The PreK TEKS most definitely lay a foundation for learning in all grade levels. The TEKS are actually continued throughout all grade levels just at deeper levels of understanding. The five foundations of Social and Emotional Development, Language and Communication, Emergent Literacy, Reading and Writing, and Math are all skills that students revisit each year. First, the Social and Emotional Development strand includes self concept, self control, and social competence. This is most important and possibly overlooked as students get older. Many students struggle with aspects of this strand such as relationships with others and awareness of feelings or even difficulty with rules and routines, but teachers feel they should have learned it already or do not have the tools to revisit these needs at upper grade levels. The Language and Communication strand is often revisited as students level of listening, speaking, and vocabulary usage intensifies. One aspect that is evident in the remaining three strands of Emergent Literacy, Reading and Writing, and Math that I feel is so important is motivation. I believe that that is so necessary for academic success and possibly where the technology perspective comes into play. Technology offers so many different levels of participation that can motivate children to achieve. The different levels allow us to focus on individual needs and abilities and can help move all children forward.
All of the skills in the Pre-K strands are revisited throughout a child's education. One specific example is in the area of math. The Pre-K strand for math includes: counting, adding/subtracting, geometry and spatial reasoning, measurement, classification and patterning. These skills are added to each year in all the grade levels with a deeper understanding. We continue to spiral the curriculum and offer multiple opportunities to master by connecting to previous learning. Really we just add to the difficulty by increasing vocabulary or adding another aspect of the skill. Where this can be a problem is when a grade level teacher is faced with a large amount of students who have not mastered pre-requisites to their current year's curriculum and the teacher needs to take a large step back to ensure the foundation is there before moving on. The good thing about a spiraling curriculum is that a teacher can look back to and know what the prerequisites are to the skills they are teaching and if a student is struggling, they know where to go to find out what they should have learned to that point.
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My question would be, how many of our teachers are truly taking a look at the previous years' learning objectives to find out what the prerequisites for their class are? How many Calculus teachers are looking at anything other than their own curriculum? We must, simply MUST have time for our Math teachers (for example) to sit down Pre-K-12 and discuss the curriculum in a vertical fashion. We must sit each area down and allow the teachers to do a "Top-Down" method of what students need to know; then, subsequently do a "Down-Top" meeting where they say what is currently in their curriculum. This way, we have both sides of it; everyone sees the overall outcome - EDUCATED GRADUATES! Pre-K teachers must realize how important they are to their students in their Senior year of High School. We must make it clear that ALL teachers and ALL classes are important if our students are to graduate and be successful outside of the public school system.
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