Orange County Head Start Preschoolers
Soar with Core Knowledge
 |
| Preschoolers build Core Knowledge language and movement coordination skills |
The sounds of children’s laughter punctuate the crisp autumn air in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, as the preschoolers in Barbara Lamb’s Head Start class in Orange, Virginia enjoy an outdoor lesson. “Reach up, up, up, as high as you can! Now, bend down, down, down, as low as you can go,” chants Mrs. Lamb, as the children coordinate their movements to her directions.
Teachers in eight Head Start classrooms serving 134 children in rural Orange County, Virginia started using the Core Knowledge preschool program as their curriculum of choice four years ago.
“We had been using bits and pieces of various preschool programs, including Creative Curriculum, but were searching for something that would more fully address the needs of our children,” recalls Jane Gray, Child Development Supervisor for the Orange County Head Start program. “We were looking for a program that was comprehensive and specific and would raise the bar for both our children and our staff. Our director, Beckie Phillips attended a Core Knowledge preschool overview workshop in 2000 and felt that it might be exactly what we had been looking for.”
Gray acknowledges that initially “getting everyone on board” was a challenge. At that time, the idea of providing a rigorous, demanding pre-academic curriculum for at-risk preschoolers ran counter to traditional thinking in most Head Start programs. But the Orange County Head Start leadership persisted, providing in-depth Core Knowledge preschool professional development to all staff members and phasing in implementation of the entire curriculum over a two-year period.
 |
| Preschoolers practice fine motor skills, to learn shapes and writing strokes, before tackling letters and words. |
Now, administrators, teachers and parents all enthusiastically embrace the Core Knowledge program. They can document improvement in the students’ oral language and early literacy as well as in their math readiness skills. Teachers talk about the importance of prior knowledge. They have learned how to scaffold children’s learning, assessing where children are initially and then moving them sequentially towards the acquisition of increasingly complex knowledge and skills. They have confidence in their own ability to guide children’s learning. They believe that their students can meet and even exceed the expectations now set forth for all Head Start preschoolers in the Head Start Child Performance Outcomes.
 |
| Preschoolers record their scientific predictions on a group chart with their teacher’s help. |
Inside Carolyn Turpin’s classroom three and four year olds happily engage in a wide variety of Core Knowledge based activities. In another class, led by Ann Mason, children eagerly follow illustrated directions to prepare a mid-morning snack. In Barbara Lamb’s room, a group of youngsters makes predictions about which objects will move when subjected to the force of air from a hair dryer. After the prediction phase, they eagerly check and document their findings. A spirited discussion ensues about why certain objects moved and others did not. Who says that the scientific method can’t be taught to preschoolers? Other children are listening to books being read aloud, practicing writing, or sorting and classifying objects. Some are “playing pretend” in the housekeeping center as the teacher joins in to extend and elaborate their conversations.
 |
| Dramatic play, with the active involvement of the teacher, offers many opportunities for building oral language skills. |
Amid all the varied activity, people in every room manifest one trait in common: every teacher and student is intently focused. All the teachers and assistant teachers know why they are offering particular activities and materials to their young charges, what they expect children to get out of the activities and how these activities will help children master the goals and objectives of the Core Knowledge Preschool Sequence.
The Orange County Head Start teachers say that integrating assessment with instruction is one of the greatest strengths of the Core Knowledge preschool program. They are strong advocates of the “assess-teach-assess approach.” In this approach children’s progress is monitored frequently and assessment results are used to inform and modify subsequent planning and instruction. So committed are these teachers to the critical role of assessment in instruction that three years ago they developed the assessment software that was the inspiration behind the Core Knowledge Preschool Assessment Tool (CK-PAT).
Administrators and staff at Orange County Head Start acknowledge ongoing challenges to Core Knowledge implementation, among them lack of financial resources, the restrictions of a half-day rather than full-day program, and multiage grouping within classrooms. Still they are unanimous in voicing their continued support for the program. Gray sums up their experience with Core Knowledge this way:
The teachers truly had to work hard, especially initially, in learning how to implement the Core Knowledge preschool program. And there will, undoubtedly, always be some sort of obstacle that we will have to address, but there is no question in any of our minds that the benefits to children and teachers make it well worth the effort!