lessonsfromthecribfortheclassroom.docVIP

Lessons from the Crib for the Classroom: How Children Really Learn Vocabulary Justin Harris1 Roberta Michnick Golinkoff 2 Kathy Hirsh-Pasek1 1Temple University; 2University of Delaware Harris, J., Golinkoff, R.M., Hirsh-Pasek, K.(2010) Lessons from the crib for the classroom: How children really learn vocabulary. In S. B. Neuman D. K. Dickinson (Eds.) Handbook of Early Literacy Research, NY: Guilford Press. p. 49-66 This research was funded by joint grants to the second and third authors: From NSF, SBR9615391 and from NIH, RO1HD050199. January 2010. Nine years after the enactment of No Child Left Behind, pre-kindergarten through third grade classrooms across America have become narrowly focused on reading and math outcomes. A recent report from the Alliance for Childhood (Miller Almon, 2009) offers a portrait of kindergarten teachers in Los Angeles and New York. Thirty percent claim to have no time for student chosen activities or play. These changes in school structure arose in an attempt to narrow the achievement gap and to raise the emergent literacy scores of disadvantaged children. Roughly 80% of the teachers interviewed suggest that they spend 20 minutes each day in test preparation. Further, teachers often follow scripted learning plans designed to build language skills. All low-achieving Philadelphia first grades, for example, spend a mandatory 45 minutes each morning tracing their fingers along a line below the letter “a” (or “b”) as they drill how the sounds of the letters matches the print. Students in Nashville learn a stack of vocabulary words – along with their definitions – before they hear those same words used in a story. To further underscore the lack of developmental appropriateness, young children using techniques developed to help high-school students memorize SAT words like syzygy and synergy, practice learning new words for the upcoming test. The motives behind these techniques are sound. Hart and