During snack time a few weeks ago at His Kids Preschool in Rochester, one of the girls in Lisa Hooley’s class suddenly pointed to an exit sign above a nearby door and proudly exclaimed, “Hey, there’s the letter of the week!”

The letter X was the feature that week, and Hooley and the preschoolers spent a portion of their class time talking about the letter, the sound it makes and some words in which it appears.

The letter of the week is new to the preschool’s curriculum this year, and Hooley says she’s already seeing signs that it’s paying off.

“We added it so the kids learn to recognize the letter and the things around them,” she said.

The girl’s ability to recognize the letter outside of the classroom environment was a significant triumph, especially considering her young age. However, as more and more schools are tightening the curriculum, even down to the kindergarten level, preschool teachers and day care workers are shifting their roles from play supervisors to early childhood educators to ensure that their children are prepared to start school.

Changing the focus

Years ago, parents and educators looked to preschools and day cares to teach children the social skills necessary to cope in a classroom environment. Physical activities and craft projects also helped children to develop various motor functions, while story time offered an introduction to literacy.

But the National Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education conducted a study in 2000 called “Eager to Learn: Educating Our Preschoolers” that found that parents and early childhood educators were changing their expectations for preschool facilities.

According to the study, much of the reason for limiting educational activities for children up to the age of 5 in out-of-home care facilities was that a low percentage of children were enrolled in those institutions. Nationwide in 1965, less than five percent of 3 year olds and less than 20 percent of 4 year olds were enrolled in early childhood educational facilities outside of the home.

With so many children receiving in-home training and no way of assessing their skills, school-level educators felt it best to start with the basics once children started kindergarten, the study states.

However, enrollment in out-of-home facilities has increased over the years as more children come from families where the caregivers work outside the home. By 1997, which was the final year for the study, nearly 40 percent of 3 year olds and more than 60 percent of 4 year olds were enrolled in programs outside the home.

“As the number of children cared for outside the home has grown, so has the conviction that education should be included in their care,” the study states.

Additionally, the study cited research during the last 30 years into early childhood development that shows children ages 2 to 5 are more capable learners than previously anticipated.

“I think this, over time, is something where maybe we short-changed them,” said Jill Collins, principal at Eastern Pulaski Elementary. “We didn’t know all of what kids were capable of doing. ... We didn’t know that they were capable of coming into kindergarten and already having a good foundation of letters. That’s something that, as we become more educated with the research, there are things we can do to make sure kids are getting off on the right foot.”

This and other studies have prompted preschool teachers to introduce more educational basics into their classrooms, which in turn, is clearing the way for school-level educators to focus on other areas of instruction that were previously left for later grades.

“Now they’re reading in kindergarten, and it’s a whole different ballgame,” said Judy Brown, the disabilities and mental health manager at Area Five Head Start in Logansport.

Head Start is one of the programs that has made this changeover possible. The federally funded program handles children ages 3 to 5 who come from lower-income families, providing them the same educational opportunities as their peers attending private preschool facilities.

The focus of Head Start, like other preschool programs, is to prepare children for kindergarten. Brown said students learn the fundamentals such as the alphabet, colors and shapes as well as more cognitive skills like sharing and getting along with others.

Although preschools and day cares are taking on more education-based responsibilities, there is no nationwide or even statewide system in place for regulating preschool education. Still, some school districts in Indiana have taken steps individually to help bridge the gap between preschool and kindergarten.

These 16 school districts have been classified as having “Ready Schools,” or schools that, according to the State Department of Education, meet certain standards to help ease the transition from home, preschool or child care facilities into kindergarten.

However, the closest Ready Schools are in Kokomo and Lafayette. Still, many area school-level educators are taking steps on their own to meet regularly with early childhood care facilities and discuss curriculum, standards and transition.

“We collaborate with the area Head Start and the area preschools ... to share what we can all do to help the kids starting kindergarten as well as to let them know what the kids were like coming in from kindergarten so they can effectively judge what the needs are,” said Collins. “I think that opens the communications between the school and the preschool and also the communication with the parents of what the kids coming in need to have a good understanding of.”

The full-day array

By the time Gov. Mitch Daniels began his push for Indiana schools to switch to full-day kindergarten in 2006, several elementary schools in Logansport had already been reaping the benefits for four years.

The initiative began at Columbia and Fairview in 2002, and the entire Logansport Community School Corporation had made the switch by 2006.

At the time, the school corporation cited improved test scores as the reason it decided to take what had been a sort of pilot program at two of its schools and implement it at the four elementary schools throughout the district. It had found that, of the students at Columbia Elementary, 93 percent of those who had taken full-day kindergarten passed the Indiana Statewide Test for Educational Progress in the third grade compared to just 50 percent who passed after taking half-day kindergarten.

Wanting to cash in on the success Logansport had experienced, many other area schools began offering full-day kindergarten as an option.

In most local schools that have full-day kindergarten, the option hasn’t been available long enough for educators to see tangible results like those Columbia has seen. Still, teachers and administrators alike know those who were enrolled in full-day programs have benefited.

“The full-day program offers two things, more student-teacher time and a more well-rounded experience for the kids,” said Collins.

Eastern Pulaski Elementary is in its fourth year of offering the full-day option, and educators at the school are looking forward to how the third-grade students — the first class of full-day kindergarten students — will perform in their first round of ISTEP testing this year.

Collins is anticipating some strong results, which is something the school is already known for, because of results on other student-performance exams. The school voluntarily participates in two other standardized tests — the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Success, or DIBELS, and the North West Educational Association exam.

In both exams, which assess students in primary grades, Collins said students are “showing some drastic improvements.”

Collins attributes those improvements to the additional time teachers can spend working with students and not just on education fundamentals.

“We do a 90-minute reading block, and we couldn’t do that in a half-day program,” she said. “The kids also have gym, music and other things we just weren’t able to provide in a half-day program.”

The full-day option has been a big help to Eastern Pulaski and other area schools looking to make additional progress on the state’s academic standards.

Although kindergarten enrollment isn’t mandatory in Indiana, the state has still set some aggressive standards, just as it has for first through 12th grades, for English and language arts, mathematics, science and social studies.

With more time for classroom interaction, schools are finding they can be more creative when trying to reach those standards.

“It’s not like they’re spending an hour and a half at their desks,” said Collins. “Instead of just playing with play dough, they’re doing play dough letters, or they’re painting letters. They’re still doing kid activities and age-appropriate things, we’re just trying to make it a little more academic.”

Looking at literacy

Regardless of school size, annual test scores or demographic, nearly every elementary school in the area has listed literacy and language arts improvements among its top educational priorities.

The state is also emphasizing the importance of English and language arts, especially in the early stages of childhood development. Indiana’s standards for reading diagnostic assessments in kindergarten through second grade are among the most aggressive for the academic standards in that age category.

As early as kindergarten, the state department of education suggests curriculum directors assess word recognition, reading comprehension, listening and speaking skills, literacy response and analysis and various writing skills.

Many early childhood educators feel literacy and language skills are among the most important, as they help to provide the basis for all other learning.

“It’s important because kids are learning so much during this time period,” said Brown. “If you think of the time that a child is an infant to the time they’re in school how many words they will learn, we need to make sure they’re in a language-rich environment.”

Brown said that at Head Start, literacy is given a slightly higher priority than other skills, especially for children preparing to enter kindergarten.

“Knowing how to read is something you use in every subject you study in school,” she said.

Educators both in and out of the classroom have recognized the importance of early literacy.

As part of the state’s Reading First program, Eastern Pulaski Elementary offers students in all grades a 90-minute block of uninterrupted reading time in the classroom. Students that need extra reading help can get up to 60 additional minutes of remediation.

The school received a grant to initiate the program, which is now in its sixth year, and Collins said teachers and parents both feel it has been a major asset.

“We feel that students at the elementary level, if they have a strong proficiency, they can explore in any areas they want,” she said. “... If they can’t read, they’re not going to be able to do a lot of different things, so the more energy we can invest at the elementary level, the more successful they’re going to be later in life.”

In Cass County, educators don’t wait for children to reach school age to begin their introduction into literacy.

The Cass County Reading Railroad began as a way to help kindergarten and first grade students with early reading skills, but since its inception in 2004, the United Way program has expanded to offer free books to children beginning as soon as they are born.

By the time children reach kindergarten, they’ll have received 60 free books and the program’s goal is that parents will spend 20 minutes a day reading to their children to help develop early literacy skills, said program director Patty Brown.

“We’re hoping that kindergarten teachers will say they have children who are more excited about books,” she said. “That’s certainly one of the things we’ve tried to accomplish. I think we have parents that are more aware of the importance of reading to children. It certainly is an effort to inform parents to work alongside teachers and the community to support those things.”

Since the start of Reading Railroad, Head Start’s Judy Brown said the teachers at Head Start had recognized an improvement in children’s aptitude for literacy.

“I think the literacy has improved overall since it began,” she said. “I know Patty Brown has worked very hard with that initiative. We’ve gotten involved, and I think it makes a difference in literacy.”

However, some educators feel the emphasis placed on early childhood literacy, particularly prior to kindergarten, is simply too much too soon.

“I get frustrated when I think we’re trying to teach our children to read when I think they’re not ready for it,” said Hooley, who still says that literacy and language arts are part of the curriculum at His Kids Preschool. “At 4 and 5 years old, some children are ready for it, but studies show that in some cases, children aren’t ready until they’re 7 or 8.”

She has sympathy for those youngsters, she said.

“We start teaching them at 6, and everyone else around them is getting it,” she said. “They’re going to get it some time, but they’ll always feel stupid if they don’t get a chance to wait a minute. They’ll get it eventually; they just don’t get it right now. I just wish there was an environment where the ones that are ready to read can read and the ones that aren’t ready can still blossom in other ways.”

On the other end, Cass County Reading Railroad cites literacy studies that show three of four children who leave third grade reading below grade level never catch up, often leading to other educational and developmental problems down the road.

With so much focus at the state level on early literacy, Reading Railroad’s Patty Brown feels the best thing parents and teachers can do to help the late bloomers is to read to them.

“The most important thing is that parents read to their children,” she said. “That is our overall goal. That really makes the difference.”

Carla Knapp can be contacted at (574) 732-5150 or via e-mail at carla.knapp@pharostribune.com