Making Pre-K Count & High 5s
Program overview
Enhanced early childhood math instruction: Making Pre-K Count and High 5s are mathematics interventions targeted toward students in Pre-K and kindergarten, respectively. Both provide high-quality math curricula, staff training materials, and supplemental math instruction materials. The programs aim to help children develop math competencies early in their educational journey to contribute to success later in elementary school. Each program can be used independently, but they produce larger impacts when used in conjunction.
Providing Pre-K teachers with robust professional development: The Making Pre-K Count intervention focuses on Pre-K teachers. It provides them with an evidence-based math curriculum - Building Blocks - and two years of ongoing training and in-classroom coaching from a local college of education. The coaching is focused on how children grow and learn - called learning trajectories - across a range of math domains (e.g., counting, operations, measurement, geometry).
Utilizing a high-quality Pre-K math curriculum: Building Blocks, the curriculum included in the Making Pre-K Count intervention, is a preschool math curriculum for general math instruction. It uses both digital and hands-on tools to facilitate math learning, including a unique software for students, physical math manipulatives, print materials, and small group instructional formats. These components offer a diverse range of engaging math learning activities and differentiate instruction to children.
Offering supplemental math enrichment to kindergarten students: High 5s is a supplemental intervention targeting kindergarten students. Facilitators, who can be teachers, paraeducators, or volunteer tutors, work with small groups of children (3-4 students) for three 30-minute sessions per week outside of regular classroom time.
Teaching through a small-group, game-based approach: The small-group High 5s sessions and the small group Building Blocks activities are designed to keep students engaged through games, songs, and other activities. These activities help students build skills in fundamental math areas such as geometry and pattern recognition.
One study with a rigorous design provides some evidence for Making Pre-K Count and High 5s as a strategy for increasing math achievement, particularly among students who enter school with the most room for improvement.
- A 2021 randomized controlled trial found that participation in both Making Pre-K Count and High 5s improved children’s third-grade math scores by 0.10 standardized units. There is also promising evidence that participation in these programs improves children’s literacy test scores and reduces chronic absenteeism.
Train teachers to implement the interventions with fidelity: Making Pre-K Count and High 5s work when they were implemented in the form and pacing intended by the original curriculum creators. School leaders and instructional coaches should conduct regular classroom observations to support teachers and High 5s facilitators in delivering lessons as they are designed. For example, educators should be balancing small versus large group instruction in Making Pre-K Count classrooms and should be ensuring adequate time for High 5s pull-out sessions.
Target interventions toward most high-need students: Results from evaluations of Making Pre-K Count and High 5s show that they are most effective for students with the lowest math scores and lowest English language proficiency upon entering Pre-K. Consequently, school district and building leaders should consider the characteristics of their student population, giving greater consideration to these programs where a significant proportion of students are entering Pre-K with high needs.
Engage with families: To encourage children to continue learning outside of the classroom, educators should maintain regular communication with parents and families to keep them updated on what students are working on in class. For example, the Building Blocks Teacher’s Resource Guide includes weekly Family Letters that can be sent home to communicate to parents what children are working on in school and suggest activities and conversation starters for them to demonstrate their knowledge and practice their skills at home. For High 5, which uses an out-of-class time model, maintaining relationships with families is especially important, as doing so supports students’ small group attendance.
Differentiate instruction for individual student’s needs: Teachers should adapt lesson plans and instructional methods based on individual student’s needs. In the High 5s program, this may include assigning groups so that students are working with peers at a similar skill level or with similar learning styles to themselves. In the Making Pre-K Count program, teachers can utilize small group assessment forms to note what concepts or skills children understand or are struggling with, and differentiate lessons in a given topic for that child’s current level of knowledge. For example, they can use specific “if… then” prompts provided in lesson plans to customize instructions (e.g., “if children need help during Find the Number, then reduce the number of hidden pizzas”).