Vertical Alignment
Current Grade
In kindergarten, children are learning safe ways to manage their interactions and work with others. The concept of student-led learning ensures educators partner with students to teach them how to carefully manage themselves and learn to live with others. The concept of student-led learning is essential in helping students develop a schema to enhance their understanding of the world and their role within it. These children learn to work independently, develop oral skills, problem-solving techniques, engage in play, and acquire social skills.
Concept of Instruction
The concept of student-led learning also ensures that developing students benefit from hands-on learning, purposeful play, self-exploration, teacher modeling, as well as appropriate direct instruction. The concept involves a literacy-rich learning environment that provides kindergartners with the appropriate mindsets and behaviors foundational to lifelong happiness and success. Learners participate in the lesson as the teacher encourages them to use any mode of communication, such as raising their hands or pointing to a specific color-coded picture, to express a feeling previously explained by the teacher. Including them in the teaching-learning process allows them to play a more significant role in their studies than a teacher-centered curriculum would permit.
Standards That Correspond to the Grade Level
Pre-Kindergarten/Preschool
Active learning places the student at the center of this process in preschool students. It involves role-playing and group activities, promoting a positive learning environment. The teacher acts as a facilitator rather than operating as the source of information. They take a passive role while students actively pursue educational material.
Learners gain knowledge from their peers and personal development, with the teacher acting as a guide to ensure they do not form erroneous notions when explaining their findings. The specific Vermont Early Learning Standards (VELS), as established by the Vermont Agency of Education, include the following approaches to learning (Fonseca, n.d.):
Element 1: Play and Exploration Goal. Children engage in play to gain a deeper understanding of the world around them.
- Engage in sustained play episodes (e.g., stays in a dramatic play role like “the baby”).
- Practice concepts through play (e.g., emergent writing: restaurant menu, geometry: naming the block shapes used in building a garage).
Element 2: Initiative Goal. Children show curiosity about the world around them and take action to interact with it and learn.
- Demonstrate flexibility, imagination, and inventiveness in approaching tasks and activities through play.
- Explore and discuss a range of topics, ideas, and tasks.
Element 3: Problem-Solving Goal. Children display an interest in novel situations and demonstrate flexibility, creativity, and innovation in solving challenging tasks.
- Use imagination and creativity to interact with objects and materials.
- Uses a new skill in a variety of contexts.
- Engage in learning through attempting, repeating, experimenting, refining, and elaborating on experiences and activities.
- Demonstrate appropriate solutions to simple problems.
Kindergarten
Kindergarten standards involve developing a concise and professional plan for teachers and learners, ensuring these groups have access to high-quality information. Foundational learning is crucial to developing one’s skills, where learners must start developing core skills such as writing, reading comprehension, and math fluency. The VELS that apply to the concept of student-led learning in kindergarten include (Fonseca, n.d.):
Element 1: Play and Exploration Goal. Children play to learn about the world around them.
- Engage in a variety of play-based contexts to develop skills in oral language, idea expression, problem-solving, and self-regulation.
- Engage in productive play scenarios to develop oral language, express ideas, solve problems, and develop self-regulation.
Element 2: Initiative Goal. Children are curious about their surroundings and actively take steps to engage with the world and learn from it.
- Initiate finding answers to questions using a variety of resources (e.g., find a book, play with a peer, or simply ask an adult).
Element 3: Problem-Solving Goal. Children are curious about new challenges and show flexibility, creativity, and innovation when working to solve difficult tasks.
- Use available materials in novel ways to meet desired goals. (e.g., build a new marble maze with recycled materials).
- Work with peers to solve problems.
- Ask questions to find out about the phenomenon of interest.
First Grade
Teachers provide learners with information that promotes student-led learning for first-grade children, promoting oral and written language, math fluency, as well as understanding important American contributors, the roles of community members, and developing solutions to problems by mimicking plants or animals. For all of this higher-order thinking to occur, students must be invested in their learning, engaged with the materials, and find value in the knowledge they are gaining. The student-led learning approach meets the following Vermont Early Learning Standards (Fonseca, n.d.):
Element 1: Play and Exploration Goal. Children engage in play to understand the world around them.
- Play moderate-level games with rules with other children.
- Engage in intricate, dramatic play and role-play scenarios, some in real-world settings, that help them make sense of the world (e.g., act out favorite stories with a group of friends).
- Engage in child-initiated outdoor games and activities.
Element 2: Initiative Goal. Children show an interest in the world and act on their curiosity by interacting with their environment to facilitate learning.
- Engage in learning about new concepts and skills (e.g., use manipulatives to solve a math problem).
- Ask questions to learn about surroundings and everyday events.
Element 3: Problem-Solving Goal. The objective is for children to engage with novel situations and exhibit originality, resourcefulness, and adaptability in resolving complex problems.
- Use prior knowledge to ask increasingly complex questions to gain information.
- Use a variety of means to gather new information. (e.g., read, experiment, use manipulatives, research, use technology, ask an expert).
Learning Progression Across the Three Grades
Students from preschool to first grade are first trained in engagement. This situation requires students to illustrate persistent, effortful engagement in their learning progression.
Teachers must ensure that learners are actively involved in various classroom activities. They should ensure that students are consistent in their activities and maintain attention, regardless of distractions. As students progress, teachers integrate problem-solving and planning into the classroom. They aim to enhance students’ ability to utilize these tools when developing strategies for achieving their goals.
Learners use flexible and varied approaches to tackle problems and plan their work to accomplish learning objectives. Moreover, the student demonstrates accurate resilience and self-regulation when facing challenges. Finally, students continuously develop creativity and initiative from preschool to first grade, with teachers guiding the process. They demonstrate independence, creativity, and initiative in novel and challenging situations.
It is crucial to promote autonomy by having students propose answers to teacher questions to determine their comprehension level. Teachers should probe students to determine their train of thought and how they interpret various scenarios that represent some social norms and established moral behavior. The learner’s answers demonstrate their relational skills with others and their understanding of what they perceive as right and wrong.
A Potential Gap and Redundancy in Knowledge or Skills
Policy observers should note that various gaps and redundancy issues affect preschool to first-grade teachers and learners, particularly those in teacher-led learning environments. Many researchers posit that teacher-led and student-led approaches are mutually exclusive, failing to discern the potential of each method in aiding the learning process. Teacher-centered learning prevents students from fully participating in the classroom, whereas a student-centered design overlooks the necessity of theoretical knowledge provided by teachers.
Students are exposed to redundant teaching designs across these years, where teachers cannot accurately assess a student’s learning progress because they do not provide students with more autonomy during the teaching-learning process. Furthermore, students do not develop adequate analytical skills in a purely teacher-led learning system. The approach to learning fails to meet the learner’s needs. Students primarily exhibit literacy, mathematical, and language difficulties in these grades.
Notably, the most effective forms of redundancy are evident for essential content items such as identifying sight words and letters (Cohen-Vogel et al., 2021). Additionally, there is limited information on how schools can address low-income households and their impact on a student’s learning difficulties. It is essential to note that limited information exists regarding student-led learning, such as collaborative problem-solving.
Improvement to the Current Grade to Better Align Vertically
Early education teachers would benefit from an effective vertical professional learning community that encompasses educators from the same content area or department. For instance, teachers in expressive language skills should form a community and exchange practice methods to ensure they have adopted a seamless system for providing knowledge to students.
Furthermore, these educators should develop planning schemes that stimulate changes in a student’s learning capacity and monitor their progress in each learning area. Students continuously monitor their progress with the teacher’s assistance, enabling them to determine whether they are making improvements. The teacher should further explore various aspects of the students’ lives, such as their households, to gain a deeper understanding of these learners. This increased integration in a student’s life enables teachers to adjust the learning strategy as the child ages.
- Teachers should introduce transition forms across different schools and utilize a student-centered approach. These transitions should be similar to ensure a learner can move to different learning institutions in the region without experiencing a varying system from their previous school.
- School district officials should create transition liaisons and teams in schools and districts. These individuals are tasked with ensuring that student transition is effective and follows a particular strategy applied across the school district, offering recommendations to those who indicate little implementation of these policies.
Steps to Ensure Horizontal Alignment
Curriculum Resources
It is prudent to contact teachers from preschool to grade one to ensure they provide similar knowledge to their students. Setting guidelines involving the topics to be addressed and those that are redundant would offer a streamlined system that ensures students do not deviate from significant coursework in their grades (Cohen-Vogel et al., 2021). This is important as a measure against skewed learning, as some schools may assign higher grades than others. School districts should ensure that student-centered learning is implemented through regular inspections.
Teachers must be trained on student-centered approaches to ensure learners gain access to high-quality materials. Using a cohesive and streamlined curriculum map enables horizontal alignment, as it facilitates comparison between different schools for preschool through first grade. The teacher should ask parents/guardians to accompany their children to school regularly, ensuring they understand and guide their learning experience. Finally, it is crucial to create a lesson plan that students have access to as they determine whether they are achieving goals set out for each day.
Instructional Strategies
Horizontal alignment requires a coherent plan to ensure instructional materials are updated across different schools to meet a set standard. In this instance, teachers should develop a curriculum that ensures the same materials are taught to all students within a given level (Cohen-Vogel et al., 2021). Literacy and Math Instructional Coaches are experts in their respective fields and should travel to varying schools based on their need for an outsider’s perspective. They use specialized instructions to address the developmental needs of young learners and prevent students within the district from falling behind their peers. Teachers use a unilateral strategy to educate students in the region.
A student-centered approach further requires a singular strategy following various steps to ensure they reach different milestones within a certain period set by the school district. It is prudent to ensure strategic group assignments, withholding answers from students, and focusing on attention to detail as a skill. Teachers should further promote a curriculum that encourages students’ learning through play and tinkering, while improving their resourcefulness through student-led teams, to foster a growth mindset.
Assessment
Teachers should develop an evaluation plan together for students within their school district that focuses on key areas of learning required for progression to the next grade. The questions asked must be well-understood in the area, based on objectives proposed by joint teacher groups before the school term begins. Teachers should communicate with students before holding district-wide meetings to determine the best assessment testing areas for the level. It is prudent to conduct regular common assessment tests to ensure schools compete effectively.
These assessments should be conducted regularly throughout the school year to gauge learner progress, and the data collected should inform classroom instruction. Representatives from various schools would confirm the similarity of the tests to those used in their schools. They further need to develop assessment criteria together during regular meetings to ensure assessment tests do not advantage or disadvantage certain learners.
References
Cohen-Vogel, L., Little, M., Jang, W., Burchinal, M., & Bratsch-Hines, M. (2021). A missed opportunity? Instructional content redundancy in pre-k and kindergarten. AERA Open.
Fonseca, M. (n.d.). Vermont Early Learning Standards. Vermont Agency of Education.