What Should My Child Be Learning at School? Part 2: Beyond Letters and Numbers

In Part 1 of our exploration of this topic, we revealed why unconstrained skills (complex ways of thinking that are difficult to teach and assess) are essential for lifelong learning. These skills do not come with a checklist or a finish line, yet they shape how children learn, solve problems, and make sense of the world across a lifetime.

Many parents may be wondering what this means for their own child and classroom experiences. Let’s dive into what it looks like in practice and how you can help support the process.

Unconstrained Skills in Early Education

For more than 25 years, the preschool fade effect has been documented (Cooper et al., 2010; Durkin et al., 2022; Gilliam & Zigler, 2000). The positive effects of early learning in preschool typically fade out by the end of third grade. But if early childhood education focuses on unconstrained skills, the positive impact of early learning in preschool can last (Durkin et al., 2022). Rather than emphasizing themes of apples and dinosaurs, memorizing 26 letter names, and counting forward and backward to 10, our young children should be learning overarching concepts like classification, big ideas like number relationships, and complex skills like listening comprehension (Pianta et al., 2012). When unconstrained skills are the center of early childhood education, the learning will last, and children will be ready for kindergarten and beyond.

What About Constrained Skills?

Does my child need to learn to write their name, count to 10, and identify letter sounds? The simple answer is yes. Constrained skills are still part of teaching and learning in early childhood. Constrained skills should be learned through unconstrained skills. For example, when learning letter names, children should be encouraged to use metacognition to notice which letters look similar and different, and which letters are familiar and unfamiliar. When learning to count forward and backward, children should use story composition and growing patterns to tell counting stories. And, when adults identify a theme or unifying topic for exploration, they should lean into cross-curricular big ideas, like systems, energy, patterns, and change, so unconstrained skills can take center stage in teaching, learning, and thinking.

Encourage Unconstrained Skill Development

Thinking back to my 4-year-old’s list of learning, the details are constrained skills. So, I ask questions that dig into what the focus of learning should be—unconstrained skills:

• “What do you do if the zipper gets stuck?” (problem-solving)
• “What other letters look like U?” (classification)
• “Why do you think autumn is also called fall?” (vocabulary)
• “Let’s change words to start with the sound ‘m,” I like to eat mapples and mananas. What do you like to eat?” (patterns)
• “Let’s find all the different shapes we can make with two triangles.” (working memory)
• “How could we write the recipe to mix colors that make purple?” (representation)
• “It’s nice that friends can like different things. I wonder what other things you like that your friend doesn’t like.” (perspective)

And just like that, we are learning unconstrained skills together.

References

Cooper, H., Allen, A. B., Patall, E. A., & Dent, A. L. (2010). Effects of Full-Day Kindergarten on Academic Achievement and Social Development. Review of Educational Research, 80(1), 34-70. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654309359185. 

Durkin, K., Lipsey, M. W., Farran, D. C., & Wiesen, S. E. (2022, January 10). Effects of a Statewide Pre-Kindergarten Program on Children’s Achievement and Behavior Through Sixth Grade. Developmental Psychology. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/dev0001301.

Pianta, R. C., Hamre, B. K., & Allen, J. P. (2012). Teacher-student relationships and engagement: Conceptualizing, measuring, and improving the capacity of classroom interactions. In S. L. Christenson, A. L. Reschly, & C. Wylie (Eds.), Handbook of research on student engagement (pp. 365–386). Springer Science + Business Media. 

Gilliam, W.A. & Zigler, E.F. (2000). A critical meta-analysis of all evaluations of state-funded preschool from 1977 to 1998: Implications for policy, service delivery, and program evaluation. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 15(4), 441-473. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0885-2006(01)00073-4.