The Early Childhood Pyramid Model
Transforming early childhood development with evidence-based methods.
What is the Pyramid Model?
The Pyramid Model is a conceptual framework of evidence-based practices for promoting young children’s healthy social and emotional development.
The Pyramid Model provides guidance for:
- Early childhood special education personnel
- Early intervention personnel
- Early educators
- Families
- Other professionals
Based on over a decade of evaluation data, the Pyramid Model has been shown to be a sound framework for early care and education systems. The Pyramid Model builds upon a tiered public health approach to providing universal support to all children to promote wellness, targeted services to those who need more support, and intensive services to those who need them.
Understanding the Tiers
Intervention within the Pyramid Model involves personalized and intensive approaches. This tertiary level addresses the necessity of offering individualized and intensive interventions to select a few children facing persistent challenges.
Prevention strategies in the Pyramid Model are focused on targeted social-emotional interventions aimed at averting issues. This level offers specific support to children identified as at-risk for challenging behavior.
At the universal level, the Pyramid Model emphasizes providing support for all children through nurturing relationships and high-quality environments. This includes implementing practices essential for fostering the social development of every child.
At the core of the Pyramid Model lies a strong foundation: an effective workforce. This foundation encompasses the systems and policies required to equip a workforce capable of embracing and maintaining these evidence-based practices.
Benefits of the Model
Team Leadership
A representative leadership team works to ensure the program has a team to provide individualized behavior support to children, professional development and support to teachers, and a plan for family engagement. This team uses data to make decisions as they guide implementation.
Family Engagement
Our Early Childhood Pyramid Model training program partners with families by establishing collaborative partnerships, providing families with information and support in guiding children’s development of social and emotional skills, and collaboratively teaming to support individual children.
Program-Wide Expectations
Adoption of program-wide expectations provides a shared focus and shared language for describing behavior expectations to children, staff, and families. Expectations are posted in all areas of the program and shared with families. Children receive frequent developmentally appropriate feedback and guidance as they are taught to meet program expectations.
Staff Professional Development and Support
Training and coaching/support are necessary to effectively implement the Pyramid practices. The leadership team and the program coach develop strategies to provide ongoing support to staff.
Classroom Implementation
Coaches use observational tools (above) to provide teachers with feedback and guidance. Through practice-based coaching, teachers are supported to use practices to ensure children succeed.
Backed by Research
Children have better social skills and less problem behavior in Pyramid Model classrooms.
Teachers are able to implement Pyramid Model practices better if they receive training and practice-based coaching.
Behavior Support
Policies and procedures are developed for providing support to staff to address challenging behavior. Examples: support in crisis situations, use of problem-solving processes for children, a consistent system for identifying children who need a behavior support plan, etc.
There is clear evidence that training alone doesn’t change teacher practices to the level needed to ensure success for all children. The Pyramid Model provides a consistent framework used in early childhood environments to support teachers, so they feel competent and confident while using best practices in their classrooms.
Bringing the Pyramid to Your Program
Program-wide implementation of the Pyramid Model refers to a systematic effort within a program for implementation fidelity. In a program-wide implementation, a leadership team guides the process and develops the support and infrastructure needed to ensure that evidence-based practices promoted by the Pyramid Model are implemented to the degree necessary to ensure the best outcomes for children and families. Implementation to fidelity is at least a three-to five-year project with support offered through New York State for training and leadership coaching.
Evidence-based practices are effective only when implemented with fidelity. Program-wide implementation sites are first assessed as a whole using the Benchmarks of Quality that guide the leadership team with action steps to full implementation. Then, specific classroom observation tools are used such as the Teaching Pyramid Observation Tool (TPOT) and Teaching Pyramid for Infants/Toddlers Observation Scale (TPITOS). The results from these observation tools guide practice-based coaching that supports classroom teachers and programs to integrate the use of evidence-based practices into teaching and caregiving.
Getting Started
The Pyramid Model is designed to provide strategies for encouraging healthy social-emotional development and a strong foundation for all children, with increasing levels of support for children who need additional interventions. By signing on to implement Pyramid Model training, you become a part of this foundation!
With the support of a team of knowledgeable professionals, you will:
- Participate in staff Pyramid Model training on the tiers, specific to that age group
- Learn and implement strategies to address and support children with challenging behaviors
- Gain access to classroom supports, materials and resources to use in your program/classroom
- Receive coaching and guidance from specialists as you institute system changes to support children and classrooms
- Assess classrooms/programs using screening and evaluation tools to identify areas of strength and areas for growth.
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