High Scope: A Constructivist Approach (continued)

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The teacher talks with children about the plans they have made before the children carry them out. This helps children clarify their ideas and think about how to proceed. Talking with children about their plans provides an opportunity for the teacher to encourage and respond to each child’s ideas, to suggest way to strengthen the plans so they will be successful, and to understand and gauge each child’s level of development and thinking style. Children and teachers benefit from these conversations and reflections. Children feel reinforced and ready to start their work, and teachers have ideas of what opportunities for extension might arise, what difficulties children might have, and where problem solving may be needed. In such a classroom, children and teachers are playing appropriate and important roles.

Key Experiences

Teachers continually encourage and support children’s interests and involvement in activities that occur within an organized environment and a consistent routine. Teachers plan for key experiences that may broaden and strengthen children’s emerging abilities. Children generate many of these experiences on their own; others require teacher guidance. Many key experiences are natural extensions of children’s projects and interests.

Work Time

This part of the plan-do-review sequence is generally the longest time period in the daily routine. The teacher’s role during work time is to observe children to see how they gather information, interact with peers, and solve problems, and when appropriate, teachers enter into the children’s activities to encourage, extend, and set up problem-solving situations.

Cleanup Time

During cleanup time, children return materials and equipment to their labeled places and store their incomplete projects, restoring order to the classroom. All children’s materials in the classroom are within reach and on open shelves. Clear labeling enables children to return all work materials to their appropriate places.

Recall Time

Recall time, the final phase of the plan-do-review sequence, is the time when children represent their work-time experience in a variety of developmentally appropriate ways. They might recall the names of the children they involved in their plan, draw a picture of the building they made, or describe the problems they encountered. Recall strategies include drawing pictures, making models, physically demonstrating how a plan was carried out, or verbally recalling the events of work time. The teacher supports children’s linking of the actual work to their original plan.

This review permits children to reflect on what they did and how it was done. It brings closure to children’s planning and work-time activities. Putting their ideas and experiences into words also facilitates children’s language development. Most important, it enables children to represent to others their mental schemes.

Providing for Diversity and Disability

The High/Scope curriculum is a developmentally appropriate approach that is child centered and promotes active learning. The use of learning centers, active learning, and the plan-do-review cycle, as well as allowing children to progress at their own pace, provides for children’s individual and special needs. High/Scope teachers emphasize the broad cognitive, social, and physical abilities that are important for all children, instead of focusing on a child’s deficits. High/Scope teachers identify where a child is developmentally and then provide a rich range of experiences appropriate for that level. For example, they would encourage a four-year-old who is functioning at a two-year-old level to express his or her plans by pointing, gesturing, and saying single words, and they would immerse the child in a conversational environment that provided many natural opportunities for using and hearing language (Educational Programs: Early Childhood, 2007).