Saturday, March 17, 2012

Blog Assignment: Research that Benefits Children and Families—Uplifting Stories


Blog Assignment: Research that Benefits Children and Families—Uplifting Stories 
As a teacher at a bilingual school, my administrations often gets stressed out to make sure my school makes AYP and that student are proficient in skills such as language/literacy, and math. However, I learned that there is a gap in literacy/writing due to a language beerier.
Research indicates that children from inner cities/lower socio economic backgrounds, enter school with fewer words/vocabulary than their counterparts from suburban areas/higher socio economic backgrounds. And children whose family incomes are at or below the poverty level are especially likely to struggle with reading, a pattern that emerges early and strengthens in the elementary school years.

In addition, research indicates the contribution of print skills to early literacy, vocabulary and other language skills as providing an important foundation.  

As a result of these findings, my kindergarten team and I come up with a list of thematic vocabulary words for each unit we teach, we created word walls for each content area, and display word walls filled with high frequency words. We all agreed by doing this, we hope to close the achievement gap in terms of reading/literacy/writing at our school. In addition, we label all materials in the classroom with the assistance of each kindergartner. The bilingual kindergarten teacher, has received a lot of positive feedback from the first and second grade teachers and are pleased with what we are doing in kindergarten because kindergarten is the foundation for education, and I am proud to say that since we have been doing this my school has made AYP and my administration believes the teachers in kindergarten have laid the foundation so the teachers in the upper grades can continue to build off of the skills leaned in kindergarten.

I hope Head Start programs around the nation gives children the tools they need so that they can attain personal success in kindergarten so that kindergarten teachers can build off of that prior knowledge and leave kindergarten with the tools they need to have a successful academic career.


http://josephrodgers.wiki.westga.edu/file/view/Vocabulary.pdf

Nicky

3 comments:

  1. Great post Nicky. I am an Early Head Start teacher in Schaumburg,IL and i can assure you that we are doing our part to get our children prepared for school in all developmental areas. We must continue to teach our parents to get their children prepared as well because to much pressure is put on teachers.

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  2. From a school who has feared for a few years about AYP, I know how excited you all must be that you have made it! Isn't it wonderful to actually see what you do pay off! Congrats! We also use word walls for each content area in second grade, and I find my students refer to them often, even when we are not referring to them in lessons ( which happens alot!)

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  3. Nicky, this is great! I am very thankful for the Kindergarten teachers like you who lay the solid foundation. Teaching 5th grade, I am able to see the payoff.

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