The Last Word

The Last Word By Anna Shiroma, Early Childhood Curricular & Instructional Specialist

When I came to Langley in August, I knew I was joining a special community. And as I’ve become a part of the Langley family over the past seven months, this joyful community’s commitment to learning and education has become abundantly clear. In my role as early childhood curricular and instructional specialist, I am in the unique position to support and engage with our Primary School students, teachers, and families. I observe classrooms daily, take part in frequent coaching meetings with teachers, and have amazing opportunities to interact with students, whether pretending to be a community worker with preschoolers, playing math games with junior kindergartners, or writing books with kindergartners. As we educate Langley’s youngest students, our Primary School teachers also recognize the key role they play in building a strong foundation for a child’s entire school experience. And as we build this early foundation, we place an emphasis on the importance of alignment – within grade levels, divisions, and the entire school (see our feature article about inquiry on page 2). When we align our strategies and language throughout the Primary School, the student experience is consistently joyful and rigorous, supporting academic and social benchmarks. Our foundation is stronger when all the pieces are connected.

I get to celebrate the great work happening in our classrooms, while also collaborating with the faculty to build a common language to capture the research-based strategies they use each day. When we talk about purposeful play or emergent literacy as a Primary School team, this common language ensures we are all supporting each child consistently in each part of their day. My unique perspective of each classroom and each student allows me to identify the different needs across classrooms and plan for and support our students throughout their Primary School years and as they transition to Lower School. During after-school bi-monthly professional development sessions for our Primary School faculty this year, I am helping facilitate discussions that allow us to dive into key areas, like purposeful play, and plan strategies to support student growth and learning. As we define what purposeful play means at Langley and share the strategies we use in the classroom, our faculty is building a common understanding about how to best support students during play. We discuss the research around developmentally appropriate materials, social-emotional learning, and ways to scaffold learning for students. We are teachers and learners, elevating, defining, and sharing effective practices occurring every day in our Primary School classrooms. To that end, the Primary School is using a set of aligned and standardized benchmarks this year from preschool to kindergarten to ensure each part of our program builds on itself. Our learning targets, the objective for each lesson, align to these grade-level benchmarks. In junior kindergarten, for example, teachers support the learning target for producing rhymes by playing a rhyming game during their literacy block. In kindergarten math, students are making different sets of objects to meet the learning targets of adding one more or one less. And when our preschoolers and junior kindergartners focus on aligned literacy and math skills, we know they are prepared and ready for kindergarten. Research shows that learning targets that are aligned to benchmarks lead to higher student growth. Langley’s Primary School is truly a wonderful place to be. Both students and teachers love learning and growing. They care deeply about each other, and the collaboration across classrooms is unlike any I have seen. Community at Langley isn’t just a word. It lives throughout the work of students and teachers every day. And it’s exciting for me to be a part of this vibrant learning community as we work together to make it even stronger. When we align our strategies and language throughout the Primary School, the student experience is consistently joyful and rigorous, supporting academic and social benchmarks.

Where vital academics meet a deep respect for childhood Preschool through grade 8 in Northern Virginia

1411 Balls Hill Road, McLean, Virginia 22101-3415 www.langleyschool.org (703) 356-1920 Nonprofit Org. U.S. Postage PAID McLean, VA 22101 Permit No. 48

Take a Deeper Dive Into Langley Through Our BLOGS & PODCASTS

LANGLEY’S PODCAST Check out Langley's brand new podcast, titled "Climbing the Arc," which provides a view into the magic that happens in Langley classrooms every day. We currently have two episodes: "Measuring Progress" and "Purposeful Play."

To find Langley’s podcast, search “Climbing the Arc” on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

LANGLEY’S BLOG Subscribe to Langley’s blog to read thoughtprovoking articles written by our faculty and staff on relevant education topics. Recent posts include:

• “What Does STEAM Really Mean?” • “The Intentional Planning That Goes Into Play at Langley” • “What It Means to ‘Really’ Answer a Math Problem” • “Reading: How It Shapes All of Us”