NAME:
Carol Carroll and Jane Rogers
SCHOOL:
Quogue Elementary School
CLASS:
Pre-Kindergarten
SCHOOL PHONE:
631-653-4285
Mrs.Carroll has a B.A.in Physical Education and Health and a Masters+60 in
Early Childhood Education. She is permanently certified in all three areas in
the state of New York.
We are currently in our second year of training and implementation of the
program "Tools of the Mind". The concept of "Tools of the Mind" comes from the
work of Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, He believed that just as physical
tools extend our physical abilities, mental tools extend our mental abilities
to enable us to solve problems and create solutions in the modern world.“To
successfully function in school and beyond, children need to learn more than a
set of facts and skills. They need to master a set of mental
tools—tools of the mind.”
Tools of the Mind is a researched based program that builds a strong
foundation for school success by promoting intentional and self-regulating
learning through classroom activities. Children work in whole group, small
groups and with partners. Learning activities are scaffolded to meet the needs
of each child, while challenging and supporting them at their own personal
level of development.
The following apply to all areas of the Tools curriculum-
* Teachers systematically scaffold children's moving along the continuum of
self-regulation from being regulated by others to engaging in "shared"
regulation to eventually becoming "masters of their own behavior."
* Children gain control of their social, emotional, and cognitive
behaviors by learning how to use a variety of "mental tools."
* Teaching of early literacy and mathematics emphasizes building
underlying cognitive competencies such as reflective thinking and metacognition.
* Children practice self-regulated learning throughout the day by engaging
in a variety of specifically designed developmentally appropriate
self-regulation activities.
* Children learn to regulate their own behaviors as well as the behaviors
of their friends as they enact increasingly more complex scenarios in their
imaginary play.
Gaining mastery of mental tools will enable children to be in charge of
their own learning by attending and remembering in an intentional way.