The Castle Project | Brand Video

Are you ready to learn?

Yeah!

Scarlett is getting ready to lead us in our phonics this morning. Let me hear the A sound. Ah, ah, ah, ah! Let me hear the B sound. Ba, ba, ba, ba! Let me hear the C sound. Ca, ca, ca, ca! Let me hear the D sound. Da, da, da, da!

I heard about CASEL a couple of years ago when a community colleague came to me and said, I'm watching these children learn to read by age 4 or 5 in a daycare.

Usually when you're coming and looking at a daycare, you're expecting to see basically a babysitting program.

The most commonly used curriculum in the state of North Carolina in over 90% of centers is a play-based curriculum.

Here in North Carolina, we have less than 40% of of children who are reading on grade level by 3rd grade.

And I thought that if I could teach children to read prior to entering the school system, that they would fan out better once they got into the school system and as they moved along.

We arrived and it's this small little 3-bedroom ranch-style house.

Immediately you begin to notice that these students have a knowledge base that far exceeds what you, you think Kids for their age should be.

What she's created here doesn't fit into the usual paradigm. Children are actually learning to read at a much earlier age than what we normally would expect to see.

I saw kids singing, dancing, stomping, clapping, chanting, and reading their way to literacy.

Yellow, blue, yellow, blue. Good job! Way to go, Indigo! Way to go! Woo-hoo! Emma, B-L-A-C-K.

So the way Miss Cynthia organizes her literacy instruction across the morning is first the children start in a whole group session.

The younger students are seated up front and the older students to the rear, and they essentially go through literacy exercises.

All right, boys, let me hear you sing that vowel song. I, E, I, E, O, U.

And what happens is the younger children, they're learning from those older children. And we, in the research literature, we call that scaffolding.

When the children are together, they learn from each other. One child pulls the weaknesses of another child. So it really makes the process a lot shorter and quicker of them grasping different things on a daily basis. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

Then the students are split up into groups.

We start with our 2s in our 2-year-old room, which is usually a 2-3, and in that room they're learning their beginnings. Find the number 8. Where's 8? Find the number 9. Find 9. Find the number 9. Good job. And find the number 10. Number 10. Way to go, Tayden. Way to go. Woo-hoo! We go over the basics, like we go over their phonics, letter recognition. We do shapes. We do colors.

And the youngest children do a lot of manipulation with letters. She'll make certain games with these children.

Today we're going to count blocks. So they're actually learning, recognizing their numbers, and also learning how to count. 5, 6, 7. Way to go!

The 3- and 4-year-olds will be beginning to do much more advanced literacy-related skills.

How about everyone give me a compound word?

Eerie, eerie.

Eerie.

Necklace, necklace.

Necklace.

Puffer fish, puffer fish. Puffer fish.

I found this age group to observe the most fascinating of all because to me, it was almost like I was watching children learn to read as they were learning to read.

Bed. Well, do you hear bed? They start reading and writing their own stories. We kind of hone in their, um, Motor skills as well and make it fun as well as challenging. So it goes from the games in Miss Lanisha's room to kind of getting them ready for some more hands-on learning. We do language arts so they understand nouns, verbs, adjectives. They even understand pronouns, onomatopoeias. We use all of that in our story writing. I'm the bell honey, watch me try. H-O-N-E-Y. Once they get that behind them, they'll move on into what we call an accelerated learning classroom. We'll take the children that are grasping material really fast and move them forward. We want— we don't want to detain their learning. Brother was playing checkers when his mommy came in. My specific goal is to— for children to learn how to read. The way that my children learn is through Repetition. I connect one thing with another, then I backtrack, I reteach, I reteach, and then I reteach. Can you help us say push? Here we go! Not yet, Ho Ho. Winchel and Toley have to build the car first. By the time they get to the accelerated learning classroom, They're pretty much on at least a 1st, 2nd grade level, and I've even had them to test as high as a 3rd grade level.

The more words they learn, the more books they can read. The more they practice with the reading, the better readers they become. And by the end of the time that they're at CASELS, they are reading fluently.

Doorbell. Grandma. Ding dong. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. 5, keep going. 6, good job. Way to go, James. Way to do space. Okay, all right, here we go. Are you ready to learn?

Yeah!

Girls, it sounds like you're ready to learn, so let me hear the A sound.

This program really highlights early literacy.

After seeing When I visited Castle's Daycare for the first time, I knew right away that we needed to study this.

We were looking at the Topel Early Literacy Index. So for the pretest, we had a very wide range of scores where, you know, you had some of the 2-3-year-olds, you know, scoring obviously very low and some of the 4- or 5-year-olds were scoring, you know, very high.

But by the end of the study, all children were average to above average.

So I was tasked with looking at some of the historical data. If we look at end-of-course exams and when we focus in on the English English 2 end-of-course exam. 12 years after leaving, the students that went to school here had proficiency rates of 80% across 4 years. To put that into context, the entire district had proficiency rates of 72% during that exact same time, and their demographically similar peers had proficiency rates of 60% at that time. We also looked at some of the behavioral and attendance patterns. In terms of Suspensions in a given school year, it ranged from 0 and 1 students that were alumni from Castles were suspended. To put that in a little bit of context, Black students averaged 32.1 suspensions per 100 students. Similar for attendance. Last year there were 13.4% of CMS district-wide students that were chronically absent. There were no Castles alumni students that were chronically absent across any years. What they're acquiring here at Castle's Preschool Academy goes beyond just literacy skills.

What she's done is create an unconventional childcare program that frankly is producing unconventional results, which is exactly what we need.

Hey Phoenix, where did you blast off to? To my garage! To my garage! Hey Caitlin, where did you blast off to?

In the state of North Carolina, we have a pretty good quality rating system. The criteria really focus on the educational background of the staff, compliance with basic health and safety rules, things like play and interactivity between the staff and the children, the environment of the childcare center. You know, for most childcare centers, that's not a challenge, but at a place like Castles, where they're actually trying to infuse learning and particularly literacy into the program, That extra effort doesn't necessarily get recognized or rewarded.

Andy wanted to make music, so he went to his room and found his red horn. Can you spell red?

R-E-D, red!

That's what he found. Look, there it is. Andy found his red horn. What my dream is for, for Castles Daycare Academy is that we can We can expand these castle walls, we can expand the castle courtyard, that we can expand the castle garden, that other programs would want to be designed and developed based off of what we're doing here at this small castle.

Miss Cynthia is an extraordinary leader of early childhood in our community, but not enough people know that. She can only fit about 30 kids in that small space. There are a whole lot more children in our community that could be served by this instructional model and served really well.

She wants to give more students opportunity to lead fulfilling and successful lives.

If it's possible here in Castles, it's possible in other childcare centers across our community, and it's possible across the entire state of North Carolina and frankly across the United States of America.