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Our Team Provides
Our Team Provides
- Consulting related to positioning our youngest learners to succeed
- Self-paced Professional Learning Experience (PLE) in Executive Function and SEL -- key skills for early childhood
- Job-embedded PL and support in designing learning environments that engage and empower young learners
A few ideas . . .
A few ideas . . .
An important part of brain development takes place between ages 4 and 5 -- a growth spurt in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that handles a significant amount of executive function skills:
Working Memory
Inhibitory Control
Self-Awareness
Planning
Cognitive Flexibility
Problem-Solving
Reasoning
Early Childhood Education is a time to ensure and accelerate this growth spurt. Students who have grown up in financially disadvantaged circumstances or have endured other types of chronic stress may have a delay in the growth of the prefrontal cortex. Appropriate learning environments can make up for that!
We recommend activities, structures, and teacher facilitation strategies toward that goal.
The brain also develops differently for boys and girls. Girls' brains tend to develop toward stronger language skills first followed by analytic skills. Boys' brains tend to follow the opposite pattern. This is why girls tend toward verbal interactions, writing, and books over machines and math, and why boys tend toward machines and math over verbal interactions, writing, and books. By age 8, brain development evens out. A dangerous side effect of this, however, is that girls can come to think early on that they're just not good at math, while boys can come to think early on that they're just not that interested in reading and writing.
We recommend prioritizing experiences in the preferred areas for each gender while tailoring reading, writing, and speaking experiences for boys around math and science; and strengthening math and science experiences by linking them to reading, writing, and speaking experiences.
Some resources for you:
Some resources for you:
Blog post — Student-Driven Learning: I Want, I Can, I Do
MyQPortal resource — A Look Into a Kindergarten Learner-Active, Technology-Infused Classroom
MyQPortal resource — Great Hybrid Learner Rubric - Kindergarten (learn well whether at home or in school)
MyQPortal resource — Great Hybrid Learner Rubric - Kindergarten (Spanish version)
Solutions:
Solutions:
Remote workshops on designing student-driven primary learning environments
Virtual Support Center (VSC) providing synchronous and asynchronous support to teachers across the school year as they work to design learning environments that prioritize issues related to early childhood
Virtual Learning Community (VLC) on a variety of instructional topics — online courses in which teachers have flexibility over when they engage while still having access to consultants to help them in designing materials for their classrooms
Self-Paced Experience "Executive Function and SEL: Skills for Life" — a fully online experience in which teachers engage in content at their own pace (no consultant support), including a specialized section on early childhood education for teachers and suggestions for parents
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