This article appeared as a “Resource Of The Week” in our parent newsletter: Rigor and Kindergarten. At TKG, we know that those two words go together when children (or an individual child) are asking for it. We will encourage our students to engage academic rigor, as their developmental capacity (ZPD) expands. Want to see how it works? Come visit the 9 to 11 Class sometime!
THE ROLE OF RIGOR IN KINDERGARTEN
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by KATHLEEN COSTANZA/Fred Rogers Institute
It seems every week, there’s another story about the benefits of early education or how investing in high-quality early childhood programs pays off. And President Obama’s recent 2016 budget proposal included a 10-year, $75 billion universal preschool request.
But as a recent story in Education Week explained, there’s no real consensus on what a regular day in a kindergarten classroom should look like. Teachers face increasing pressure to focus on academic content in the early elementary grades, often at the expense of art, music, and time for free play. At the same time, researchers continue to find the brains of children of this age are wired to learn through the very types of activities being pushed further to the side.
Alison Gopnik, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, told Education Week that in the last 15 years, there’s been a revolution in how we understand young children’s minds. Read More @MrRogers Center