Today at lunch, the K/1 team -- Claire, Kyla, Lyssa and Ben -- met with Paula, Laurie and myself to begin planning next month's K/1 Child Visit Day. We began by looking at last year's program (which itself was an enormous step forward from the previous year's event), and discussed the positive aspects of the program that we want to keep, as well as those areas we think can be refined and improved.
The basic structure of the event, which we revised last year, will stay the same: we begin with open classroom exploration, move on to a short circle, and then have an extended "work period" in which children are free to roam the room and engage with various materials, during which time each child gets guided in a short 1:1 assessment with a faculty member. The work period closes with a circle and story read-aloud, and then an outside recess before parents pick up the kids.
Perhaps the most significant shift we discussed is the content of the 1:1 assessment through which we run each student. We together looked at a long list of areas in which we might want to assess these small four-year-olds -- gross motor, fine motor, following directions, visual patterns, visual matching, visual memory, imitation, delayed gratification, cooperative play, and early academics -- and agreed that last year's assessment was too heavily focused on early academics, in areas of both early literacy (sound/symbol correspondance, letter names, etc) and number sense (1:1 correspondance, rote counting, etc), given the age and development of the prospective students.
One aspect of the event we won't be changing is that Julianne Hughes, K-5 art teacher, will have projects available for the parents in the Art Studio during this event. Giving parents something to do while they wait (especially one in the artistic realm) is a great tool for distracting them from their concerns, while also providing them an opportunity to get to meet other potential families who might join our K/1 program next year.
No comments:
Post a Comment