Kindergarten Education: Theory, Research, and Practice Journal Articles: Volume 1, No.1 * Spring 1996

Portfolios and Young Children: A Natural Match 

ADRIENNE L. HERRELL
Early childhood educators and parents have long recognized the need to use observation to capture growing competence in young children. For many years, parents have documented children’s growth in the form of Baby Books. These books are the first Early Childhood Portfolios. They consist of photographs and dated notations of benchmarks in the child’s life: the first tooth, first word, first steps. They also include other kinds of support materials: a lock of hair from the first haircut, a very small piece of the child’s treasured security blanket.
When children enter preschool or kindergarten the teacher often continues this tradition of collecting data documenting the child’s growth in the form of art work and samples of beginning writing. Collecting samples is not unusual, although, they are not always collected in a systematic fashion. Documenting the child’s growth in an ongoing manner is especially appropriate for young children because they are in a period of childhood marked by rapid growth and frequent changes. To fully understand this phenomenon, it is necessary to examine the way in which young children learn.

ADRIENNE L. HERRELL is Associate Professor and Coordinator of Early Childhood Education at California State University, Fresno.

Cognitive Development of Children Four Through Six Years of Age: Implications for the Classroom
VIOLET B. ROBINSON
This article explains what is developing cognitively in children four through six years of age, as elaborated by Piaget’s later work. The general principals of assimilation, accommodation and the child’s construction of knowledge are elaborated, along with implications for teaching and for the classroom. Young Children are in the process of developing functional relations, correspondences, classification, ordering, possibilities and meanings. Examples of how to foster this development in the classroom are presented. A comprehensive list of specific principles regarding the cognition of children four through six years of age appears in the appendix.

VIOLET B. ROBINSON is Professor Emerita of Elementary Education, San Francisco State University

Choice Behavior in Kindergarten: A qualitative Study
MICHAEL BALLARD-ROSA
This qualitative study investigated children’s choices in two kinds of classrooms, one defined by its teacher as “more academic” and the other defined by its teacher as “more developmentally appropriate.” Data were gathered from observations as a participant- observer, interviews, and content analyses of student-produced books. The data analysis resulted in 10 descriptive statements. Although the class schedules affected both the extent and type of choice making, children in both classes had opportunities to make choices. The developmentally appropriate classroom, however, presented more opportunities for choice making and a more diverse set of activities. The findings about children’s reported desire to build or make physical objects suggest that many kindergarteners are especially motivated to construct actively and that their motivation may represent a developmental characteristic. The data also revealed that some children did not choose an activity they liked because of extraneous factors such as the cleaning-up task; thus there are both positive and negative aspects of kindergarten choice. Therefore teachers, teacher-researchers, and other researchers should examine choice and its optimal use in the classroom

MICHAEL BALLARD-ROSA is Professor of Child Development at California State University, Sacramento.

Balanced Literacy Within a Kindergarten Study of Woodland Animals
HELEN S. FAUL
The study of woodland animals was the content source for a balanced literacy program and an integrated curriculum in a kindergarten class. The literacy program included development of listening, speaking, vocabulary, understanding of story structure, phonemic awareness, writing, and word recognition, along with the spontaneous construction of sound-symbol correspondences and the differentation of fiction and non-fiction. The integrated curriculum included science, mathematics, reading, oral and written expression, art, music, and expressive movement.

HELEN S. FAUL is a Kindergarten Teacher at Tierra Vista School in the Ocean View School District, Oxnard, CA.