The High-Performing Preschool - by Gillian Dowley McNamee (Paperback)

About the Book

This book arises in part from the many visits Gillian McNamee paid to Mrs. Miller s class in Chicago, helping to write down children s dictated stories as part of a carefully planned curricular intervention for this Head Start classroom. As McNamee explains, the blueprint for the work with Mrs. Miller and her colleagues derives from L.S. Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist of the early 20th century, and fames kindergarten teacher and Press author Vivian G. Paley. Vygotsky and Paley s ideas guide McNamee s discussion of the most urgent educational issue for our nation s youngest public school children: how can classroom teachers enhance the oral language foundations of children who are growing up in communities experiencing economic hardship, and who often come from diverse language and dialect backgrounds? What curricular approach will initiate them into active verbal participation in a community of learners ready for the full breadth of educational opportunities school has to offer?
McNamee explores the part of teaching in which learning depends and thrives on what children are learning from their teacher and from each other. She shows how and why other children, whether rich or poor, are an essential part of each child s learning in school; and what the teacher s role is in organizing the class so that the collective provides the strength and resources for each child to achieve their potential every day of the school year."

Book Synopsis

The High-Performing Preschool takes readers into the lives of three- and four-year-old Head Start students during their first year of school and focuses on the centerpiece of their school day: story acting. In this activity, students act out stories from high-quality children's literature as well as stories dictated by their peers. Drawing on a unique pair of thinkers-Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky and renowned American teacher and educational writer Vivian G. Paley-Gillian Dowley McNamee elucidates the ways, and reasons, this activity is so successful. She shows how story acting offers a larger blueprint for curricula that helps ensure all preschools-not just those for society's well-to-do-are excellent.

McNamee outlines how story acting cultivates children's oral and written language skills. She shows how it creates a crucial opportunity for teachers to guide children inside the interior logic and premises of an idea, and how it fosters the creation of a literary community. Starting with Vygotsky and Paley, McNamee paints a detailed portrait of high-quality preschool teaching, showing how educators can deliver on the promise of Head Start and provide a setting for all young children to become articulate, thoughtful, and literate learners.

Review Quotes

"As I read Gillian Dowley McNamee's latest book, The High-Performing Preschool: Story Acting in Head Start Classrooms, I was reminded of a rose blossoming in time-lapse photography. At its center is the question she poses to young children, one child at a time: "Do you have a story to share?" Surrounding that center are layers of petals that illustrate why (i) asking this question in a classroom environment steeped in children's literature and opportunities for play, (ii) listening to the child's response, (iii) recording it, and (iv) supporting the child in dramatizing it in a meaningful and visual way with peers are efforts so vital to a young child's learning and development. . . . McNamee offers those of us who believe that children learn through relationships a very powerful tool to grow the kinds of meaningful relationships within a learning community that make learning possible. This tool is simple. It is likely to be effective whether employed in a classroom full of active young children or in a focused small group. And it is useful to achieve multiple goals (e.g., to learn what the child is thinking about, what she knows, and where she is in her literacy development)."
-- "Schools"

"Increased academic pressures have forced many preschools and other programs for young children to engage in behaviors that those well versed in developmental appropriateness find troubling and ill-conceived. Yet as mandates to demonstrate student learning increase, many practitioners are not quite sure what to do. McNamee has provided a masterful blueprint grounded in theory and practice for those preschool teachers, administrators, and researchers who want to create learning spaces in which children are successful and supported. Organized into nine chapters, the book explores zones of proximal development, how acting out stories supports Common Core State Standards, ways to learn through stories, the introduction of storytelling and acting, changes in development, preparations for first grade, ways to stage stories, entry points for teachers, and classroom communities. The book is rich with examples and anecdotes, and McNamee presents a cogent and compelling picture of preschool programs serving low socioeconomic status students who achieve equity and excellence. . . . Highly recommended."-- "Choice"

About the Author

Gillian Dowley McNamee is professor of child development and director of teacher education at the Erikson Institute in Chicago. She is coauthor of Early Literacy, The Fifth Dimension: An After School Program Built on Diversity and Bridging: Assessment for Teaching and Learning in Early Childhood Classrooms.