The Advocates' Child Studies Blog

 Questions From an Interview Q : What do you make of Bush's push to have literacy testing in Head Start programs? : Z igler: I'm not thrilled by all that testing. I don't think if you take somebody's temperature a lot that will make them well. What they really need are good teachers and smaller class sizes, which are good for younger ages. But all Bush seems to care about is literacy and testing. There's so much more to human development than being able to decode these words. That doesn't mean you comprehend what you're reading. So I'm not thrilled by it. Further, we know that the test scores of preschoolers are notoriously labile. Thus, the validity of any such test score is open to serious question. Q: Why do you get annoyed at efforts to link better I.Q. scores with better child care?  Zi gler: This nation has always had this love affair with I.Q. and we don't understand its limitations. And that's why I'm having this fight

"In both cooperative learning and project work. The teacher  encourages children to talk to one another. This helps them pay attention to each others efforts and ideas. Children take to these kinds  of exchanges very readily, but the teacher really needs to encourage this interaction"  Dr. Lilian Katz "Experts generally agree that taking all opportunities to read books and other material aloud to children is the best preparation for their learning to read. The pleasures of being read to are far more likely to strengthen a child's desire to learn to read than are repetitions of sounds, alphabet drills, and deciphering uninteresting words." Dr. Lilian Katz