Matt Halpern brings nearly two decades of experience in K–2 education to the table. A few years ago, he began presenting and consulting during his summer breaks. Amid the challenges of the pandemic, he left his classroom in coastal Maine to consult full time on behalf of his private business Matt Halpern Education. Today, Halpern works with school districts across the country and industry leaders like Scholastic. His first book, A Teacher's Guide to Interactive Writing, is forthcoming from Heinemann. I was particularly eager to speak with Halpern because much of my background is in the intermediate and middle grades. He helped me envision what many of our small teaching principles look like for younger students.

• How do you post a daily agenda for students who haven't yet learned to read?

  For kindergarten and first grade, a schedule or an agenda for our day has pictures. It will have writing as well, but it's definitely going to have a picture. Usually what I would do is use an original photograph. If it says “read aloud,” there's going to be a picture of me doing a read aloud. If it says “phonics,” there's going to be a picture of an activity that kids would associate with phonics. When it's time for us to do math, it's going to be a picture of a math activity. I provide something kids can recognize without necessarily being able to read. We also read through our schedule together each day. Ultimately, they learn to read what it says. But, that takes time. Right? Instead of me just posting an agenda, I prefer to write it as I'm saying it. It helps kids make meaning. And I might even ask them what picture we could use for different activities. Like, “Independent reading. What would that look like?” I'm not an artist at all, but I can manage a quick drawing of one person with one book to show independent reading, and then I write it out as well.

• Is that also how you share your learning objectives?

  Yes. Consistency is the most important thing. I have used the Lucy Calkins and Teachers College Units of Study, which I know people have all kinds of thoughts about. I'm not here to say whether they're great or not. But, one of the things that they do well is to use routine language. You start every lesson by saying, “Today, I want to teach you …” We would use the same language every day.

• What does project‐based learning look like for little kids?

  I worked at a project‐based learning school early in my career. And when I started at the school, I knew nothing about project‐based learning. They sent us to project‐based learning training from Buck Institute. The whole time I was kind of asking the same question as you, “How the heck are my kindergarteners going to do this?” At the beginning of the year, I found it was a lot more teacher directed. We didn't know each other yet, but I was still trying to give them voice and choice in the process. At the beginning of the year, I would ask something like, “Do you think we could learn about the life cycle of a butterfly so much that we could teach it to our families?” By the middle of the year to the end of the year, I would have the kids picking projects of their own. For example, our school was in the middle of a neighborhood. A lot of people from the community used the playground even if they didn't go to the school. The kids started finding dog poop on the playground and that was the problem they felt passionately about. We ended up structuring our whole project around the importance of taking care of your pets and stray animals. We raised money for the local animal shelter and the big culminating project was creating a brochure for kids on how to take care of your pets, which we brought to the local animal shelter. It was this beautiful scene and it came organically from the kids.

• What are some of the other projects your students dreamed up?

  Another year, when I was teaching first grade, I had some students who were really upset because kids on the playground kept killing spiders. They were devastated. They were so upset. They thought it was horrible. Some of that came from me because whenever we would find any bugs or spiders in the classroom, we never killed them. We would just capture them and bring them outside. When they told me, I was like, “Ooh, it sounds like we have a problem, kids.” We ended up creating posters with information about how beneficial spiders are and how they don't really hurt people. We had a guest speaker who came in with a tarantula and all these crazy spiders and it was the coolest thing for first graders to see. I always feel like the difference with little kids is you have to be more teacher directed at first so they can understand the process. And then once they do, you kind of have to allow yourself to sit back and see what happens.

• How do you use storytelling to help students learn?

  At the beginning of kindergarten, a lot of what we do is called emergent storytelling. When they come in, most kids cannot read conventionally. Like, they can't actually decode and read the words, but they can tell stories. And so there are certain books that are considered emergent stories. For example, “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” is an emergent story. Once you read it to them and they hear it two or three times, then they can start telling it themselves in different ways. Sometimes we would make puppets and retell the story using their puppets. Sometimes I would have them make a storyboard where they would paint the background. Then, they're really talking about setting and looking at the details so they can tell the story in front of the storyboard themselves. I've even said, “Let's make a movie!” There are tons of different ways that you can do it. Meanwhile, we are doing alphabet work and sound work. So, you can ask things like, “Oh, my gosh, do you see a word on that page?” And they say, “I think that might be caterpillar.” That's when they start connecting the words on the page to telling the story.

• What about play? Can play be useful in achieving learning outcomes?

  Let's be honest, play is the work of kids. It's a struggle because depending on where you work and how the district or the administration views play, you might have to almost hide it in your curriculum. “Oh, so you're saying I can only have the kids play for 30 minutes a day? Well, let's do a meaningful project that's playful and engaging.” That's one of the things I love about project‐based learning; it's playful. It's almost a workaround, right? The sky's the limit.

• How do you encourage meaningful play and what does it look like?

  In my kindergarten classroom, I typically had certain types of activities that were available for what we called “choice time.” The whole idea was that you got to make a choice of what you wanted to do. I would try to have different kinds of play activities available. There were always some building activities, like blocks and legos. But then, there was also a dramatic play station. Every four to six weeks, the dramatic play station would change.

• Can you give me some examples?

  At the beginning of the year, it was directed by me because they didn't even know what it was or how to do it. I would usually start the year with a daycare, which basically meant it was dolls like babies with diapers and clothes and bottles. We'd be talking about empathy and what that means. The kids would be teaching each other how to change a diaper and how to burp a baby. They'd say, “I have a baby brother, so I know. Let me show you.” It's precious. Usually in January, we'd come to the big turning point. That's when I'd say to the kids, “What do you want the station to be?” Sometimes it would become a veterinary office where we were looking at animals and taking care of animals. Almost every year it was something different. The last year that I was able to do it before COVID, the kids decided that they wanted it to be a Starbucks.

• That's adorable. Was it successful?

  Yes. It was really cute. We took a field trip to Starbucks and the kids brought little clipboards and they took notes and they took pictures and then we came back and I said, “Okay, well what are all the things that we need to make this into a Starbucks?” They decided we needed a cash register and I said, “Okay. Well then, we have to make one and we better study money… .” So then, we're looking at numbers and counting skills during play. They noticed that thing in the back with all the words on it. I told them, “That's the menu, so people know what to order. We better have a menu!” Then, we're writing and we're reading and we're sounding out words on the menu. So they ended up making a little Starbucks and they created almost everything themselves. Of course, the Starbucks ladies were so sweet and they gave us cups and some coffee beans so we could have a “real” coffee shop. We had the little aprons that the kids made.

• Do you have any advice for K–2 teachers who want to implement play and project‐based learning in their classrooms?

  To be honest, not all teachers like the things that I'm describing to you. Play can be a little chaotic, right? Some people want quiet and they want everyone sitting in their seats. One of the things that I try to do when I present and when I coach people is show them all this cool stuff that I'm telling you about. But, when I show them pictures and videos, I also say, “Okay, this is amazing. Right? And you want to do this, right?” If the answer is yes, I tell them the truth: “Well, it's gonna be loud. It's gonna be messy. It's gonna take time. This isn't gonna happen in a day, and in the end, it will be worth it.”