Here are some basic programme components to look for when you visit a school or day care centre:

• Teachers are questioning individual children, encouraging them to expand their thinking and problem-solving skills

• Children are intellectually engaged, eager, and happy; children are not bored, tense, or unhappy. Look at their faces

• Children are working on individual or collaborative projects; children are not all doing the same project in the same way

• Children have physical space to experiment and play, and time to be alone; they are not crowded into a confined or restrictive area for long periods of time

• Children are creating their own writing or dictating their own stories to the teacher; children are not copying or completing a worksheet out of a book