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The Curriculum: A Written Plan for Action

Curriculum in Early Head Start and Head Start is a written document that serves as a road map for implementing a quality child development and education program.

No two curricula in Head Start and Early Head Start look exactly the same.There are two basic approaches programs use to determine the curriculum. Staff and parents may base a curriculum on an already-developed model and adapt or "tailor" it for the group of children being served. Or staff and parents may develop a local curriculum. Either way, the curriculum must be in keeping with all requirements of the Head Start Program Performance Standards and based on sound child development principles.

Performance Standards and Child Development Principles

The standards first require that when serving infants, toddlers, or preschoolers, including children with disabilities, the curriculum must include:

(1) The goals for children's development and learning–what do we want children to achieve this year?;

(2) The experiences through which they will achieve these goals–what learning experiences will we offer them?;

(3) The roles of staff and parents in helping children achieve these goals–what are our individual and shared responsibilities as a team to help children achieve the goals?; and

(4) The materials needed to support the implementation of the curriculum–what furniture, equipment, and supplies are appropriate for the ages and stages of children's development?

Think of these four aspects as the framework for the curriculum. As we continue to develop or adapt the curriculum,we also have to keep in mind the child development principles that guide the ways in which we work with children. Such child development principles are universal, applying to all children regardless of their gender, race, culture, or country of origin. They include:

• Patterns of growth and development are orderly and sequential–all children learn to walk before learning to run, and all children babble before they use words.
  
• Human growth and development proceeds from simple to complex–children learn individual words before they learn to put words together into sentences, and children use their hands to eat before they use a spoon.
  
• Learning is influenced by the child's social and cultural context–what their culture values and doesn't value influences what and how children learn.

Next, we have to make certain that the curricula we develop or adapt are consistent with all of the Program Performance Standards. We do this because Early Head Start and Head Start are comprehensive child development programs, concerned with all aspects of children's education and development (including medical, dental, mental health, and nutritional development) as well as staff qualifications and the roles of parents and other adults in program planning and implementation.

Curriculum Influences

Even though each program across the country must mold its curriculum to the Program Performance Standards and to sound child development principles, we all know that all Early Head Start and Head Start programs do not look alike. Nor would we want them to. Each community has its own context and characteristics, strengths and needs.These individual differences must be taken into account when a local program is "tailoring" or designing the curriculum.

Some factors to consider, for example, are how location and context influence program goals, child experiences, roles of staff and parents, and learning materials and environments. Is the program located on an Indian reservation, in a migrant camp, or in the middle of a major city? What do parents and staff feel children need to know? Do children need to know water, hurricane, or earthquake safety? What are the cultural beliefs and traditions of the families served? (Articles on pages 9, 11, and 13 of this
Bulletin illustrate how environment and culture influence the curriculum.)

To fine tune our teaching approaches and the learning experiences within the curriculum, we need to be aware of a number of things about each infant, toddler, and preschooler. What do the children already know? What are they interested in? What are the temperaments, languages, cultural backgrounds, and learning styles of the children? All of these elements, and many more, must be considered when adapting or developing
a curriculum. Like each child, each curriculum is a unique creation.

Goals for Children's Development and Learning

"Goals" describe what competencies we want children to develop. While each child is unique, there are some overarching goals for children in Head Start. One such overarching goal is to increase the child's everyday effectiveness in dealing with both his or her present environment and later responsibilities in school and life. Examples of more specific goals are:

• Develop positive and nurturing relationships with adults and peers
  
• Develop a sense of trust and security
  
• Identify and solve problems
  
• Express thoughts and feelings
  
• Think critically
  
• Increase self-confidence
  
• Respect the feelings and rights of others
  
• Use creativity and imagination
  
• Work independently and with others
  
• Develop literacy, numeracy, reasoning, problemsolving, and decision-making skills that form a foundation for school readiness Learning

Experiences for Mobile Infants, Toddlers, and Preschoolers

For every goal identified, developmentally appropriate experiences are selected from the program curriculum, planned, and intentionally presented to children. For example, one goal for children is to gain increasing competence in the area of numeracy. Children need active, hands-on experiences to develop age-appropriate mathematical understanding. Teachers take advantage of everyday materials, daily routines, and child interests to foster emergent mathematical thinking within the curriculum. Staff members create environments and select materials that support mathematical thinking, and they engage children in meaningful conversations about the work they are doing. Experiences that support learning include:

• Classification: Shells, juice cans, and Legos are great for sorting and classifying by size, color, shape, or use, and for making patterns or counting.
  
• Patterning: Stringing beads in a variety of colors, shapes and sizes, or playing dominoes and matching the number of dots.
  
• One-to-one correspondence: Distributing napkins, plates, and cups–putting one in front of each chair at a table.
  
• Ordering and sequencing:The process of ordering relationships: more/less; bigger/smaller; big/bigger/biggest; small/smaller/smallest.
  
• Providing books to children, such as Anno's Counting Book, and reading other stories about number concepts.

Observations and Ongoing Assessment

Once we've identified the goals and presented an array of learning experiences to support progress toward them, we assess children's prior knowledge and then track their progress in meeting the goals through ongoing assessment, observation, and recording of the child's development. Parents and other adults in the child's life are encouraged to share with staff things they know about the child. No one knows the child better than his or her immediate family.With such input, parents and staff can plan a curriculum that reflects the needs and interests of each child in a group, whether the child is an infant, toddler, or preschooler. All of the information we gather allows us to individualize learning experiences (increasing or modifying the degree of challenge)
to make the Early Head Start and Head Start programs relevant and meaningful for every child.

The information on each child's progress towards achieving the goals is referred to as a "child outcome." This outcome tells us how the child is different at the end of the program than he or she was at the beginning. Sometimes this is referred to as "value added." How has the child benefited from his or her time in Early Head Start or Head Start? What documentation or "proof" do we have?

Evaluating the Curriculum

Throughout the year, staff and parents take time to discuss the ways the curriculum seems to be working for the children as a group and for individual children. Based on these discussions of child progress, changes are made to keep the curriculum responsive and supportive of children as they grow and learn, as their interests expand, and as their skills and knowledge change.

In Closing

I hope my comments have helped you to understand why having a written curriculum–a "roadmap"–is important; why a curriculum helps to ensure that nothing related to children's development and learning is overlooked; and why, although the overall curriculum is planned for a given group of children of a certain age range, we consciously "individualize" the curriculum for each child within the group to support each child's rate of development as well as individual interests, temperaments, languages, cultural backgrounds, learning styles, and prior knowledge. The learning environment is, therefore, arranged to accommodate a variety of children's strengths and needs, and to stimulate learning across all domains of development: social, emotional, cognitive, and physical.

And Remember...

Have Fun My wish for each of you is to enjoy, nurture, and have fun with the children and their families, as well as to support them as they thrive and learn.

E. Dollie Wolverton is Chief of the Education Services Branch at the Head Start Bureau. T: 202-205-8418; F: 202-401-5916; E: dwolverton@acf.dhhs.gov.

Some sources of guidance for implementing curriculum in Early Head Start and Head
Start include:

• Guidance to the Program Performance Standards
  
• Zero to Three
  
• WestEd's Training Program for Infant and Toddler Caregivers
  
• The Guide and Video for Head Start Education Coordinators
  
• The Head Start Home-Based Training Materials
  
• The Head Start Family Child Care Training Materials
  
• Training Guides for the Head Start Learning Community
  
• Head Start's A Creative Adventure – Art, Music, Movement, and Dialogue
  
• NAEYC's 1997 Developmentally Appropriate Practices for Early Childhood Education
  
• NAEYC's Learning to Read and Write (birth to 8 yrs)
  
• The National Research Council's Starting Out Right – Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (birth to 8 yrs)
  
• NHSA's "Position Paper: Reading and Writing Now!"
  
• Early Intervention – Early Special Education Recommended Practices, Council for Exceptional Children, Division of Early Childhood
  
• The Council's "Essentials" for the college-based CDA
  
• Journals and early childhood education magazines
  
• Research, college courses, child development texts

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