Keeping Play in Kindergarten

After two rewarding years of teaching pre-K, I felt ready for the new challenge of teaching kindergarten. I knew there would be some substantial changes as I moved from the world of pre-K to the more traditional K-12 school model. After all, DC kindergartners are expected to master the more rigorous Common Core standards which include the requirement for students to “read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding.” Nap time was gone and lesson planning would soon consume a large portion of my weekends.

These were all changes I had anticipated and even welcomed. The major change I did not anticipate was the dramatic shift away from play-based learning in favor of direct teacher instruction. The play kitchen was gone, along with the vast stretches of time dedicated to center-based learning in which students were able to choose their preferred activity. I spent a lot of my time as a kindergarten teacher trying to find the right balance between allowing opportunities for play and ensuring that all of my students experienced significant academic growth throughout the school year.

This balancing act I performed as a kindergarten teacher was on my mind when I read a new study that finds evidence that delaying kindergarten entry by a year can lead to lower levels of inattention and hyperactivity among children. The study, conducted by Stanford University and the Danish National Centre for Social Research, utilized the Danish National Birth Cohort Survey of almost 36,000 mothers in Denmark to examine the effects of later kindergarten entry on children’s mental health. Denmark is certainly very different from the United States, but this study is just one among many others that examine the effects of age of kindergarten entry on academic and behavioral functioning. The part of this study that stuck out to me most was the authors’ suggestion that the lower levels of inattention and hyperactivity found among children who waited to enter kindergarten might be explained by the extended exposure to “playful early-childhood environments” they enjoyed as an alternative to a kindergarten environment.

Shouldn’t kindergarten classrooms be providing just this sort of playful environment necessary to develop emotional regulation?

Some researchers suggest that my experience teaching kindergarten was not an anomaly. As accountability pressures tied to high-stakes testing have increased over the past decade, school districts have responded by increasing the rigor of kindergarten to the point where it is popular to refer to kindergarten as “the new first grade.” Researchers from EdPolicyWorks recently completed a study comparing kindergarten clasrooms between 1998 and 2010. Their results are striking. Kindergarten teachers in 2010 had much higher academic expectations for their students than teachers in 1998. For example, 80 percent of kindergarten teachers in 2010 expected their students to learn to read while in kindergarten compared to just 30 percent in 1998. Kindergarten teachers in 2010 also reported spending more time on literacy and math content, more time on teacher-directed instruction and assessment, and less time on science, art, music, and child-selected activities than their counterparts in 1998. The likelihood of offering a dramatic play area in kindergarten, such as a play kitchen, dropped by 29 percent between 1998 and 2010. It is worth noting that this same study found that while these changes in kindergarten expectations were seen across the board, they were particularly noticeable among schools serving a high percentage of low-income children.

Is it possible for kindergarten teachers to meet the rigorous Common Core standards while also preserving play-based activities, such as a dramatic play area? I believe it is, and my colleague Shayna Cook recently pointed out that it’s not the standards that are the problem as much as how administrators and teachers choose to implement the standards. For example, a kindergarten teacher can choose to develop student literacy skills through the use of direct instruction and worksheets, or he could foster literacy development through the use of play-based, literacy-focused centers that are standards-based but also developmentally appropriate for young children. To be sure, developing playful yet standards-based learning activities is much more challenging than simply providing teacher-based instruction and then distributing worksheets, especially if you do not have a principal who understands what you are attempting to do. The extra effort required by the teacher, however, is more than offset by the academic and social gains that children experience when allowed to engage in meaningful play.

As I became a more experienced kindergarten teacher, I realized that setting high academic standards for kindergarten students and building a classroom centered around play are not mutually exclusive. It’s a false dichotomy to suggest that educators must choose between providing high-quality academic instruction and encouraging play-based learning. Kindergarten classrooms shouldn’t resemble chaotic playgrounds where anything goes, but neither should they deprive students of the play that is essential for building important skills of self-regulation and cooperation. We can, and should, demand kindergarten classrooms that embrace standards-based learning within an atmosphere that is fun, age-appropriate, and, yes, playful."