This post will deal with what is quickly becoming the latest "craze" in early childhood circles. To those people I say, "Where have you been?" I am a former homeschooler, and individualized instruction or one-on-one instruction, as it is also called, makes up the heart of what I do every single day. I will discuss the reasonings behind this philosophy of instruction and also give you a glimpse of what it looks like in an early childhood setting.
The Superior Quality of Individualized Instruction
The main thrust of the homeschooling movement from its inception has been the superior quality of individualized instruction. Instead of being in a classroom where a teacher has to cater his/her instruction to the group, in a homeschooling setting the teacher tailors the instruction to the child. With all that we now know about learning styles and differences in the way children learn, it makes perfect sense why this method of instruction really does provide superior results. When children have material presented to them in their own learning style(s), they learn much more. Also, in the individualized instruction world, a child does not move on to another topic before they conquer the previous one. The child is allowed to proceed down a logical path to acquiring knowledge rather than a hodgepodge of material. For those of you who have never homeschooled, been homeschooled, or attended a private school, you probably have no idea what that truly looks like. Most American public schools have not proceeded down logical paths to instruction in the last 75 years or so. I am not saying every homeschooling or private school situation proceeds down logical paths, but I am saying that when this situation occurs it happens 95% of the time in homeschool or private school settings. I know that the education my children received was so far superior to the education I received it was astonishing. My daughter is also now learning that the education she received is far superior to the ones her children are receiving now in public school. She spends every evening now trying to make up the difference and fill in the holes. It blows her mind how hodgepodge her children's education is compared to the one she received. The reasons for this will be the topic of a future post.
What Is All The Fuss?
Why all the sudden interest in individualized instruction? There has been much discussion in the last couple of years about the huge difference in maturity among children who are biologically the same age. Many current kindergarten teachers are finding it increasingly difficult to cover the broad range of maturity levels that arrive on their doorstep. I have already written a post about the upsurge of immaturity in the children who are presently arriving in childcare for the first time. The early childhood community has seen this coming for the last couple of years. Many facilities are simply not equipped to handle such a wide range of maturity levels. In a class of 4 year olds in a typical early childhood classroom in today's world, you can have children who are not even pottytrained yet to children who are nearly ready to read. Some of this is caused by an upsurge of true developmental delays that we have been seeing for the last 5 to 10 years. A great deal of this is simply immaturity caused by parenting styles presently embraced by our society. Facilities that are divided by age are finding themselves in the same situations as multi-age facilities such as family child care. What worked even 5 years ago does not apply anymore. However, to divide children by ability rather than age opens up a whole other can of worms. Therefore, many teachers are beginning to look to the homeschooling movement and the model of the one-room schoolhouse for answers to our current dilemma.
The One-Room Schoolhouse Model
In my facility I draw heavily from the model of the old one-room schoolhouses. Those teachers faced the same problems we are seeing today. Many times in those days, children's education was interrupted by harvesting, sickness, or having to go to work to help support their family. Therefore, those teachers would just simply pick up a child's education where it left off and keep going for as long as they could attend until something else came along to interrupt the instruction. This was frustrating to say the least, but they had a model that worked well. They had the instruction broken down to where it was line upon line and precept upon precept. A child did not proceed to the next level until they conquered the present level, even if they were half grown. Also, because these classrooms were small and were multi-age another dynamic came into play. The teacher rotated between groups all day long doing direct instruction, and sent the other groups to do independent work. While the teacher taught the older ones, the younger ones were getting exposure to more complex concepts. While the teacher taught the younger ones, the older ones were getting review in simpler concepts. As a homeschooling mom, I cannot communicate to you the value of this dynamic unless you have witnessed it for yourself. This review and exposure makes everything easier at all levels. It doubles or triples the amount of instruction that occurs in the same time frame as a teacher that simply caters to one level of instruction. However, it requires a level on control in the classroom that cannot be achieved by many of the modern models of discipline and instruction. That is why I may seem extremely old-fashioned in my methods and ideas.
How Do I Do It?
How do I accomplish an old-fashioned one room schoolhouse with today's children? First of all, I am strict. I expect these children to follow the rules at least 75% of the time (they are still children). If a child refuses to follow the rules after having been given a couple of months to settle into our routines, I will terminate that child. We have to remember that we are private businesses. We are not equipped to handle many of the emotionally dysfunctional children in our society, but public preschools do have those resources. Never feel bad about sending children to places where more resources are available to them. We cannot single-handedly save the world. Secondly, I do all individualized instruction during our center times. I will have the children choose centers, and they must stay in that center for the duration of that center time, which ranges from 20 to 30 minutes. I do not allow roaming. You have no idea how much chaos that removes until you have witnessed a facility with this rule in place. While the children are playing, I will call them one by one to come for their "school." The time for each child's instruction varies. For those who are just starting, the instruction time usually last about 5 minutes per day. For those who have reached the four-year old kindergarten level, the instruction lasts about 20-30 minutes per day. That does not sound like much, but when you consistently work with a child one-on-one every single day for even 5 minutes it makes a HUGE difference in just 6 months. Many of the children that come to me as one year olds reach kindergarten reading simple words and sentences. I will do this "round-robin" style of teaching all day long during each center time until everyone is finished. I will say that this preschool model works best in smaller settings. For me, it worked very well for 7 children, but was much more difficult for 12-15 children. However, for those larger facilities that would like to adopt this model, an adaptation to your distribution of staff might make this work. If I had had decent staff at 12-15, it might have worked well.
This has been an introduction to this topic, but much more needs to be said. For the next several Saturday posts, I will be covering various aspects of how I accomplish the one-on-one instruction in my facility.
I hope you have enjoyed this post. Goodbye and God bless!! Check out Natalie's children's books at: https://www.amazon.com/author/nataliewade7457
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