Teachers have high hopes with High/Scope
Educational approach emphasizes hands-on learning over memorizing
BY TAMMY MCKILLIP
Correspondent

Clockwise from top: Keyport Central School kindergarten teacher Lynn Ferber uses student-made ice sun-catchers to explain the nature of liquids and solids to her class. Kindergarteners at Keyport Central School put berries, tree branches and other items into a pan with water and examined what happened to them when it froze. Students observe a homemade sun-catcher hanging from a tree.

KEYPORT - It is a biting cold February morning, and elementary school students in most of the area's districts are sitting quietly (and warmly) in their neat little rows of desks, listening to their teachers and copying their letters into a notebook.

At Keyport Central School, four classes of bundled and mittened kindergarten students are trudging across the lawn, laughing and rosy-cheeked in anticipation of their expedition. The children and their teachers are on a mission to hang homemade frozen sun-catchers from the trees in front of the school, and with temperatures that have remained below freezing all week, they are expecting their science/art projects to be on display for quite some time.

PHOTOSBYTAMMY MCKILLIP

"The children are so excited," said kindergarten teacher Lynn Ferber. "We started out with the idea to make a sun-catcher, and it just became this big science lesson. We poured water into a pan and put branches and needles from pine trees, holly from bushes, fresh fruit and Craisons. We did this at one of our morning workshops, and the children were making predictions about what would happen after we put them outside.

"First, we talked about temperature. We put our thermometer outside and showed them it was below zero. That brought up a discussion about negative numbers. Then we talked about how the ones in the shade were freezing faster, and the children were excited because some of them had bubbles in them, so they were pushing them around. That brought up a discussion about solids and liquids and how they can freeze and melt. It became a hands-on science activity."

Hands-on is what the High/Scope educational philosophy, developed over 40 years ago by David P. Weikart, is all about, according to prekindergarten instructor Linda Gaita. She said the school chose to implement the federally funded program six years ago because of its developmental appropriateness and child-centered approach to learning.

"Our district went with the program because of the longitudinal research," she said. "There have been studies following the children from the original program in the '60s all the way into adulthood, and they show that children who are involved in cooperative learning programs early on are more confident and better able to cope with the social changes in adolescence."

Gaita said the High/Scope approach, which is similar to Montessori, fosters independent learning, as opposed to the more traditional methods of direct instruction, or learning by rote. In High/Scope-inspired classes, the children are provided with work stations and are given inviting materials to pick and use at their own discretion. Through loosely guided independent interaction with the materials in the environment, they discover on their own specific information predetermined by the daily curriculum.

"Our mission is to foster independent learning and a love of learning and to show them that they have the power to go and find out the information, whatever it is, for themselves," she said. "We don't do it for them. They get their own materials. Everything is labeled in the room, and when they're done using something, they put it away. Everything we do from the time they walk in is to get them ready for life."

Gaita said that because the program is very language-based, the children in the classrooms "talk to each other all day long," unlike more traditional programs, where speaking out of turn is discouraged.

"We expose them to so many activities," said Ferber. "The children get to speak to each other all day about literature and math and science. It really helps them with their confidence and self-esteem. They feel good about themselves and are so happy about what they are doing. They love learning."

Ferber said the children follow a daily routine and have certain tasks assigned and activities laid out for them to choose from. Because the classes are not taught "to the test" the children are able to learn at their own pace within the less-structured environment and choose which activities most interest them.

"We set up the environment so that they will discover very specific things based on the New Jersey expectations or standards for early childhood," said Gaita. "We give them the power to go and find out the information for themselves, whatever it is. It's cooperative learning. They are learning all day long."

Gaita, who has a master's degree in early childhood education from Rutgers University, said that many people are confused about the nature of cooperative learning, and as such, the pendulum of debate continues to swing back and forth over the issue of how best to educate early learners. Because the state has recently begun to "push the curriculum down," she said, she would like to form an early childhood curriculum committee to discuss what she feels is a dangerous trend in education.

"They're trying to make kindergarten into what first grade used to be and then to make pre-K what kindergarten used to be," she said. "What people don't get, and what upsets me the most, is that you can't do it. There's a reason that the state starts testing in third grade, and that is because age 8 is where the range between kids starts to level off. There's such a huge range between children when they're in pre-K. Some of them come in as babies at the beginning of the year, and they all grow so much.

"Pushing direct instruction at an early age - where you just drill the letter, the sound, in isolation, and then you pre-test and test and post-test - is the worst thing you can do. It's ineffective because even though you can train the children to repeat back the letter, they'll soon forget it if it has no meaning to them, whereas when they're creating, they're motivated to learn, and they're going to remember it. A good example is when we make the letter "W" with our fingers when we want water in pre-K. They learn the letter because it's meaningful to them, and they'll remember it.

"It's more of a child-centered approach to learning. It's shared control. As [former Principal] Robert Higham used to say, 'You're not the sage on the stage. You're the guide at the side.' It's a philosophy that respects early childhood. Too often, we don't let children be children anymore. We force them to do things they're not ready to do, and they lose so many social skills because they're sitting there memorizing these ridiculous things," Gaita said.

"You know, they're not little adults. We have to let them be who they are, and we have to let them be creative. How much of their creativity is stifled? This program is wonderful because it allows them to create. In direct instruction, there's no room for that."

Gaita said she is involved each year in the grant-writing process to get approval for the program funding, which is provided to schools based on their academic status and is subsidized by the district. She said that a representative from Childhood Resources in Monmouth County recommended moving the High/Scope program up to the third grade but that the school gets mixed messages from the state department.

"In the perfect world, everybody would understand children," she said. "Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. There are a lot of different opinions on the issue. Teachers feel under the gun when it comes to getting their kids to pass state-mandated standardized tests.

"To me, the administrators need to worry about that. As a teacher, the only thing I have to worry about is what's best for my kids in class. I answer to a higher authority than the state department."

For more information on the High/Scope program and philosophy, visit www.highscope.org.