GETTING KIDS READY TO LEARN.

Byline: Diane Dietz The Register-Guard

Some children are beginning kindergarten without the ability to write their names, and worse, unable to sit still long enough for somebody to begin to teach them. In critical ways, these 5-year-olds - at minimum two or three per classroom - are unprepared to learn what they need to learn to keep up with their peers.

And this out-of-the-chute deficit may well be the prelude to a lifetime of trouble, a succession of recent studies has suggested.

"We're seeing school success means life success," said Cindy Bass, who has taught kindergarten in the Eugene School District for 25 years.

The state and federal governments are grappling with the problem, studying how to better teach preschoolers and setting up guidelines for parents and other people charged with getting children ready for school.

At the federal level, the Bush Administration launched a five-year, $45 million research effort to identify the best teaching curricula and methods for preschool children.

In Oregon, a 70-member state task force on early childhood education will meet a second time on Feb. 11.

The goal is to write a set of teaching guidelines for day care providers and preschool teachers.

Members are studying guidelines adopted by Illinois and Kentucky. They hope to finish their work by late spring.

Aspects of these efforts are controversial among some educators - in the same way President Bush's No Child Left Behind initiative is - said Betty Shoemaker, the Eugene schools curriculum and staff development coordinator.

Some teachers fear it's foisting a mechanistic brand of teaching on younger and younger children, and that will hamper learning in some children and discourage others.

Some children will get the message early on that they are failures, whereas if they were encouraged for a couple of years, they'd catch up, Shoemaker said.

But Bass said the money and attention focused on young children is likely to help. "It's a real exciting time in early childhood education with all the state and federal mandates coming down," she said.

The least prepared children, meanwhile, come from poor and middle class families, the research shows. "Many vulnerable children attend the lowest-quality preschool programs, and many children from middle-class families also attend preschool programs of mediocre quality," a study by the New Jersey-based National Institute for Early Education Research concluded.

That's why Eugene schools with higher percentages of low-income students - River Road, Westmorland, Harris - are offering full-day kindergarten programs, so they can bring the stragglers up to full academic readiness.

It's a wild and ill-prepared bunch that arrives at the joint kindergarten classroom taught by Linda Postma and Kay Softich at the River Road/El Camino del Rio Elementary School.

The first challenge: Half of the kids don't have the capacity to sit long enough for the teachers to call roll.

They've got short attention spans, said Postma, who's headed kindergarten classrooms for two decades. "By very short, I mean two minutes or less."

"When you're not calling their name, they're done," added Softich, who became a teacher six years ago, after a stint as an instructional assistant.

Many kids are from one-child families and they've spent hours and hours in the virtual universe of video games, where:

"They're in control so (life) goes at their speed," Softich said. "They're used to being first and doing it their own way."

Many are missing critical skills at the start of the year, the teachers say.

Of the 65 kindergartners in the combined class, 10 percent can't tell a simple story in sequence, 15 percent aren't aware that books may contain stories, 80 percent can't count beyond three - and 30 percent wouldn't know to stop and say they were sorry if they knocked another child to the ground.

"Twenty years ago, I didn't have to teach that," Postma said.

The teachers spend weeks just teaching the kids how things are done "the school way," Softich said. "Everything is taught. Everything is modeled. You model, then you practice, practice, practice."

The teachers agree it's tough for parents to make their children ready for kindergarten in the two hours per night they have after work - and it's hard to know if day care is doing the job.

"Parents are both working. They're just stretched," Postma said.

The teachers recommend that parents spend whatever time they've got giving "a lot of attention and stimulation and games and social skills," Softich said.

Children learn through play. When they scribble on a paper in imitation of a parent making out bills, they're learning fine motor skills and literacy skills, such as writing goes from left to right.

If parents could manage only one thing for kids, the teachers said it would be reading to them for 10 or 15 minutes a day - and then talking to them about the story.

Reading builds imagination, attention span and patience, the teachers said. Considering what the character is going to do next builds empathy and narrative sense.

Conversation between parent and child builds vocabulary and knowledge of how to sequence thoughts.

Another wish? That parents would teach children that they don't always have to be first. The teachers say one of the toughest things to teach children is how to hold their thoughts until it's their turn to speak.

A 5-year-old, excited by a thought, will poke a teacher or yank on her clothing. The teachers say the kids are darling in this state, but they must learn to hold on until the teacher finishes speaking with others.

Postma holds up a finger, to signal the child to wait one minute. Softich puts a hand on the child's shoulder to say: "I see you, and I'll be right with you."

READINESS CHECKLIST

Here's a shortened list of what experts believe 4-year-olds should be doing to prepare for school. To see the full list, go to www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content/getready.html.

To be ready, my child:

Is read to every day.

Is encouraged to ask questions.

Is encouraged to classify things (for example, by looking at red cars on the highway).

Is learning to write his name and address.

Is learning to be confident enough to explore and try new things.

Is learning to work well alone and to do many tasks for himself.

Can follow simple instructions.

Gets plenty of rest.

Runs, jumps, plays outdoors and does other activities that develop large muscles and provide exercise.

Works puzzles, scribbles, colors, paints and does other activities that develop small muscles.

- U.S. Education Department

EXPERT ADVICE

Healthy Start, Grow Smart: Federal guidebook for parents, www.ed.gov/parents/earlychild/ready/healthystart/index.html

Ready to Go: What Parents Should Know about School Readiness: Brochure of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, www.naeyc.org/shoppingcart/itemdetail.aspx?stock_no=554

Teaching our Youngest: Federal guidebook for day care and preschool providers, www.ed.gov/teachers/how/early/teachingouryoungest/teachingouryoungest.pdf

Helping Your Preschool Child: Ready to Learn: Federal guidebook with activities,

mirror.eschina.bnu.edu.cn/Mirror/ed.gov/www.ed.gov/pubs/parents/preschool/preschool.pdf

CAPTION(S):

Shane Bruce explores a basket of plastic pipe during indoor recess. E d u c a t i o n E x t r a