Obama's "Preschool for All" v. Head Start...a comparison

New America Ed (@NewAmericaEd) tweeted at 5:16 PM on Tue, Mar 12, 2013: Early Ed Watch: No, WSJ, the President’s Preschool Proposal is not ‘Head Start for All’ http://t.co/UEt7f7gD55 (https://twitter.com/NewAmericaEd/status/311616602456092672)

Every Child Has Special Needs...Super Scaffolding Strategies Work for Everyone

I attended a training today with some co-workers related to incorporating some elements of structured teaching, verbal behavior and/or ABA into blended/inclusive settings. During one conversation, the lecturer mentioned that during centers in blended/inclusive classrooms there should be some structured tasks to meet the needs of children on the spectrum who are still building their play skills. Additionally, she talked about pre-teaching new skills or activities.

My reaction to this was-Wait! We should already have some structured tasks in each center, we also should already have visuals in each center...because lots of students could benefit from these, not just the students with autism. Because each child has her strengths/needs, these strategies help all children to be sucessful by meeting them at their own individual levels. Will all students need and/or use them? No. But, having them there will make our classrooms more accessible to all students.

On that note, does anyone have links to resources or ideas for scaffolding common play schemes in blocks, housekeeping/dramatic play? Maybe some based on studies/projects you have done as a class? We are looking at things like PRoPELS. Ideas from Leong and Bodrova and ala this article from NAEYC's Young Children

Wishing you Happy Holidays and a Very EC Smart New Year!

May everyone have a wonderful holiday season, no matter how or what it is you and your family and friends celebrate.

EC Smart also wishes that the new year brings prosperity in all forms - knowledge, joy and peace to all.

Early Childhood RtI: Interventions

Does anyone have some RtI interventions that are research based that they would be willing to share?

Follow Up: Using Teaching Strategies Gold

In an earlier conversation about using the Teaching Strategies Gold, I asked about benefits and challenges. Here is a list of these compiled:

Benefits
- authentic assessment that relies on power of observation
- widely held expectations for children birth to kindergarten so can be more inclusive for a wide range of children's skills in all domains of development
- research based and aligned to state and national head start standards and common core for kindergarten
- provides tools to create portfolio of children's work
- provides a plethora of ways to report individual child's progress and growth and family friendly ways to share this
- provides teachers with ways to analyze and track student progress and plan intentionally using this information and gives activity ideas
- provides administrators with ways to analyze school wide progress and universal needs; additionally, reports can help determine what students require tier one, two or three support where response to intervention (RtI) is used.

Challenges
- can be overwhelming for teachers to collect documentation on all objectives and indicators; professional development is necessary to support teachers understanding of how to decide how much to collect
- interrater reliability support is provided by Teaching Strategies but this is a long process and time consuming; ongoing professional support with ongoing discussion and review of objectives/indicators and different skill levels is necessary
- family child development report is long and generic in tone; can be individually customized, but this is time consuming

Thoughts? How do you use this tool? What do you use instead?
Assessment: To use or not use the Teaching Strategies Gold? http://ecsmart.blogspot.com/2012/12/assessment-to-use-or-not-use-teaching.html