High Scope Education Approach
Guiding Principles of the High/Scope Educational Approach
The High/Scope Foundation bases its educational approach on four guiding principles:
- From birth throughout adulthood, the individual develops awareness and understanding through active involvement with people, materials, events and ideas
- Learning is most effective when the individual plans, carries out, and reflects on intentional activities.
- A variety of developmentally appropriate active learning experiences contributes to the individual’s intellectual, social, emotional and physical development.
- Consistent support and respect for personal decision-making strengthen the individual’s confidence, self-control, and sense of personal effectiveness and responsibility.
The Goals of High/Scope are:
- To develop children’s ability to take the initiative and make decisions about what they are going to do and how.
- To develop children’s self- discipline and their ability to identify personal goals and complete self chosen tasks.
- To develop children’s ability to work with other children and adults so that work done is a result of group planning, co operative effort and shared leadership.
- To develop children’s ability for self- expression, so that they can use language, pictures, movement and writing to share their experiences with others.
- To develop children’s ability to apply their reasoning in a wide range of situations and using a variety of materials.
- To develop children’s creativity, spirit of enquiry and openness to knowledge and other people’s points of view.
High/Scope Methods and Practice
A typical High/Scope day
The morning commences, as any good Preschool session should, with the adult making sure that all is ready for the arrival of the children. This will include a detailed plan for the session – covering the names of the adults who will be working with the children, what children will not be in, what our break and lunchtime snacks will be, whatever is required for our planning tool today, a clipboard ready with the names of the attending children and anecdote paper ( more on these last two items later) -ready for the off!
PLAN - DO - REVIEW TIME
As the children arrive for the morning High/Scope session, one of the adults will be available to greet any late arrivals – thereby ensuring that the Planning part of our Plan-do-review period will not be disrupted. The adult leading the planning time will have already decided what tool will be used for planning today. ( The adult has opted today for the board representing all the areas within our preschool room and will be using a small brio train engine for the children to “drive” their vehicle to their chosen areas. As it is early in the Preschool year, we have 50% of this group of children who do not have much experience in planning and we also have a few who are reluctant as yet to speak up their plans, so the adult has guaranteed that all the children will willingly plan, using a tool which does not necessarily require them to use their language skills.)
But…Prior to commencing our planning session , we must first offer the children their second opportunity of the day to work on their pre reading skills (Their first opportunity arose when they had to find their own symbol which identifies their own hanger and cubby-hole) and so we commence by using our notice board – at child height of course, to talk about today, and to inform the children of who is working with them today, what their break/ lunch will be, what extra activities we have planned, and who will not be in today ( this we do by drawing the symbol, and then putting a cross through it). Not only does the drawing of all of this in symbol form assist the children in their pre reading skills, it also gives them “control” of their own day – they know what is coming next, there are no surprises that may cause upsets and the group, in general, feels empowered! Next, I ( or the Adult) have a copy of each child’s symbol (these are displayed in the cloakroom area for the children to find their name and hanger) and I have them already laid out for the children to find their own symbol and/or to help their peers find theirs. Naturally, as I know the children, I can allow for the older children to find their own or a friend’s symbol and get the ball rolling with the planning exercise – each child will ideally “Plan” to go to 3 areas within the room this morning and, as the year progresses the child will give us more information about what he/she plans to do there on any given morning. As each child plans, he/she heads off to the first area of their choosing. This can also assist the younger or new children – giving ideas of what they would like to do. Once all the children have had their chance to plan, the adults move with them and start to observe.
Observation - careful detailed observation of an individual child in any area of the room, offers huge insight into the abilities of each child. A really important aspect of High/Scope is this individual observation of the child in ACTIVE learning.
The children then have an opportunity to act on their individual plans for the morning. Some will work through all of what they planned, some will stick to one area for the whole period, some will deviate to an area that they had not included in their plans today. All this is ok. What is important is that the adult, while playing alongside and observing the children in their play, remains alert to all the children and picks up on the facts that one has stuck in the same place, one has chosen to do something different etc., and either comments to the child during the session or else waits until review time to point out something relevant to the child or children. During this observation time, the adults are noting down interesting developments, what the children are saying or doing – this note taking is called “anecdote writing” – and these anecdotes are subsequently used to form the basis of the “Child Observation record”, which is High/Scope’s tool of assessment for each individual child. Anecdotes are taken daily. Examples would be “Alex lined up 6 small cars in a row in the block area”, “James - playing alone in block area built a “tower “ 10 cardboard bricks high, then got 3 horses and 3 knights to “guard “ it, “ Mary, in house area- “I know Anna, when the baby wakes up we can take her to the swimming pool in the buggy and Alex can be the man who gives us the bus ticket”.
All these anecdotes are pinpointing different areas of a child’s growing ability - Mary is showing some complex language skills and is building her Creative Representation skills and is also using Initiative and Social skills. It is likely that Mary is in her 2nd year of Preschool and has experience of quality freeplay sessions. James is still playing alone, but is working on maths and science skills and the anecdote also shows us his simple language abilities. Alex too is working in Maths skills.
As the year progresses, the adults will collect more complex data through these anecdotes. Anecdotes are not only taken during plan-do –review sessions – they happen throughout the day , when a child closes another child’s jacket, or comes to tell the adult about a problem or offers a solution to a problem – all these are noteworthy anecdotes.
Once the agreed time has come for tidy up and review – the children are given prior notice of “tidy up time” and then, perhaps during snack time, they will review their first session of the morning. It is the job of the adult to assist the child to remember what they have done – whether he /she managed to do everything he/ she planned, whether plans were changed during play- perhaps a lovely picture was painted or drawn and the adult may have taken a digital photo of it ( this would also be used for anecdotal evidence), or the child may just show the drawing to the class or show a special lego or craft piece that has been created to the class. These actions not only build up self esteem and self confidence in the individual child, but also serve to give other children ideas of what they can do later in the day or tomorrow. And a good adult may hold these thoughts for the future to suggest to another child who may have problems making detailed plans. So for instance, the adult may say to Paul tomorrow, who says in planning that he wants to play with the bricks, “Maybe you will get the horses out too like James did yesterday” and Paul may say, “No, I want to play with the cars”. It is all about extension of learning opportunities for the children by competent adults. The adult is there to do much more than supervise play – she is there to extend , to offer additions to the children in their play opportunities. So, if a child is playing with jigsaws that he can complete with ease, the adult will first note this as an anecdote, but will also suggest that the child might like to try a more difficult puzzle and stay close in order to support the play.
The review session builds children’s ability to remember, builds their self confidence and self esteem, encourages language and listening skills and brings the group back together.
Then the group moves on to the next part of the morning.
In our Preschool, the children will finish their break, then head outside for play. On their return, they will have a small group time, which has been organised by the adults with a view to introducing something new to the children. This small group time could be showing the group as a whole some new equipment that has come into the room, showing the new symbol for the equipment, deciding as a group where it will be kept, and how it can be used. It could also be an activity based around maths or sciences competencies that the adult wants to introduce. It can be an art activity – but it must be child centred – so it should not be “look, I have a Christmas card and we are all going to make the same”. The card or cards may be shown, but the materials are offered and the children design their own. Remember, High/Scope is about Active learning – a child learns best when they are doing what they want to do, not what someone else wants them to do.
Also included in our morning sessions would be a large group time. During this period, children are offered opportunities to make decisions about how to move about, sing, what to sing, what instruments to play and a lot more besides – more of this, and ideas for small group times another time!
Niamh M Leeney, B.A.,Dip Froebel, High/Scope tutor – consultant specialising in Preschool years.
Written by
Niam M. Leeney
Ireland's leading Early Years education Magazine
