Kindergarten Roundup

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Kindergarten Roundup

• February 2008
• Presented by Dr. Shannon Varley
• Director of Curriculum and Instruction
• svarley_at_avonworth.k12.pa.us

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Purpose

• To provide parents with information about what
  they can expect of our kindergarten program
• To provide a timeline for enrollment and other
  important events, such as meeting your childrens
  teachers

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Welcome Class of 2021!

• We are preparing this class for
• A flat world immediate communication, access,
  and emergence of Asian countries as superpowers
• Careers that do not presently exist- cybrarians,
  web gardeners, robotic engineers, astrobiologists
• Competition for jobs with people who can work for
  less from their own country tutors,
  telemarketers, any customer service, medical
  diagnoticians
• Skills needed work together productively,
  understand divergent views, media literacy,
  create a case, create change

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The Learning Gap

• According to The Learning Gap Why Our Schools
  Are Failing and What We Can Learn from Japanese
  and Chinese Education
• Effort needs to be emphasized in education Asian
  countries focus on effort America focuses on
  ability (high vs. low, can vs. cant) We need
  to teach students how to maximize ability through
  hard work

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The Learning Gap

• Examined parents satisfaction and expectations
  with their childrens education
• To protect self-esteem, Americans tend to adjust
  standards downward to a level considered to be
  appropriate for the childs level of ability
• Conclusion American parents, by holding low
  expectations for what their children can
  accomplish, form evaluations of their childrens
  abilities and academic performance that are
  unrealistically high

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The Learning Gap

• Conclusions were echoed in How Well Are American
  Students Learning? (The Brookings Institute)
• American students were the most confident in
  their math and science classes. They were happy
  about their performance (happiness quotient in
  learning).
• They were also among the lowest achieving.

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The Learning Gap

• How does this apply to kindergarten?
• We need to begin teaching children how to
  maximize their abilities through hard work by
  providing them with challenging, but not
  frustrating, tasks
• We need to challenge our expectations of what
  kindergarten students are capable of and not
  limit them to an idea of what a five year old
  should be doing (old developmentally appropriate
  model)

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Best Practices in Kindergarten
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General Principles

• Assessment Drives Instruction
• Use assessment to determine where children are
  in their learning and decide next steps
• Curriculum is Concept Based, Not Activity Based
• Curriculum is based on big ideas in disciplines
  activities are not included as they must be based
  on assessment of what a particular group of
  students needs to grow
• High Expectations
• Teach Forward
• Teach every child at a higher level than what
  they are presently capable of

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General Principles

• Differentiate Instruction
• Students come to us with different interests,
  readiness levels, and learning styles. We need to
  adjust our instruction to accommodate these
  differences.
• Zone of Proximal Development
• Students are truly learning when presented with
  tasks that are challenging but not frustrating
• Gradual Release of Responsibility Model
• I do you watch we do together you do on
  your own

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Standards-Based

• Pennsylvania Department of Education has
  developed and approved standards for
  Pre-kindergarten and Kindergarten
• Avonworth meets yearly with representatives from
  local pre-schools to align our programs based on
  these standards
• Standards are available on PDE website and
  Avonworths website

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Standards-Based

• New Standards (National Center on Education and
  the Economy) has created models of writing for
  each grade level, k-5, in four genres narrative,
  informational, how-to, and response to literature
• National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
  Focal Points Identifies three big ideas and
  connections for each grade, PreK-8. Kindergarten
  should focus on numbers and operations, geometry,
  and measurement.

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Focus On Emergent and Early Literacy

• Why should students begin learning to read in
  kindergarten?
• According to Starting Out Right,
• Enriched preschool environments and excellent
  primary grade instruction can be a deciding
  factor between success or failure that will
  follow them all their lives . . . No time is as
  important, or as fleeting, as a childs early
  years of life and schooling.
• Research consistently shows that children who
  get off to a good start in reading rarely
  stumble. Those who fall behind tend to stay
  behind for the rest of their academic lives.

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Focus On Emergent and Early Literacy

• According to Starting Out Right,
• Research consistently demonstrates that children
  need to enter first grade with good attitudes and
  knowledge about literacy. Otherwise, they will
  probably find first grade instruction in
  accessible.

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Focus On Emergent and Early Literacy

• According to Starting Out Right,
• Conclusion Children who do well in reading from
  the beginning rarely stumble later on. Those who
  have difficulty in the primary grades tend to
  remain behind their classmates as the years go by
  even though they receive remediation. This
  fact, reconfirmed again and again, is a painful
  testimony to the importance of addressing reading
  difficulties as early as possible in a childs
  life. As important as it is to hold out hope for
  every struggling reader in our middle and high
  schools, there is no substitute for an all-out
  effort to ensure that all of our children start
  out right

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Focus on Emergent and Early Literacy

• According to Building Blocks,
• What young children need most during their
  early years of schooling is a sturdy foundation
  upon which to construct the ability to read. The
  failure to help all children put such a framework
  in place has been the greatest failing of
  Americas schools. It is no wonder that so many
  pupils find their house of reading in splinters
  by the time they reach the fourth grade. In most
  cases, patch-up jobs just wont work and young
  children who struggle to read become teenagers
  whose learning falters and then adults whose
  futures are compromised.

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Focus on Emergent and Early Literacy

• According to Building Blocks,
• Children need extensive exposure to rich
  language in a multitude of forms to become
  strong, swift readers who glide across a page
  like a graceful swimmer cutting through water.

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Focus on Emergent and Early Literacy

• The probability of remaining a poor reader at the
  end of fourth grade given a child was a poor
  reader at the end of first grade was 88
• 74 of children who are poor readers in third
  grade remain poor readers in ninth grade
• It takes four times as long to remediate a
  student with poor reading skills in fourth grade
  as in late kindergarten or early first grade

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Kindergarten Literacy by Anne McGill-Franzen

• Recommendations
• Personalizing Instruction Is the Heart of It All
• Increasing the Intensity of Kindergarten Is
  Beneficial
• Bringing Home Literacy Practices to School Is Key
• Kindergarten Reading Changes Lives

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Kindergarten Literacy by Anne McGill-Franzen

• The progress children can make in reading and
  writing during the kindergarten year can change
  the rest of their entire academic lives.
  Kindergartners whose teachers help them begin to
  read and write are far more likely to go on to
  become proficient readers and writers than
  children who are not provided with these
  opportunities.

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Kindergarten Literacy by Anne McGill-Franzen

• Across all groups, children who spent the most
  time in reading instruction experienced the
  greatest gains and long-term effects so that the
  more reading instruction, the better results.
• Children grow into the intellectual life around
  them as the famous developmental psychologist
  Lev Vygotsky suggested, and adults should teach
  them at the growing edge of their competence.

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Breaking the Code The New Science of Beginning
Reading and Writing by J. Richard Gentry

• Kindergarten classrooms that are organized for
  writing, where teachers teach and support writing
  explicitly, allow students to exceed minimal
  expectations such as writing names, most of the
  letters, and some words
• Develops a system that connects reading and
  writing

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The Changing Paradigm of Kindergarten

• Kindergarten of the Past
• Hands-on
• Manipulatives in Math and Science
• Mostly whole group instruction done in a circle
• Letter of the Week Students did not get all
  letters until spring!

• Kindergarten of the Present and Future
• Hands-on and Minds-On
• Manipulatives in All Areas
• Mix of Whole Group, Small Group, and
  Individualized Instruction
• No More Letter of the Week

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The Changing Paradigm of Kindergarten

• Kindergarten of the Past
• Curriculum centered on holidays
• Developmentally Appropriate
• Five year olds cant do that!
• Social skills in artificial settings

• Kindergarten of the Present and Future
• Curriculum focused on big ideas to promote
  thinking
• Developmentally Responsive
• Five year olds can do that!
• Social skills in context

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For More Research

• Send your name and address to
• Dr. Shannon Varley
• 258 Josephs Lane
• Pittsburgh, PA 15237
• svarley_at_avonworth.k12.pa.us

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Bibliography

• The Learning Gap Why Our Schools Are Failing and
  What We Can Learn from Japanese and Chinese
  Education by Harold Stevenson and James Stigler
• Starting Out Right A Guide to Promoting
  Childrens Reading Success by the National
  Research Council
• Building Blocks Making Children Successful in
  the Early Years of School by Gene I. Maeroff
• Kindergarten Literacy by Anne McGill-Franzen
• Breaking the Code The New Science of Beginning
  Reading and Writing by J. Richard Gentry

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Kindergarten Readiness

• Kindergarten children are confident in spirit,
  infinite in resources, and eager to learn.
  Everything is still possible.
• Robert Fulghum

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Kindergarten Readiness

• Social Readiness
• play cooperatively
• follow the rules of a game
• respect the property of other children
• share
• communicate feelings and ideas
• wait for a turn
• ask for help
• independence from parents

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Kindergarten Readiness

• Intellectual Readiness
• Identify common shapes
• Recognize and name colors
• Recite the alphabet
• Print first and last name
• Recognize rhyming patterns
• Know month and day of birth
• Recognize numbers to 10
• Count to 20
• Draw a person with several recognizable features
• Understand positional vocabulary

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Kindergarten Readiness

• Emotional Readiness
• Readily says goodbye to a parent
• Forms friendships with peers
• Be flexible when confronted with new situations
• Take pride in accomplishments
• The foundation of emotional readiness is
  self-esteem that the child constructs through
  successful experiences.

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Kindergarten Readiness

• Physical Readiness
• Coordinate large muscles as in balancing,
  running, jumping, hopping, and skipping
• Coordinate small muscles as in writing, painting,
  coloring and cutting
• Take care of bodily needs such as dressing,
  eating and toileting
• Speak clearly enough to be understood

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Kindergarten Curriculum
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Math

• Scott Foresman series
• Calendar Math by Great Source
• Students study position and sorting, graphing and
  patterns, numbers through 100, time and money,
  measurement, geometry, and addition and
  subtraction

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Reading

• Trophies by Harcourt
• Guided Reading series by Scholastic
• No More Letter of the Week program at the
  beginning of year to quickly introduce letters
• Word Families and Sight Words
• Students focus on big ideas identified by
  National Reading Panel phonemic awareness,
  phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension

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Reading

• Text Talk, a read aloud series by Scholastic, to
  promote vocabulary and comprehension
• Culminating Activity Author Study
• Students study concepts about print, decoding,
  word recognition, listening and speaking, genres,
  and literary elements and devices

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Language Arts

• Students write every day
• Includes grammar and spelling
• Students study writing process, parts of speech,
  capitalization, punctuation, and spacing

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Science

• Students study the five senses, seasons, wood and
  paper, animals, solar system, living things
  (animals and insects), and oceans and the water
  cycle

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Social Studies

• Heartwood Curriculum respect, courage, loyalty,
  justice, love, honesty, and hope
• Students study themselves and their school,
  feelings, families, our town, Pittsburgh Pride,
  and holidays

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Kindergarten Assessment
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DIBELS

• Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills
• Fall Initial Sound Fluency, Letter Naming
  Fluency
• Winter Initial Sound Fluency, Letter Naming
  Fluency, Phoneme Segmentation Fluency, Nonsense
  Word Fluency
• Spring Letter Naming Fluency, Phoneme
  Segmentation Fluency, Nonsense Word Fluency
• Used to determine placement in flexible groups
  for skill instruction, need to work with a
  reading specialist, and possible, future,
  placement in Title I

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A Day in the Life of a Kindergartner
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Typical Half Day Schedule

• 830 Arrival Time
• 850 Open Activities (Morning Message, Read
  Aloud, Poem of the Week, Interactive Read Aloud,
  Calendar Math)
• 920 Math
• 940 Writing Workshop
• 1000 Reading and Language Arts
• 1045 Guided Reading/Centers
• 1115 Wrap Up
• Note Mid-day transportation will not be provided

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Sample Full Day Schedule

• 830 Arrival
• 850 Morning Message, Journal Writing, Literacy
  Centers
• 1025 Recess/Lunch
• 1105 Science or Social Studies
• 1145 Math
• 1230 Guided Reading/Centers
• 145 Specials (Music, Art, Computers, PE)

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Sample Full Day Schedule

• 230 Independent Learning Project
• 300 Journaling or Mystery Reader
• 315 Wrap Up
• Note Full day schedule may change yearly based
  on specials and lunch time

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Learning Centers

• Discovery Center (mainly science)
• Writing Center
• Puzzles and Blocks
• Reading for Meaning
• Big Books/Overheads
• Word Making
• Language Arts Manipulatives
• Math
• Math Manipulatives

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Selection of Full Day/Half Day Preference

• Please select your preference based on what you
  feel is best for your child and family. You may
  wish to consult your childs preschool teacher.
• Preference does not guarantee placement.
• Data from preferences will be shared with school
  boards Curriculum Committee after Roundup and a
  recommendation will be made about how many
  sections of full day and half day to offer next
  year will be made. Total enrollment at Roundup
  will determine how many sections we can offer of
  each and if all parental preferences can be
  honored.

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Next Steps

• You will receive a letter in mid-March telling
  you of your childs placement, if parental
  preferences are honored. If space is available,
  you may still change this placement at this time.
• If, due to total enrollment, parental preferences
  cannot be honored, procedures for enrolling your
  child in either program will be detailed in the
  letter.
• In May, kindergarten screening will occur. At
  this time, you will have the opportunity to meet
  the teachers assigned to kindergarten for the
  2008-2009 school year.

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Kindergarten Screening

• Students will spend ½ day with kindergarten
  teachers so we can get to know your child.
• May 12 or 13 sign up for A.M. or P.M. session
• Students will take the Brigance screening test.
• Students will work with the kindergarten
  teachers, a speech teacher, and reading
  specialists so we can gather data before their
  arrival in August.

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Frequently Asked Questions

• If you have questions about our kindergarten
  program, please email them to Dr. Varley. If your
  questions are specific to your child, I will
  respond to your email individually. If they are
  general questions, they will be answered and
  posted in a Frequently Asked Questions document
  on the districts website by the beginning of
  March.
• You may also wish to refer to our kindergarten
  guidebook.