Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Jacobs and Crowley's book begins with a Chapter One title that contains an extremely accurate phrase, "getting off to a good start." With many Kindergarten classrooms across the country being operated like first grade boot camps, the authors remind early childhood professionals that Kindergarten is still the first taste of formal schooling that a significant number children still expreience (depending on the state) if they did not attend pre-Kindergarten (like me)(Barnett, Epstein, Friedman, Boyd, & Hustedt, 2008). For the rest of the book, they successfully walk a fine line between staying true to developmentally appropriate practice and keeping a firm eye on accountability expectations in this catalyzed, standard-based education system that exists today since the passing and implementation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education legislation.
After an excellent Chapter One, the book predictably moves from more appropriately designing the Kindergarten classroom to desiging effective instruction for each of the subject areas. Each, though, chapter offers succinct but surgical applications on how to interpret state curriculum standards and make them relevant to the everyday classroom. For example, mathematics is put within a framework of motivation rather than straight skill acquisition. Discovering how mathematical concepts make logical sense is exhorted as the perspective that state curriculum standards shade for early childhood children. Each of the other chapters imbued by their titles takes a similarly constructivist interpretation.
I recommend this book to any early childhood teacher, but I would use it in conjuction with Dominic Guido's K-TODAY: TEACHING AND LEARNING IN THE KINDERGARTEN YEAR and Bobbi Fisher's JOYFUL LEARNING IN KINDERGARTEN to keep the balance a little more ethically grounded in child development point-of-view rather than an information processing one.
References:
Barnett, W.S., Epstein, D.J., Friedman, A.H., Boyd, J.S., and Hustedt, J.T. (2008). National Institute for Early Education Research State of Preschool 2008. Rutgers, NJ: The State University of New Jersey.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Reaching Standards and Beyond in Kindergarten: Nurturing Children's Sense of Wonder and Joy in Learning
Focusing on research-based, developmentally appropriate practices, this book shows teachers how to help young children reach standards through creative play activities that ignite their enthusiasm to learn.
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