Kindergarten Physical Assessment To Be Completed By: Fill & Download for Free

The most important reform we could make in public education is to align what we teach, and how it is taught, with the insights offered through the sciences of neurobiology, developmental psychology, and neurodevelopmental psychology. Compared to twenty years ago, we know exponentially more about how humans naturally learn, how children learn, what is likely to promote learning, and what is almost certain to inhibit it.Here are some changes I would suggest in the light of new understanding. Don't misinterpret this as an argument against rigor:1. Failure should never be stigmatized. In a way, it should be encouraged. People learn by making mistakes. Lack of effort is what teachers need to be concerned with. Those who fail more will often end up learning more.2. The time element for learning must be minimized. People learn in different ways, at different speeds. and at different speeds for different subjects. Some people take more time to learn something but they learn it more completely. They can generalize what they have learned and apply unifying principles to other matters. Perhaps they have made more mistakes and those mistakes have contributed to learning more deeply. This implies that grade levels need to be eliminated. If one person has been accessed to have learned what he or she needs to know, they graduate. If another takes an extra year, it is unimportant. Passing scores, however, need to be close to 100% for all students.3. Play needs to be re-associated with learning. Play should not be a reward for the work of learning. Learning should be, as much as is possible, enjoyable. Even learning the times-tables (rote learning) can be made more fun. To assess whether the learning in a classroom is being disassociated from fun, assess the level of curiosity. Incurious children, and adults, learn only what they feel they need to, to get to where they feel they need to go. In school that means grades. The likelihood of the kind of deep learning that results in the student mastering a subject tends to be directly proportional to the driving force of learning; curiosity. It is not natural for the level of curiosity in children to tend to diminish in public school from Grade One onward.4. Learning to connect the dots is more important than accumulating dots. By dots I am referring to factoids, or the quanta of data or information, such as the USA entered World War II in 1941. We have a public education system that has evolved little from its 19th century roots. In fact, with the present obsession with high-stakes testing, rote learning has come back into vogue. We are back in the 19th century. The attempt to roll back the, so called, “radical educational experiments” of the nineteen sixties have succeeded. That needs to be reversed. Minimal rote leaning might be occasionally needed to prime the educational pump, but it is so much more beneficial to learn facts as a by-product of learning methodology. In other words, learning general principals seems to naturally precede learning details for our species. The key skill taught in school, therefore, should be methodology for how to determine what you need to know to get a task done, and how to access that information. You can find out in less than a minute which English king ordered the waves to retreat by googling the question. Knowing what that tale implies, that is deciphering its meaning, and understanding how that lesson can apply to life in the present; that is learning from history as opposed to merely learning history. That is also a higher form of intelligence, often referred to as “general intelligence”, while specific or specialized intelligence is what we are already beginning to get from A.I. computation and falls far short of the intellectual capacities that humans are born with.5. Homework and cramming need to be eliminated or minimized. Or homework should become schoolwork. Since so much of the average school day is demonstrably nonproductive in terms of true learning - meaning the kind of learning that lasts longer than a few days after a student has taken a high-stakes test - most of what is now homework could be done within a seven hour school day. Educators and parents need to recognize that non-school activities, peer socializing, and just unstructured knocking about, can be as conducive to learning as being in a structured classroom.6. It's not that there is too much nor that there is not enough structure in today's classroom. Its the kind of structure that matters. Students have to be allowed to take tangents and long-cuts. Students have to be not just allowed but encouraged to question assumptions and fundamental premises. To challenge conventional thinking and the 'consensual reality' is a human and student right, perhaps even a duty. This defines a natural process for human learning and results in new discoveries for the student, It even occasionally results in new insights or discoveries for the rest of us as well. Incorporating the process of individual discovery into a curriculum should be a no-brainer. If students are allowed the time to play around within a given project they will find out who they are and how they learn largely, although not entirely, on their own. Certainly there are times when minimum supervision is for the good. The structure within a classroom needs to accommodate not just the various ways people learn but the fact that it is play more than necessity that is really the mother of invention.7. Tests should be only one instrument of assessment, and as much for assessing the teaching as the learning. Since it is the process of learning, and the process of thinking, that is most important (again connecting dots rather than accumulating dots) that is what most needs to be assessed. The student's teacher, not the test creator, is best equipped to assess that. This implies class sizes small enough and enough one-to-one time for a teacher to get to know his or her students.8. Every student must feel protected, comfortable, and unconditionally accepted in the class room. Every child deserves to be there and every child needs to get that message. Behavior needs to be studied to determine why a given student might tend towards acting out inappropriately. There is always a reason. Compassion needs to be the guiding principle. Punishment needs to be rare and shaped by a compassionate knowledgeable teacher or administrator. (All children will act inappropriately some times.) Reflexive, top-down, dictatorial authority will result in oppositional psychology for a healthy individual. The possibility for a positive change in the behavior of a child is chained to his or her understanding that the adult, or authority figure, dishing out consequences is motivated by concern for the student, not vindictiveness. That cannot be faked. Students can instantly sense the difference. Teachers who are constitutionally incapable of empathy for the students they are entrusted with are in the wrong profession. Fear does not motivate deep learning. If there is any foundation for creating a learning environment, that is it.All of the above is congruent with the findings of current developmental science. Children react to implicit memories and inner emotional turmoil, often without much self-understanding. Especially in the first few years of life, but continuing throughout life, the brain wires itself and rewires itself as a consequence of environmental factors. Neurons that fire together tend to stay together. The brain should no longer be viewed as a fixed thing but as a plastic thing, an organ that will physically change for the positive in response to an attentive carrying environment, or to the negative in an inattentive uncaring environment. Immaturity is to be expected of children, by definition. That stated, children act out impulsively for a reason. The blame game must stop for the learning game to continue. Emotional health is not a side-issue for education, but its foundation.The unifying concept here is that anti-social behavior, or self-destructive behavior, or self-aggrandizing behavior, or self-deprecating behavior, all tend to be emerging from an underlying source. Almost always negative behavior relates to the child's deep-seated feelings of inferiority and his or her lack of mental well-being. All of that is best understood as the consequences of a negative environment, probably at home more than at school. The misbehaving child is defending herself, albeit poorly, but that is her underlying motivation. Misbehavior isn't to be tolerated, of course, but consequences need to be designed that are in the best interest of the child. The blame game is to be avoided, If a child has been largely ignored in the first two years of life, is she or he to be blamed for acting badly in kindergarten? A child might need to be removed from the proximity of other students,but that step has to be understood as temporary. It has to be understood that way by the child.The trick is, I think, that freedom should be granted in direct proportion to the responsibility taken. For example, after a certain age, students should not be punished for being absent from class. But the consequence of missing classes is that he or she will have to put in the time to meet course requirements. (Remember every students needs to earn the equivalent of an ‘A’ before being allowed to move up the ladder.) This kind of social contract, obviously, is something that a student matures into. The freedom and responsibility threshold needs to advance over time, but that process needs to happen. It needs to be an educational goal, and a conscious and ongoing process involving teachers and students. Grade ten students should not be required to ask a teacher for permission to go to the bathroom. This transition into adulthood where freedom is conscientiously balanced by responsibility needs to be designed into the school experience.(In California, moving out of high school and an atmosphere of what feels like to many students a minimum security prison, and then abruptly moving into the institutional freedom offered in a college, requires a psychological transition that at least 50% of students fail to make.)Obviously the above means that I take a radical view that our public education system needs to be fundamentally reinvented if we are to expect student outcomes to radically improve. And they must, if we are survive as a democratic nation and if the ecosphere is to be conducive to future life on this planet. The solution to a failing school system, however, is not offering less carrot to students and applying more stick to their rear-ends. The solution is equally not union busting, nor is it upping the education standards - although they need not only upping but a thorough rethinking. It is also not soft or corrupt teacher evaluation that is the central problem, although retraining of teachers may have to be made a national mandate. The truth is that scapegoating teachers or blaming lazy or undisciplined students will only make matters worse. To go on mistaking symptoms for causes will invite further disaster.The worst thing we do to students in the public education system is convince them on an emotional level, where it counts most, that we adults don't really care about them, and that school is the opposite of fun. That must be changed.Suggested related reading: Scattered, In The Land Of Hungry Ghosts, Gabor Mate MD

First watch this video (it’s an hour and a half long, but full of extremely valuable information, and captioned with REAL captions):What he's talking about is the very real problem of language deprivation in Deaf children. This is caused by the denial of complete and accessible language input which is virtually guaranteed by exposing Deaf children to a natural signed language such as ASL (but not so with artificial systems like signed English or other coding systems for English). Deaf children are denied this exposure by doctors, audiologists, and educators who almost invariably tell the parents of these children not to sign with their children for fear that the children will not learn to hear and more importantly (in their eyes), to speak. This fear is entirely unfounded; it has long been shown that if anything, exposure to signed language enhances developing abilities and speaking and listening, and more importantly, the ability to command English, whether in its written form or its spoken form, and this is also being verified by current research at Gallaudet University’s VL2 program.At this point, you’re probably saying “oh, that’s old news! Cochlear implants solve that problem!”. I have news for you: They don’t. Cochlear implants are far from perfect. While it is true that SOME implanted children SEEM to have achieved a full command of English, it is equally (if not more) true that MANY Deaf children with implants achieve only a partial or limited command of English; therefore these children are ALSO experiencing language deprivation. Perhaps not to the same degree as profoundly Deaf people without implants, but deprivation is deprivation, and the consequences of partial deprivation are almost as bad as those of full deprivation.The possession of a full, complete language model is something that too many Hearing people take for granted. Truly, language is a human right, as much as the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Having language is the key to being able to live as a complete human in society; without it, nobody can become a fully contributing member of society in all the ways that one contributes to society.When Deaf people are deprived of language, this leads to a plethora of problems such as:Social isolation and difficulties in developing healthy social relationshipsMental health issues, especially depression, suicide, and drug/alcohol dependencyEducational underachievementWithout good education, one is not going to be able to get a good job, leading to underemployment and/or unemployment.In any Hearing child, the intentional deprivation of language from a child would be instantly viewed as child abuse. Yet, in the case of thousands upon thousands of Deaf children, the deprivation of language is officially sanctioned by the medical and legal establishments in the name of “parents’ rights”. What about the Deaf child’s rights? Unfortunately, children are not viewed as having rights, and they are typically powerless (physically, psychologically, and legally) to advocate for their own wishes and desires in regards to their bodies and education. But those children DO grow up into adults, and they (like myself) DO often grow into advocates for Deaf children like themselves, because we know what it is like to be a Deaf child and what Deaf children need. Yet, all too often we as adults are told (by the very same medical and educational establishments) that “we are speaking about the past; technology has made improvements in the past 20 years that make our arguments invalid; we are angry Deaf adults who are merely venting our anger on innocent parents and children” and so on. Thus why Nyle paraphrased the line from “The Sound of Silence” in his post-dance interview: “We are heard but not listened to”.With his post-ANTM success and now winning DWTS, he has established his own foundation, the Nyle DiMarco Foundation, which aims to:…. improve access to accurate, research-based information about early language acquisition–specifically, the bilingual education approach. Through the early intervention process, the child’s language and literacy development should be the focal point.Nyle and the Foundation are guided by the principle that every child deserves love and language.He has also partnered with the LEAD-K campaign which is currently pushing to get bills passed nationwide (U.S.) to end language deprivation by establishing language benchmarks for every Deaf child that must be assessed and met at certain points in their development PRIOR to entering Kindergarten in order to ensure, as much as possible, that every Deaf child is ready (at least on a linguistic level) to enter Kindergarten with the appropriate linguistic and social skills that are expected of children at this age.So, is Nyle’s statement that he is “saving Deaf people’s lives” (did he actually say that? I don’t recall him saying those exact words) self-aggrandizement and hyperbole? Self-aggrandizement? No. He is, like most of the culturally Deaf community, concerned about the future of these children and our community. The linguistic deprivation of Deaf people has been occurring for over 130 years as a standard educational practice; there is a good case for viewing this as something of an attempt at ethnic cleansing or “Deaf Holocaust”, a goal advocated by Alexander Graham Bell himself in his now-infamous tract, “A Memoir on the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race”. While Deaf people’s physical lives have not been harmed by the policies of the Auditory-Medical Complex (although there is evidence that numbers of Deaf children have died as a result of medical attempts at “curing” our “affliction”, including through cochlear implants), it is certainly true that our lives have been impacted at the cognitive, social, employment, and linguistic levels. Imagine all those language-deprived children who could have grown up to be another Einstein, inventor of a cure for cancer, President of the United States, or inventor of a cheap, renewable fuel, yet due to their upbringing, ended up as janitors, gardeners, junkies, or dead?Hyperbole? Maybe a bit of a misstatement: he is certainly not acting alone in trying to create a change in this situation, as I described above with his efforts in establishing his foundation and working with LEAD-K. But he is certainly likely to be the first culturally Deaf person to gain some notoriety at a national (if not international) level who is ALSO bringing attention to these issues by speaking out on them. We have had many Deaf (and some Hearing) people, with Ph.D.s and without, who have spoken on these issues as well. But again, they’re often ignored and/or unknown by the masses, and therefore have no real influence on the public opinion. Whereas, Nyle has taken advantage of his moment (and I hope it is a LONG moment) in the spotlight to take that spotlight and shine a light on these important issues, and hopefully as a result, created a paradigm shift in the minds of people who, without him would think otherwise, that Deaf people can and should be able to do ANYTHING! After 130+ years, we Deaf (and FYI: we are NOT “hearing impaired”) welcome anybody who has the opportunity (and is readily willing to do so) to represent us and our viewpoint on these issues at a national level and gain the attention of people who may actually have the power to make real changes in this area.

This question is rather odd to me, as I don’t know much about my precocity. My earliest memory is of my father pushing me in a stroller at the Maryland zoo in Baltimore. I can remember the stroller was dark blue, and the cobblestone beneath the wheels was off colored brown.Since my parents broke up around the time I was one, I can estimate that the memory took place around that time. I can remember my bottle being a light colored blue, with a yellowish top. Memories around that time are fuzzy—some of them good, some bad.My memories are very somatic (sensory based) so, I can remember how the hippo enclosure( now defunct) smelled hahaha…. I can also remember being able to read before kindergarten. My mother told me it was around the age of 4 when I started. Yet, some of my earliest memories are of reading.I was a colicky baby, my father had to repeatedly drive me around to get me to sleep. I was also very aware of my surroundings. While at restaurants, I would constantly play with things on the table to see ‘how they worked’. I was like any other child, yet I felt very different in comparison to my age peers. My mother was a biology teacher, and I was exposed to plays, literature, movies, religion, and lastly music & art.I was classically trained as a violinist by the age of five, and could play through relative pitch. My mother (although divorced and ill) instilled in me the importance of education. Reading has been my refuge as long as I can remember. Sure, I read curious George, Babar, and Clifford the big red dog earlier on— by age 8 I was reading Oliver Twist, a compendium of Greek mythology, the King James Bible, and many scientific books (for fun in second grade I would memorize the periodic table, and was well acquainted with state facts).In second grade (maybe third) I was more advanced than my class mates in reading, science, and arithmetic. So much so that I was invited to the chalkboard by my teacher to help explain multiplication and division facts. This did not sit well with my mother. “I send you to school to learn, not to teach!!” This would usually be followed by admonishment.I was a hellion in school! And I got into plenty of fights with older kids, to the point I had to arrange protection. In fifth grade it was said that I could read at a twelfth grade level (probably university level in some aspects). When I moved into my fathers house (after a messy and physical custody battle) I entered sixth grade and nearly flunked out of middle school. This was when the words “sensitive” and “too much” began to be applied to me.High school was a joke (no homework and no library, just a shelf). I spent most of my free time engaging in my ‘eccentric’ hobbies (old school rap, comic books, twilight zone etc.). Intellectually speaking— school was a colossal waste of my time. I often slept through classes, and was seen as a waste of smarts (although to some I was mentally challenged). I was accused of plagiarizing a paper on the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, and was utterly disgusted by how limiting my school was.I was truthfully ready for college by tenth grade, but by twelfth I was craving it. I studied Native American anthropology in my spare time (a deep interest) and was gifted a compendium of extant Native American tribes in the United States (which was collected by Oxford university). Philosophical musings began to come to fruition, and one of my teachers suggested I take philosophy in college.By this time I could probably read at a university-grad level. I completed the autobiography of Malcolm x by Alex Haley my junior year, read Roots also by Haley in my senior, and fell in love with prose and poetry as well.My intelligence was noticeable to a few, but not always nurtured. If it had been, I would’ve had my PhD by now. Instead I worked as a dog bather for twelve years while delving into my interest (which now included linguistics, philosophy, and psychology). Within two years (2017–2019) I accumulated so much knowledge that some believe I have gone to college. I don’t think of myself as being suis-generis— but, I was assessed by more than five PG individuals as being PG myself.Whether you consider me PG, or consider my development precocious, that’s up to you. I just know I struggle with cognitive dissonance (Jim Springer and Thomas West can attest to this) and imposter syndrome. I’ve been called an ‘omnibus’ and a ‘search engine’ due to my ability to consume knowledge.However, I feel as if I’m just me. Alienation and all hahaha…..-BlessingsSide note: for trolls and other denizens of the web. My personal musings are not for you to scrutinize. I’m well aware that adult test go up to 160. I’m also aware that the individuals who have assessed me as being profoundly gifted (SD 5–6) are all clinically assessed themselves. And furthermore, my intelligence is not a parlor trick!! I don’t need to ( or any PG for that matter) solve Navier Stokes or have been a prodigy like Magnus Carlsen to be PG. My genetics already decided that was what I was going to be born as.