Empowering Preschoolers through Reading "The Little Engine That Could"

You have planned activities related to weekly lesson plan theme for the students to engage in as they go to different learning stations in the classroom.  During circle time, you have shown specific related activities and how to demonstrate/manipulate the materials.  However, when you are walking around to different learning stations and engaging the children in conversation of what they are doing then finding creative ways to interweave circle time content in along with weekly lesson plan theme you hear a student saying, “It’s too hard, can’t do it!”  What’s the initial response of the teacher?  Yes, walk over to the child, bend down, make eye contact and state, “Johnny, you can do it.  I will help you if you want me too”.  Then what happens next, yes, the teacher basically will do the manipulation of materials then proceed to give verbal or non-verbal reward to him/her for accomplishing the task.

The teacher will hear this statement quite often throughout the school year when new challenges are presented to students moving toward expanding their unknown knowledge.  Now is the time to read and engage students in the story “The Little Engine That Could” reinforcing the moral of the story value of optimism, hard work and perseverance to achieve the goal.  For the chugging repetitious reframe have the students repeat “I think I can.  I think I can. I think I can”.  While reading the story posing a range of statements/questions (e.g., open-ended, who, what, where, when, distancing) engaging students to better insight that reaching a goal may not be easy in the beginning but once they have broken it down into smaller steps and not given up at the first attempt but to persevere toward accomplishment.  Yes, they must keep trying and will succeed.  Also, write the words optimism, hard work and perseverance on sentence strip to discuss then place on word wall.  As you end, the story let the students repeat, “I knew I could. I knew I could.  I knew I could”.  In addition, place throughout the learning environment pictures of the little train with the captions “I think I can” and “I knew I could” to remind students they have the knowledge to complete the activity.  So, when teachers hear the statement, “I can’t do it.  It’s too hard” walk the student to the picture of the little train and discuss the storyline reinforcing key terms hard work and perseverance to complete the job.

Another key aspect of the story to reinforce with students is prosocial skills that when students need help, work with them so they will not give up in mastering the skill.  For, prosocial skills are intended to help others, being concerned of feelings, empathy and behaving in ways to help others through sharing and cooperating.  Teachers it’s your role to assist students to see themselves as “The Little Engine That Could” to achieve set goals and exceed expectations as well.  Therefore, I hope you will dusk off or add to the reading list “The Little Engine That Could” all reinforce the morals of the story for the classroom of community learners.  We must instill in the students they can and will achieve set goals. 

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