Have you ever known that things weren’t right, but couldn’t deter-mine why and certainly couldn’t find any answers?
That’s the situation I found myself in when I began teaching prekindergarten. Typically, we began each half-day class
with a meal, spent 45 minutes hearing a story in whole group, and then spent 30 to 45 minutes doing an activity based
on the story. There was a lot of off-task behavior, and most students showed little interest in the extension activities.
The remaining time was spent in free-choice centers and recess. Things didn’t feel right.

I had not yet attended the Literacy Learning in the Classroom summer institute or received support from a teacher leader,
but because of The Learning Network’s influence already in my school, I was expected to have everyone write every day.
So I had all of my students "write" at one time. Once again, there was a lot of off-task behavior as students waited for my
assistant or me to take dictation about their drawings. We rushed from student to student so that we could get dictation
from everyone. Students showed little or no progress in their drawing or oral language development. They certainly didn’t
have a clue about planning. Student work at the end of the year varied little from their work at the beginning. Things still
weren’t right.

Finally, I attended my first summer institute and was supported by a teacher leader. I learned about the reading and writing
processes and the value of teacher demonstrations. I still had many questions. Then I began training as a teacher leader for
preK by a Learning Network coordinator, David Matteson. The next two years were invaluable as I used my knowledge
of four-year-olds and David used his knowledge of the reading and writing processes to develop our understandings about
how to better support these young learners.

"Learning by fire" is how I refer to my experience as a TLN coordinator working with teacher leaders in a prekindergarten
setting. I had absolutely no experience teaching four-year-olds. My only experience was hearing Jan Duncan talk to preK
teachers as I facilitated my first few summer institutes. Little did I know I would be in need of those treasures in my work as
a coordinator!

From those discussions I under-stood that play was the work of four-year-olds. (Jan was adamant that we shouldn’t be
putting draft books into the hands of most preK students.) I understood that oral language needed to be at the heart of the
preK classroom and that reading and writing needed to be a part of the preK "play areas." PreK teachers needed to be
monitoring what students were doing in those areas. As it would turn out, these ideas would be just a drop in the bucket.

During my first year as a coordinator for preK teachers, we worked through those ideas, but I was struck by the
inconsistencies in what teachers were doing from month to month. It was frustrating. I couldn’t get Jan’s "pearls" to stick.
We’d throw out draft books one month and the next month I’d see small group writing instruction. We weren’t moving
along in our understandings of what reading and writing looked like in preK, and I had just as many questions as the
teacher leaders. One thing was clear – we (I) needed to do some-thing – but what?

Thinking about Jan’s ideas, Debbie and I took a closer look at her students’ writing. Debbie had been publishing her
students’ stories in book form. When we asked them about the books, it was obvious that many had no idea that these
were their own stories. We realized that we were putting the cart before the horse. The publishing step was too abstract
for them.

Since publishing was an issue, we decided to focus just on the students’ artwork. When we had students talk about a
picture they had just created, many could tell a pretty good story and many could remember it later, some almost word
for word. Our new understanding: The picture holds the meaning for four-year-olds. The picture is the published work.
When we added dictation to the situation, the teacher was readily able to recall the story and help the student remember,
if necessary. This was the next step for the children – remembering more and more about their stories.

During the second year of our work, Debbie and I thought more about the pictures her students were drawing. We
noticed and began to categorize similarities. Some pictures were unidentifiable scribbles. Many drawings had some level
of detail. Some were very detailed. Some students were doing the same picture over and over again but had a different
story to go with each. There was nothing to differentiate one picture from another.

We also explored what the students could tell us about their pictures. As with the drawings, we found some commonalties
in the levels of students’ oral language as they talked about their pictures. Some students could not articulate what they had
drawn. Others used one-word labels. Some changed their stories every time they told them. Others remained steadfast to
the stories about their art. What was becoming clear as we went through this process was that, by looking at the different
levels in picture drawing and oral language development, we could see what students needed next. These were teaching
points! Deb and I were using the teaching and learning cycle! We were monitoring students and recording their growth!

What did this mean for the classroom? We knew that play was an important part of the preK experience. We began to look
more closely at the play centers in Deb and Kara’s classrooms. We discovered that the work the students were doing at the
clay, wood blocks, interlocking blocks, and painting centers was remark-ably similar to the drawings they did. Those who
had good detail in their pictures had many details in their clay shapes and/or interlocking blocks. Those who lacked details
in pictures had little detail in their other work as well. The student’s level of oral language within the play areas was very close
to the talk that stemmed from their drawings.

We were now a little clearer about what teachers needed to monitor as they roved during play times. Teachers needed to
take notes on the amount of detail students used and then help the student develop the detail. They also needed to take notes
on their students’ oral language development and then extend the oral language as the children made changes in detail to the
work they were doing.

As Deb, Kara, and I put this information together in the form of a continuum (Figure 1), we dug into their state’s preK
guidelines to be sure that what we were doing could be supported by that document, because that was what the district was
following. We noticed two distinct strands woven throughout – writing skills and oral language skills. What hit us was the idea
that students needed to reach the oral language teaching objectives be-fore they could function in a draft book. That was
especially evident in the ESL teaching objectives. (Both Deb’s and Kara’s classes have high populations of new learners of
English.) Once we flushed out the teaching objectives, it was pretty easy to match them up to the levels in our continuum.
When we put everything in place, we could easily see when to support the students just using their oral language in the be-
ginning of the continuum, when to use teacher dictation as students’ skills increased, and when to shift to the draft book. We
felt that guidelines would help support preK teachers, so we incorporated them into the continuum and matched them up to
the stages that we identified.

Knowing that our job was to move children along the continuum, we also looked at reading and writing demonstrations and
how they could support the teaching objectives and effect change in students. That was a very interesting process for all of us.
Thinking through those approaches, keeping process and teaching objectives in mind, we developed some wonderful new
insights into preK connections to reading and writing process. First, pictures are the genesis of writing and reading. Second,
children need to put detail into their work so they can learn to be effective planners when they are in draft books. Third,
children need to put detail in their work so they can better attend to pictures in emergent books. Finally, the more control
a child has over his or her oral language, the better writer and reader he or she will become. This work had a profound
impact on Deb and Kara’s teaching.

David and I arrived at two important conclusions: the genesis of reading is noting details in the illustrations, and the genesis
of good writing is oral language development. We also discovered that a student’s written work often parallels their work in
other curriculum areas. After working with David, the way my students spend the day is very different than when I began
teaching preK. Now, rather than spending large blocks of time in whole group circle and literature-extension activities or in
free choice centers, students move in and out of shorter whole and small groups. This allows them to focus during teaching
and demonstration times, and the periods of small group instruction allows me time to give each student individualized
attention. For example:

8:05-8:15 Circle Time Welcome

sing welcome song

check class calendar of events

focused alphabet lesson – I write the name of the helper for the day, describe how the letter is formed, and tell the
letter name.

sing word/sound song while connecting to alphabet chart

writing demonstration – I use the continuum in planning my writing demonstration. By focusing on the step just above
where the majority of my students work, I am sure that I am demonstrating in their zone of proximal development.

9:15-9:35 Small Literacy Groups (at least four groups)

first group writes

second group "reads" books in the classroom library

third group works with the teaching assistant

fourth group "reads" big books in large open floor space

reading demonstration

concept and vocabulary development activities for science and social studies

big books and poems or rhymes on charts

songs related to math concepts

and Math

free choice centers

small group math activities and games led by teacher or assistant – activity takes 10-15 minutes so that students
still have free choice time and teacher and assistant have time to interact with students at the centers. It may take
3 or 4 days for the whole class to have a turn at the activity. (Option: literature extension activity)

Before our development of the continuum, I doubt I would have been able to identify specific needs or record any growth,
and I did not have the time to work one-on-one with anyone. I know that the continuum we have developed is a powerful
and highly usable tool.

In the past, my teaching of reading and writing in prekindergarten was not only not focused, but I lacked the understandings
I needed to even know why an activity was being done and what the objective was. I had a filing cabinet full of "literacy"
activities and a class-room full of children who did those activities whether they needed work on those skills or not. To put
it frankly, I couldn’t have told you what each child needed because I didn’t know.

As I began working with other preK teachers, I realized that I was not alone. PreK classrooms, in general, are strong in
math, science, and social development, but the role of reading and writing seems to be ambiguous. A wonderful team, David
and Debbie, whom I would later join in my role as a teacher leader, had already begun to address this very problem. They
understood that the preK teachers in our school needed to develop some basic under-standings of how the reading and
writing processes worked in the preK setting and how to apply the teaching and learning cycle so that our teaching could
become focused and purposeful.

As we began to work toward these goals, we realized that a vital part of the teaching and learning cycle was missing –
assessment. As most PreK teachers do, I had always roved the class, taking down monitoring notes, but I never really
knew what I was looking for or how to apply the information I had gathered to my teaching. What PreK teachers needed
was a tool – a tool that would help us focus our monitoring notes and ultimately our teaching. That is exactly what the preK
assessment and teaching continuum has done for me.

I have been brought to a whole new world of knowing my students. I begin with considering a piece of work, such as a
drawing, a painting, a castle in the blocks, or anything that my student has produced. I take notes on the detail of the work
and the conversation I have with the child. I am looking for broad indications of that child’s development in relation to the
continuum. Once I have identified where a student is in his or her development, I use the continuum to help me decide the
next goal or teaching objective that he or she needs to master. With this knowledge, I can plan purposeful activities that
will help that individual child (and any other with the same needs) master the objective. For the first time, I am actually
teaching the child, not the activity. I am using the activity only to springboard that child’s teaching point, not to direct my
teaching. With each teaching point, my goal is to support that child’s learning until he has established mastery of his
objective and I can identify a new objective.