Second Cons Kindergarten

Multnomah County had a survey done for kindergarten teachers. The results suggested that 19.4% of their students were not headed toward literacy success, due to a lack of necessary language and pre-reading skills. There is a 90% probability of a child that is a poor reader in first grade, still being a poor reader three years later, in fourth grade (http://www.co.marion.or.us). As Early Childhood Educators, we must help our students.

In the other group, 1,302 children who did not attend transitional kindergarten due to ineligibility. Both groups attended kindergarten during the 2013-2014 school year at 164 elementary schools in twenty different districts. In terms of preliteracy and literacy skills, AIR found that children who attended transitional kindergarten were significantly better able to identify letters and words in kindergarten than their peers who did not attend. Additionally, those who attended had greater phonological awareness than did students who did not. In math and problem solving, transitional kindergarteners also outscored their peers. Transitional kindergarten improved students’ knowledge of basic mathematical concepts and symbols in kindergarten. Even though the difference was slightly smaller than that of math concepts and symbols, they even showed better problem-solving skills (AIR, 2015).

This is a very important component in education to be aware of and when you are a teacher. I interviewed a first-grade teacher at my local elementary school to gain more information about the processes that our local schools go through for professional training, interventions, and in the classroom to ensure that students are developing their abilities in reading. My main focus was on what our school’s process was, how support is given, professional training offered, and what more is needed to be done to increase success for students.

(Carta, Greenwood, Atwater, McConnell, Goldstein and Kaminski 2015) believe that using Response to Intervention (RTI) or the Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) in preschool programs will begin to change the way children read in kindergarten and in the future. Their study set out to show the value of identifying and preventing learning problems early and the importance of individualized instruction in a preschool setting. Out of six hundred and fifty-nine children in sixty-five Pre-K classes in four different states, these individuals did a study of Tier 1 instruction involving Kansas City, Mo/KS; Columbus, OH; Eugene-Springfield, OR; and Minneapolis, MN.

Oftentimes, children who are not introduced to the guidelines and principles of their kindergarten classroom spend much of their first year trying to catch up to their peers. By implementing a universal preschool, early childhood educators are able to apply kindergarten policies to their classroom procedures in an effort to prepare students for the transition. For instance, when the educators from various grades are able to communicate with one another, health records, learning disabilities and classroom procedures are discussed and teachers are able to employ solutions before the school year starts. As many as half of all children entering kindergarten display difficulties in the transition. Moreover, teachers expect children to have certain skills sets upon entering the classroom that they may not possess. Finally, kindergarten teachers identified weaknesses in academic and social kills, including the inability to follow directions, working independently or perform adequately in a formal school setting (Stormont, 213). By introducing children to these basic skill sets in preschool, they are able to transition smoothly to kindergarten and succeed among their

For this project, we worked with Eloise Leatham. She is a kindergartener, 5 years old, from St. Paul. She attends Saint Paul Academy, a secular private school in St. Paul. She is exposed to books on a regular basis, as she has an 8-year-old sister who loves to read. Her parents, who are both working professionals with a relatively high income, read to Eloise and her sister every night before bed. Both parents enjoy reading, and have instilled a value for reading in their girls. Eloise attended preschool for 3 years, and was exposed to reading and writing there as well. She speaks fondly of her preschool experience, and continues to enjoy going to school now that she is in kindergarten.

Explain how the range of early years settings reflects the scope and purpose of the sector

The current state of California’s state-level preschool program (the California State Preschool Program, or CSPP) is currently underperforming, given the population they are serving. Despite California having the 9th highest per-capita income of all states (and being home to some of the highest income counties in the U.S.), the CSPP only manages to achieve six out of the ten outcomes for preschool effectiveness as outlined by the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER). In addition, the newly established California Transitional Kindergarten program achieves a mere two out of ten, which ranks it as one of the lowest early education programs in the entire country. The CSPP achieves fewer outcomes than much (on average)

On September 2010 more than 600 schools across Ontario opened their doors for a new program full-day kindergarten. This project is supposed to help parents to build a better future for their children. Almost every parent has a daydream in which she or he wants to see his or her child’s success. The project of full-day kindergarten can drive this dream to a reality. This program has been approved in the USA and given a significant result; this program became very popular, according to Viadero` and Debra (2005), because it is affordable for families with low income. Today parents in Ontario are given a hope to see

“Literacy learning has a profound and lasting effect on the social and academic lives of children. Their future educational opportunities and career choices are directly related to literacy ability. Since early childhood is the period when language develops most rapidly, it is imperative that young children are provided with a variety of developmentally appropriate literacy experiences throughout each day, and that the classroom environment is rich with language, both spoken and printed. Early childhood teachers are responsible for both understanding the developmental continuum of language and literacy and for supporting each child’s literacy development.

Kindergarten redshirting, also known as academic redshirting or delayed entry refers to the practice of parents who chose to delay their child’s entry to kindergarten if they have birthdays near the cut off line (example: a child is born on september 3rd, and children must be five years old by September 5th in order to be eligible for kindergarten). While the parents are fully able to enroll their child for the upcoming school year, he would be one of the youngest students in his class, so they may choose to “redshirt” their child and have him start kindergarten the following year right after he turns six. This term comes from the athletic world where a coach may choose to redshirt (delay a year so that he would not start until the season of his sophomore year) a linebacker in order to allow the athlete a full year to train with the team and become a better player before he actually gets any game time. The same principle applies to the academic world. Parents choose to redshirt often to give children with summer or early fall birthdays a chance to mature and build their skills so that they are fully ready and even have a head start in kindergarten at the age of six.

Literacy is important for young children. It’s so much a child has to know before entering kindergarten. The Essentials of Early Literacy Instruction stressed the importance of teaching literacy. Early literacy is an emerging g set of relationships between reading and writing. Today a lot of terms have been referred to for literacy development for preschoolers the term that’s mostly used is early literacy. The term was chosen because the earliest forms of literacy development are forming reading and writing concepts. Linking early literacy to play is the most effective way to for young children to learn. There are many ways educators can teach literacy activities such as rich teacher talk, storybook reading, phonologic awareness activities, alphabet activities, support for emergent writing, shared book experience, integrated, and content-focused activities, Young children understand print by oral and written language. Asking students to help read a book and turn the page help them understand the basics of a book. There are at least three critical content categories in early literacy: oral language comprehension, phonological awareness, and print knowledge. Children need to learn phonological awareness, alphabet letter knowledge, the function of written language, a sense of meaning making texts, and vocabulary. Alphabetic writing is quite difficult once children understand the language of their community they learn which words stand for which concepts in that language.

Learning to read is a complex process that involves phonics, decoding, morphology, fluency, and comprehension (U.S. Department of Education, 2013). Children, who are exposed to language in the form of oral language, phonological awareness, and print knowledge within their home environment prior to entering kindergarten, are significantly less likely to struggle to read than peers, who lacked such language exposure (Farver, Xu, Lonigan, & Eppe, 2013). Therefore, children experientially acquire a basic literacy foundation at home prior to entering school. Even without such literacy experiences at home, one of the most important predictors of long-term school success is early literacy instruction in prekindergarten and kindergarten (Justice, Kaderavek, Fan, Sofka, & Hunt, 2009; Lonigan, Farver, Phillips, & Clancy-Menchetti, 2011; Vellutino, Scanlon, Zhang, & Schatschneider, 2008). Early reading instruction that includes print knowledge, phonological awareness, and phonics has been shown to be necessary for establishing foundational skills in subsequent reading acquisition (Bingham, & Patton-Terry, 2013). Since a solid foundation in reading leads to future reading success, identifying and addressing reading difficulties during the primary grades (i.e. kindergarten, first, and second grades) is a high priority for school personnel

My progress in ECCE 2115 Language Arts and Literacy course has been a fast but a great one. I knew it was important to read to children starting from as early as birth, but I did not know there were some many ways of doing so. I have gained some great insight on skills I can use in my future child care center to develop a love for reading, writing, and spelling at an early age. I will not only use the skills taught in the course with my three children, but I will use them with the many children I come in contact with in my early child care career as well.

Constructive early language and literacy development can be an ally to opening a child’s (ren) imagination; this will enhance and empower their potential to become successful readers. As the children grow (birth to 3 yrs. old) their brain goes through an extradinary developmental process and they begin to think, learn, communicate and rationalize things. When this early developmental stage is not being nourished the child will feel the affects of it in the long run. Children that come from low-income families that are enrolled in schools are affected the most. Educators and parents can assist these children by giving them the support (early-on) that they need to sustain a healthy learning environment. As educators it is our duty to create an environment that will help in this process.