajectories as the base of the not only the curriculum, next slide, but also the professional development of teachers, we find clear empirical support for that approach. In this particular study, compared to not only business with mutual control groups, but a comparison group that got the same amount of professional development, but I have a curriculum that wasn't based on learning trajectories, the building blocks kids scored higher at the end. Next slide. And next and next. Yes. So my advice to everybody is to learn more about learning trajectories. Julie and I have a couple books out with loop with John learning trajectories. There's some learning trajectories appearing on the Common Core tools website. Use them in teaching, use them in choosing curriculums, using them as professional developers. They provide a unifying support so that our standards, our curriculum, and our assessment, formative assessment in the classroom and then, you know, the eventual large-scale assessment will have a Common Core of mathematics and the way children learn mathematics. Next slide. Here are some websites that if you're interested, you can learn more about these approach and an elaborated version of this presentation is available as a PDF if you're so interested. Just go to the triadscaleup.org. That's TriadScancer Technology Enhanced Research-Based Instruction Assessment and Professional Development Scaleup.org. If you're interested in triad research, that's wonderful. Mainly, though, click on that one and then click on articles so that you can download any of these articles in this presentation. Next slide. And I'm all done. And my friends, Elena and Debbie, are going to take over and talk about self-regulation. Thank you very much for letting me join you today, everyone. Thank you so much, Doug. And as we're shifting to Elena's presentation, again, I'm sure most of you are hearing what I was hearing, which was a lot of commonalities across thinking about curricula for language literacy, high-quality curricula for math, really focusing on the rigor, cohesiveness, building on developmental progressions. So before we introduce Elena our next presentation, we do have a polling question which shifts our gears a bit from content-specific or domain-specific curricula to really think about more domain general or across the day, across the curriculum, support for children's and learning development in social, emotional, and general cognitive development. So take a quick step at your response to each of these. As you're doing that, please be reminded if you have questions or if you have specific, in any of the presentations that you would like, help preparation, note those in the chat box on the right of your screen, and we will make sure we try to address those in the question and answer period. So as we're waiting for, as we're waiting we see that adopted a published curriculum or set goals and strategies up to individual teachers was the predominant way that issues, domain general issues are being addressed through curricula. It's my pleasure now to introduce Sampo-Slova, who as most of you know is a co-collaborator and co-author with Deborah Leong of Tools of the Mind. So Elena, with that, let me turn this over to you. Thank you. Thank you, Chris. I was just thinking preparing for my presentation that just a bunch of coincidences happened that I was thinking of the same topics in three different context. One was developing of Tools of the Mind curriculum. Another one, we've been working with some states helping them to choose different curricula and see what kind of issues people are having when they're making those decisions. And also I was involved in some international projects. So I got to learn how different countries look at this continuity between preschool education and primary education. So what I'm going to be talking about is a set of issues that seem to be universal when people are addressing those issues. So can you please show next slide? And what seems to be happening is that how the transition between pre-kindergarten and primary grades happen seem to determine what is happening in the early childhood in general. What kind of philosophy is happening? And what I'm going to be talking about two things. One is continuity and consistency between pre-kindergarten and primary grades. And the other one is continuity and consistency between different aspects of the curriculum that is adopted. And answering the second question, what seems to be happening and it may be partially the result of the decisions that are being made. Like I saw on the polling that a lot of times it's being left up to individual teachers. The continuity may not be there or consistency may not be there because some of the curricula chosen may not be aligned with each other. And what I'm talking about is the philosophy, philosophy of the program and how it matches the philosophy of the curriculum. So what I've seen in some of the classrooms is that the curriculum that is cognitively oriented may be based on constructivist philosophy or whole child philosophy, but a supplemental social emotional curriculum can be based on behavior management, which is completely philosophical opposite of this constructivist approach. So that's one of the things to keep in mind when choices are being made, that different parts of the curriculum are based on the same philosophy, so they seamlessly work together. And the same is true when, I'm still on the previous slide, sorry, the same is true when you're looking at the pre-K and primary when there is a transition made between preschool and primary grades sometimes the philosophy shifts from being focused on general underlying competencies, whether they are cognitive and linguistic or social emotional to being focused on more discrete skills. And this kind of switch changes both the focus of the curriculum and the pedagogy involved. And so the next slide about what should be the focus of the curriculum and what we are seeing also that decisions are being made based on what is the primary focus, whether it is academic skills or what is now combined into this category of non-cognitive skills. It's not very good description of those skills, but this term became familiar to people after publications by Jim Hackman when he was looking at long-term consequences of children being in high quality pre-K programs and how their success in life actually depended on how high quality program was that. So with academic skills the question to answer is are we thinking of academic skills as the end of itself or rather as means to the end and in some of the approaches actually academic skills are considered to be rather the context in which children are learning those non-academic skills that involve persistence and character and ability to self-regulate. So what is important to consider is that there is a balance again between what children are learning in terms of academic skills and what and how they learn that also works to promote their social-emotional skills and self-regulation on executive function. And speaking of social-emotional skills, just one comment I would like to make is that a lot of times social-emotional curricula that are being adopted, they are rather function as add-ons and not totally integrated into day-to-day activities that happen in teaching math or literacy and that sometimes makes those social-emotional efforts not very successful because children do not get enough practice in the most authentic context when they need to practice those skills. And it brings me to the next slide talking about pedagogy. We talk about curriculum and pedagogy is kind of left out of the picture but sometimes it's just as important as what is being taught because how is being taught can either make the curriculum more effective or less effective. And what I've been witnessing so far in viewing kindergarten curricula and preschool curricula and also primary grade curricula that a lot of times while the material being taught is made very explicit the methods and how it is being taught it's either not described in the same amount of detail or sometimes it's totally left out. And what is happening in the classroom is that actually implemented curricula may be very different from what the curriculum authors intended because teachers use the same pedagogy for very different activities for different purposes and a lot of times it ends up being more teacher-directed, teacher-led activities and what is being missing is attempts to engage children through various formats of learning that are not necessarily teacher-led. And what I'm talking about child-child interactions that sometimes happen incidentally and they may be encouraged but they're not always built in the fabric of curriculum the same way teacher-child interactions are built in. And one topic that is dear to my heart is playful learning and play that is being talked about more in the recent times but still there is a lot of misconceptions about play and playful learning and how engaging children in playful learning can be beneficial for their development. And one distinction I want to make is that there is play itself and children oftentimes come to our preschools and even kindergartens not knowing how to play and also playing at the very immature level and the other thing is using play in service of learning so using games, using playful activities that are very important but they are not the same as teaching children how to play and this other distinction that I want to make is that a lot of times play that we see in the classrooms is very immature and from our perspective perspective of developers tools of the mind this immature play does not contribute to the learning the same way mature play does and recently there has been some research showing that amount of play in the classroom may not necessarily contribute to learning however the researchers did not look deep into quality of play and when our 4 and 5 year olds are playing the way toddlers do obviously their learning is not being enhanced by this kind of play. And then finally another set of issues that is associated with this broad view of curriculum is relationship between curriculum and assessment and a lot of times what is being assessed actually drives the curriculum decision and what is being assessed sometimes is driven by the tradition but now it can be driven by the standards that are being changed as we speak and there are some issues associated with assessment and one has to do with developmental trajectories or rather using Doug's terminology I'm talking more about developmental progressions that sometimes lack of very specific knowledge of some developments let teachers to assess all developmental progressions as if they are continuous and incremental and sometimes we know that there is discontinuity and assessing children and certain points of those developments may give us an accurate picture of their development. For example I'm talking about literacy development it's very important for children to have certain level of phonological awareness in order to break the code but some children take the path of learning about rhymes much faster and better than they learn about beginning sounds of the words and some children may take a different route they all come to the same goal but their routes can be different so assessing just rhyming or just beginning sounds may give incomplete picture of those children's progress toward this goal. Another interesting thing that comes up when we look at the progression from pre-K through third grade that there seem to be some latent competencies that teachers teach but they may not have immediate feedback of how well they're teaching until much later and by that time it would be a different teacher of a different grade level. For example working with preschoolers and kindergartners on the oral language may have latent results when the reading comprehension is being measured but it will not be measured until they are in third or fourth grade when they check that their reading are complex enough to allow for this kind of assessment so it is something for us to think about to plan assessments in long term and make curriculum decision in long term and not on the grade by grade basis. And another last comment about assessments is something very specific to preschool and kindergarten age children that oftentimes the early prerequisites of skills and it includes both academic skills and non-academic skills they don't even look like most mature forms of the same skills. What I'm talking about is for example early advances in children's ability to draw are related to the later mastery of writing but very few teachers have specific focus on helping children to express themselves through drawing context of their literacy development so they just get another thing to think about. So I hope I give you enough food for thought and I'm waiting for your questions. Thank you. Thank you so much Elena and as we shift to our final presenter before we are going to be able to address questions so please keep questions coming in the chat box. Elena really showed that cohesiveness that we started out talking about as Julie made the first presentation about curriculum has many meanings and is important at many levels not only across the ages developmental spans but also across the content areas of the curriculum and making sure that what we teach is cohesively linked and intertwined with how we teach. So our final presenter is Sam Ortwig and as we move to Sam's presentation again a final quick poll that hones in on the common core state standards which are very much a part of all of our lives taking a look at where you are and your thinking about the common core standards. So as you look at this and begin to see what our experiences across participants today let me take the pleasure of introducing Sam. Dr. Sam Ortwig is currently Director of Implementation for First School an initiative at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Dr. Ortwig has a long career in public education that stands Elementary Teacher, Elementary Principal and District Director of Elementary Education. Sam's title is Developing Effective Pre-K Third Curriculum Sam, take it away. Good afternoon everybody. I'll go to the right to the first slide. Since instruction is only as good as the curriculum that it is based upon we know that it is critical that definitely a good deal of time and attention be dedicated to it. So in order to give curriculum as to just do we recommend five criteria that we refer to as our favored framework that authentically meets to meet the needs of your students and that is that curriculum needs to be aligned, balanced, integrated, relevant and developmental if you want to build quality in right from the start. So I'm going to briefly discuss each of these three and I believe that you will note that our previous presenters definitely gave some wonderful examples of how these can and should play out in different content areas as well as in just general curriculum planning. Our first is aligned and we have to make certain that what our children are engaged in during instructional time is fully aligned with the Common Core State Standards. One of the most important jobs that a teacher has is to translate standards into curriculum that is effective for their students. However, all too often we see that the translation of standards into lessons becomes a series of activities. These activities may be fun and interesting but they sometimes bear little resemblance to specifically what the children need to know and be able to do in order to meet the targeted goals. Often this is due to the fact that teachers are dealing with standards is a very time consuming and brain taxing process. Teachers tend to spend what time and energy they have delving right into instruction. However, taking the time to know your standards and know them well is really the very beginning of quality instruction. So I'm happy to see that there are a number of you out there who have really taken time to read and delve into the Common Core. I know a lot of people are spending a great deal of time with the Common Core now because it's new but I hope that this will continue on and that people will really check those standards and keep them in mind, keep them on the front burner so that they can effectively use them as they create their instruction. Two things that effective teachers are keenly aware about when they think about the standards is number one, what does the standard actually specifically state? And number two, what does it mean for the age and the grade level of the children they are teaching? We use three questions to help strengthen alignment. The first one supports effective teaching by identifying quite specifically the end target. It is best to know your destination before you begin your journey. Then teachers work backwards by thinking about the learning sequence that is needed to take the child from where they are now to that designated target. Inherent in this process is knowing where your children are right now. So effective teachers use continuous formative assessments and lots of quick and easy ways to keep themselves connected with all their learners. And then finally, they consider where the current lesson or unit plan fits into that continuum. Few grade level standards can be mastered quickly. Most tick months if not the full year to develop. So it is important to keep the entire scope and sequence in mind as one moves forward in that learning journey. Next we consider balance. Curriculum balance is so important yet we know that time constraints can easily create situations where entire strands or even units of study are left out in the course of the school year. Teachers regularly make decisions about what they will teach and how much time they will dedicate to it. Effective teachers ensure a balanced curriculum because it reflects their belief in the importance of educating the whole child, which we know is so very important, particularly when we think about closing the achievement cap. They teach all content areas, not just the ones that are assessed because they recognize that what children are exposed to will ultimately shape the minds they come to own. Teaching a balanced and rich curriculum is what supports closing the achievement cap yet we find all too often that in low achieving schools the curriculum is actually being narrowed. So effective teachers find lots of meaningful ways to include the arts. They recognize that balance needs to be considered within each content area and not just across content areas. Some concepts need more time than others, as mentioned, and most require repeated exposure, all of which is reflected in a balanced curricular plan. One of the best ways to increase curriculum balance is through curriculum integration besides allowing for more curriculum to be taught the learning experience is actually strengthened when it is interconnected rather than viewing math, reading science and so forth as separate from one another. Effective teachers know the standards so well that they can build curriculum that joins multiple learning goals together. These teachers promote the learning of knowledge and skills by helping students connect them together rather than viewing everything in isolation. Integration also helps students to work from a point of strength and interest. If you're not strong in math but you're a capable writer, the integration of writing in math can make it more approachable. And integration does not just refer to content areas but it also includes thought processes. Any content area is strengthened when students have opportunities to talk about it, to reflect upon it, and to write about it. Using math notebooking and science notebooking are two of the best ways to build in higher order thinking. And acting out a concept drawing it or building it solidifies new learning into long term memory. To ensure high student participation and engagement, learning also needs to be to have relevance. Whether we're adults or children, we're quintessentially sense making problem solving beings and we need to know why or how something is important in order to want to give it time and attention. Therefore quality curriculum connects to the interests and lives of our students. Effective teachers provide a high level of emotional support as well as cognitive support to their students. They know and value each of their students strengths, their interests, their dislikes, their hopes and their dreams and respectfully include ways to help students connect learning to the real world. The real world of the child which is not necessarily the real world of the teacher. Effective teachers recognize that success and achievement promote self-efficacy and positive identity development. They work diligently to make sure that each child has what he or she needs to engage and participate. They begin where the child is at and scaffold her to success. Another aspect of relevance that is worth considering is that learning becomes relevant not just by the situation it is initially presented in but also by opportunities to transfer the learning to new and different scenarios. Quality curriculum includes opportunities for children to do something meaningful with their learning. And next, last but not least, high quality curriculum needs to be developmental. As Elena talked a lot about, effective teachers recognize the cognitive, social, emotional and physical needs of their students and ensure that each domain is regularly addressed. They design curriculum that is differentiated to meet the wide range of abilities within their classroom and they routinely use manipulatives and opportunities for application. High quality curriculum development takes into account how memory works and how it is best supported and how much time children can reasonably attend before needing to move, talk, or process information. So in conclusion, I like to encourage you that the next time you are considering working on your instructional plan make it even better by first considering your curricular plan and use the ABIRD framework. Thank you. Thank you so much both to Sam but also I think on behalf of all of the participants including myself today we really want to extend a very hearty thank you to each of our four presenters and if I look at the time right we have about 15, even 20 minutes for questions so do keep them coming. I have received a few that have been sent in to me. I don't think they've been on everybody's chat box but let me pose a question and then we'll work through the group. One of the themes that I've seen in some of the questions that have come to me is that as educators who are really trying to connect pre-kindergarten through kindergarten through the primary grades in a more cohesive pre-K through third approach districts and specifically schools and programs are either taking a new look at their existing curricula or are in the process of selecting developing new curricula to support this broader pre-K through third orientation. So I'm wondering if each of our presenters might offer what you see as the most important starting place or the biggest takeaway that you'd like each participant who is in the process of rethinking or selecting curricula to use as a starting place in that process. So why don't we start with Doug and then Julie and then Elena and Sam. Doug, are you willing to take this one? Oh, absolutely. You know, in part I'll be a little repetitious. If grade level age and grade level teachers not only get together with each other but the people on each side, we've found with these learning trajectories which I could give only the briefest outline for to help form connecting tissue between the, not only the grade level on one side but the grade levels on the other side because there are of course first and second graders who are in need of number sense that other children have developed in preschool and kindergarten. So sharing the knowledge about kids, learning, sharing the activity, sharing the information you have about teachers or children when they go to the next grade all can be extremely valuable. That kind of conversation doesn't always happen. In two of the three districts where we did our big scale-up work there were district policies that the coaches who worked with preschool couldn't work with kindergarten or first grade teachers and the coaches that worked in math were strictly for kindergarten through five and couldn't work with the preschool teachers at all. They weren't allowed in their classrooms, etc. We have to break down those kind of barriers I think and make sure that coaches and teachers at all sides are talking to each other and all the talks I heard today great talks everybody. We're really interesting in that they all seem to, I think, to my way of thinking although of course that's the lens I have on now, speak to this kind of developmental view for early childhood across these districts. Thanks Doug. I'm wondering if we can shift to Julie now with the same questions. Sure. I guess I have two responses to this question. The first would be if we're sort of thinking about cohesion from the sort of early care setting to the pre-K3 or K3 world. Sort of this looking inward and being reflective in terms of well what is your setting sort of really strong at providing for children and where does things need to be strengthened and that could be a big part of your curriculum selection. So for instance what's often the case is that in the K3 setting we have sort of a bit of a relative strength might be the instructional rigor but maybe what the relative strength or weakness rather might be sort of really focusing on the social-emotional climate of the classroom and sort of building children's social-emotional and self-regulation skills. And so, and it might be the opposite in the early care setting and sort of ramping up the rigor in the early care setting and making sure we're paying attention to children's continued social-emotional development in the K3 setting is one way to think about bridging that gap but my second answer and I'll be really quick on this would be just I think if we're really going to make a difference it's thinking about curriculum again as part of that package of instructional improvement where the curriculum matters but then here when we're thinking about from setting to setting having this cohesion it's about partnerships and thinking where partnerships between these settings really comes into play and maybe joint professional development opportunities among teachers it can feel a bit pie in the sky but if we're really serious about making a difference I think it's going to be the partnership that really matters in the end and any questions about that are always welcome Thanks Julie. Elena, would you be willing to jump in now looking at this issue of what is the most important starting place in building high quality curriculum in pedagogy? Okay, so maybe not the most important but one of the important things when we look at social-emotional development and self-regulation development and the whole area of non-cognitive skills there is very interesting thing happening like Julie just noted that K3 doesn't seem to be very hard on this issue but when you look at the high school and you see all the habits of mind and other things showing up in the standards we see that there is probably a good way to go backwards and see what are the prerequisites of those skills or you can also look at what's now called 21st century skills what are the early prerequisites that can be addressed in primary grades in this way that would be a more seamless transition from emphasis on those non-cognitive skills in pre-K to emphasize the same group of skills in primary grades although they may show under different categories Thanks and now Sam are you willing to jump in on this question? Sure, I think the more that teachers work together the better they have an understanding of the continuum of learning. As Doug talked about there is so much power in teachers from various grade levels working together and we have found in our project that that vertical alignment is really a critical building stone in strengthening the whole pre-K 3 continuum people understand the standards better, they understand the developmental process that children go through and it really builds the teachers into a community of learners as well as the students. Thanks Sam and I think of course my biases and my beliefs are kicking in but what I hear that to me is so important is it's certainly about selecting or identifying and developing a high quality curriculum but that really is that architecture, that starting place and it's really the professional connections across teachers that begin to support the cohesion which again has been a theme across presentations of just a critical important criterion for our thinking about high quality pre-K 3rd. I think we have time for a final question and let me see if I can pull together several ideas that popped across my chat box and it goes back to thinking or listening across the presentations most of you talked about rigor talked about having ambitious curricula for young children and as we know rigor is very often a word that many of us in early childhood have shied away from and had images of something that really didn't fit what we know and understand about teaching and learning for young children but coupled with that rigor we also heard I think all of you talk about the importance of playful learning as a part of really putting in place a very high quality curriculum that leads to very important and meaningful teaching and learning. So I'm wondering if each of you might comment upon this equation of redefining rigor plus the notion of playful learning and help us think about how we can best articulate that as we all move forward in our respective programs and our respective districts. So why don't we reverse order we'll start with Sam if that's okay then Elena and then Julie and Doug each having about two to three minutes. I think that rigor certainly is not giving students a bunch of worksheets to do having them sit down in individual desks to create complete assignments. The A-Bird framework particularly the integration, the relevance, the developmental, all of those things really do provide much more high quality challenging learning experiences for children. Again that integration piece where you're really bringing in different content areas together and targeting multiple learning goals at one time certainly strengthens the academic challenge for the students. And mature play is definitely a necessity in the developmental portion of the framework looking at really engaging children in situations of application where they are taking the concepts that they're learning and applying them in real-world ways again elevates the learning experience beyond just mediocrity. Elena? I'll try to do is to combine these two things together and come up with a new term rigorous playful learning. What I'm saying is that it would be really great if we start approaching the issue of play and playful learning with the same rigor as we do approach teaching academic subjects and we'll use research that exists on play, on symbolic representation, on social interaction on cooperative learning and all those related areas to make sure that we're also following developmental progression in play and games and we approach choosing context for play and choosing games also to follow this developmental progression to support this learning so we'll have self-regulation and social emotional skills but also will have highly engaged students who practice their content related through playful learning. Thanks. Julie? Hi, yeah, no, I'm really glad you asked this question actually because I think it can be really confusing in the field like what is meant by instructional rigor and for one I think that it's really in a lot of ways thinking about like as you said redefining what rigor is and knowing that rigorous instruction is mentally appropriate instruction and that if we're not being rigorous in our instruction we're really to be frank I think we're letting our children down like if we're not asking open-ended questions and reading books about nature and history and then having centers after this read aloud that connect to these ideas where children are playing with science experiment like scenarios and writing their own books and creating all these things again as I remember one of the presenters said it might be drawing but that is literacy development and drawing is rigorous when it's not coloring just in a picture of Dora but really thinking about connecting to what's being learned in the classroom. And from that same token I think what's often confused with rigor as you move up through the grades maybe when you're getting closer to second and third grade is that teachers will talk about implementing rigorous instruction and what they're actually saying is they're doing a lot of test preparation and skill building and how that's not really rigorous instruction either and how so we're thinking about what's developmentally appropriate for our youngest children and our children and early and middle childhood it is this idea that children come with synapses firing and a lot of big ideas and things to talk about and so when we're being rigorous in an authentic way and learning about content and through math and literacy and all the rest I think that is what developmentally appropriate is means and that's that. Thanks and now Doug to bring it home on this question. Yeah I couldn't have said it better than Julie Her Ginsburg a friend and colleague also in mathematics early childhood education says that you can't be developmentally appropriate and not do mathematics and I would add science and literacy with young children. They see the world in mathematical life they love to count and see what's more and the shape of things and they love books that are informational science books not just fantasy books it's not one against the other but we do far too little of challenging them to learn rigorous content. And then rigor where is rigor so is a rectangle and this isn't a rectangle because when she said this isn't a rectangle you know it doesn't have too long too long sides and too short sides no that's mathematically incorrect and doing that actually breaks the hypocritical it does harm to kids to not know the mathematics that even your teaching kids most people think oh I'm just teaching you know primary grades or something like that I know all that mathematics actually you stop the move terribly bad mathematics education most of us in this country we need to kind of up the game for ourselves and therefore for our children and so there's rigor in the mathematics and like all three previous speakers said there's rigor in the pedagogy that should be more scientifically based more research based than we now do that means the opposite of psychedelic worksheets that means the opposite of scientifically based that means it's going to be dry and dull it's exciting to do interesting mathematics they play and learn self-regulations they play and learn literacy they play and learn math and they play with mathematics they play with mathematical ideas and through that kind of engaged play they're getting they're getting self-regulation the developing language developing mathematics skills and I can't think of a better way for kids to be developing the whole child. Thanks Doug and that was a such a wonderful integration explanation of how play, rigor, and all of the content areas are integrated as all of our presenters show it looks like we have about six to seven more minutes for questions and we want to get our full time with our wonderful presenters so I'm wondering if each of you might think of a question or might if you have if you choose to a question that you wish you were asked about high quality curriculum for pre-k through third and weren't and you certainly can defer but I'm wondering what you what you wish we asked you and we'll just go backwards again start with Doug and move through the line as long as we can Doug is there a question you wished we had asked well um jeez there's so many but you know just mathematics for young children a push down curriculum you know and is it one more thing that used to be first graders had to learn and now we just keep pushing it down to kindergarten and preschool and again my answer I sort of gave it already you know kids come to this stuff with deep engagement and interest and enjoyment his play with these ideas they play with shape they play with a transformation of the shape and size of clay you know these kind of things it there doesn't have to be a dichotomy between play and child centered on one hand and academic on the other hand the fact that academic has a dirty name at times in early childhood is just a misunderstanding and a misapplication of bad pedagogy to young children and the reaction to that but that is not safe and this might be a little controversial for our other people that everything can be done to play I take a playful approach to small group lessons we take a playful approach to old group lessons which are always short and engaging and physical we take a playful approach to computer activities which also help kids and we engage in more what we naturally think of so dramatic play more open ended kind of play all of those can have a playful but all of those pedagogical sources are an important piece of an effective early childhood education throughout the grade level thanks Elena do you have something you'd like to share as your question you wished we had but the question didn't I think Julie is the answer okay I can talk okay so the question that came actually keeps coming in conversations about curriculum is the question about research based curriculum and it's a huge topic probably for the entire webinar one thing that I want to emphasize is that not all research is equally valuable available to the same degree when we talk about research based curriculum because a lot of times you can read in publishers brochures that it's research based and you look at research and it is done in a discipline that is related but the research is not translated into curriculum and pedagogy just the fact that we know some things about brain development does not necessarily translate into effective practice or effective organization of the material there is a lot of intermediate stages for translating research just wanted for all of us to be very careful when we are looking at that and I think Doug has a lot of information about those transitional stages and what actually has to be done to translate research into the curriculum thank you thanks and one just very quickly by Julie and then I won't come on and we'll move to Sam okay sounds good so a question that wasn't asked so I'm just going to go out on a limb and I'm going to pose the question that maybe some people out there webinar cyberspace are thinking still well really a curriculum like is that even what we should be doing might that limit teaching instead of helping it will we end up with teachers sort of all reading off the page and teachers might be worried that administrators will be expecting them to be on a particular page at a particular minute in the day and so I think I think underlying a lot of this is just remembering how supportive a curriculum can be so on one hand we want to remember that a curriculum is not something that limits teaching but in fact is something that is really a resource for teaching and that having taught myself when you're presented with just the standards which as amazing as they are they're not enough when again you have a lot of instructional priorities and a lot going on in your day and you're serving many different roles as a teacher and so a curriculum is something that can be very supportive but at that same token when we're thinking about quality implementation of that curriculum we're not thinking about teachers all being on the same page and while I've heard from teachers that in fact reading a very structured curriculum and getting that picture in their minds of what the instructional day might look like can be so helpful even from a curriculum that has a lot of those scary scripted things in place that it can be really nice as a resource to see it but at the same time we don't want to then go too far and expect teachers to again all be on the same page at the same time so I think if the question is really why curriculum I would say because it's helpful. Sam I think it's your turn to take this last question if you want to. The thing that I guess the one thing that I would have like to talk more about had to do with how to stay focused on the child and not get drawn off by schedules and time and all of the other things that seem to interfere and that it is so important always to really keep the faces of the children in our minds at all times. When things aren't working well or when the day seems particularly chaotic for a teacher to step back and look at what is it that isn't working and why isn't it working and be really willing to make adjustments and not just to push through. So much of the time curriculum is just something to get through and I love how Doug talked about it in a very different way so I just would encourage that we really keep the children always at the heart of what we're doing. Thank you. Great so I think we're now at the end of our question period. Chris, did you have any wrap-up that you wanted to do? Okay, we seem to have lost Chris Maxwell, our moderator. So this is Christy Cowers, one of the... Yes, I had a glitch that just came back. I apologize. We have reached the end unfortunately thanks to our presenters once again on all of our behalf and to our participants we apologize because we know there were several key questions that we just were not able to get to. We want to hear from you but we also want you to direct you back to the Pre-K Third Web site. We have another presentation, another webinar coming up very soon on the topic of looking into classroom, inside classrooms, teacher effectiveness which is scheduled for Wednesday, October 24th. So please join us again. Thank you to our participants and to our presenters on a topic that we could spend a lot more time working on. Thanks again. Please let us know your responses on our final polling and this brings us to the end of our curriculum webinar.