Our Focused Areas & Growth Spurts
Grow & Give Learning is proud to offer a wide assortment of professional learning opportunities for educators engaging with students from pre-K to Kindergarten. Our programs and resources range from in-person exploration to digital resources online and training's for teachers along with other professionals.
Reading
Early childhood educators are well versed in the importance of building relationships with children of diverse backgrounds. Often times its ignored but this is not the best approach. Children see race and we should as well. Researchers and practitioners are still figuring out how best to address race so young children can develop their own positive racial identity, build relationships across races, and recognize and stand up to race-related injustices. This is an important message here at Grow & Give Learning. We wanted to make sure that we include representation in the books that are included in our lessons. It was also critical to have children’s books that address common issues in our communities and give a underlying message that can be learned.
Writing
Early writing is one of the best predictors of children's later reading success (National Early Literacy Panel [NELP], 2008). Specifically, early writing is part of a set of important foundational literacy skills that serve as necessary precursors to conventional reading (Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998). This includes developing the understanding of both print (i.e., print concept and alphabet knowledge) and sound (i.e., phonological awareness).Knowledge about sound, or phonological awareness, includes the ability to attend to and manipulate sound structure of language, progressing from awareness of larger chunks (e.g., sentences, rhyme, beginning sounds) to blending and segmenting individual units of sound (i.e., phonemic awareness). These early skills work together to lay a foundation for later reading success (NELP, 2008).
As children integrate their knowledge of print and sound, they begin to grasp the alphabetic principle, a critical achievement in early literacy. At Grow & Give Learning it was essential that we include a writing component. This gives our “seeds” an opportunity to develop not only oral but written language as well. As early seed learners, the exposure to both reading and writing component is required as they progress through and become our very own “blossom” learner.
Social-Emotional & Applied Behavior Analysis
Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) is the practice of applying the psychological principles of learning theory in a systematic way to modify behavior. The practice is used most extensively in special education and the treatment of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but also in healthcare, animal training, and even business. SEL is the process through which all individuals acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities. It also provides developmental skill sets in managing emotions to achieve personal and collective goals, show feelings or emotions, establish, and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and decisions in their community. Using both disciplines interchangeably, it establishes a foundation of life learning needed for our seed learner’s success academically and socially.
Math
As we develop our lessons, our goal is assisting our early seed learners to acquire math skills using real-world situations. This is a great way to help your seed learner connect to diverse cultural experiences and become excited about math as we do. We begin by designing standard- based math lessons that connects learners’ language and cultural aspects of students’ background. By doing so, it can foster mathematical identity development. Our vision at Grow & Give Learning, is to always incorporate real-world connections into math practices in a culturally responsive manner that can elect responses from our early learners and soon to be “blossom” learners in ways that build diverse ways of thinking, learning, and communicating.
When planning for math lessons, our curriculum developers can increase its culturally responsiveness in ways that can connect learners to their lives and experiences inside and outside the classroom as well.
