prekindergarten news
TRANSCRIPT
The beginning of the new year promises many opportunities as well as challenges for early childhood education, including our UPK Program in Rochester. We will kick off the year with our School Expo, a showcase of our district’s prekindergarten and school age programs and a spring calendar of pro-fessional learning opportunities for early childhood staff. Despite the budgetary chal-lenges our country, state and district are currently experiencing we remain encour-aged that our legislators recognize the val-ue of quality early childhood education and will act accordingly when budget decisions are finalized for New York State.
The School Expo will mark the beginning of our recruitment for the UPK program with registration available at the event. Current PreK parents will have an opportunity to learn about elementary school programs in the Rochester City School District and to register for the schools of their choice at the Expo. The Early Childhood Department and all of the district’s schools will have booths with informational displays providing highlights of various programs with an em-
phasis on school selection this year.
During the months of January and Febru-ary weekly professional learning sessions will be offered on AVATAR, the district’ s online system for early childhood educators focused on aspects of the High/Scope Pre-school Curriculum. The sessions will fea-ture a combination of videos, discussion and web meetings with High/Scope staff.
On January 21st, the officers of the New
York State Prekindergarten Administrator’s Association (NYSPAA) will meet in Albany with New York State Education Department representatives to share information, dis-cuss the draft prekindergarten standards and plan for the upcoming year. Early indi-cators from our Board of Regents regarding continued support for the Universal Prekin-dergarten program in our state appear promising. In Rochester we have strong advocacy groups supporting our youngest students. In these financially challenging times it is heartening to know that people in Rochester recognize the importance of sup-porting early childhood education for our city’s future.
Looking forward to a New Year in the UPK Program submitted by Dr. Robin Hooper
January, 2011 Volume VI, Issue 5
Prekindergarten News Rochester City School District
Our lives begin
to end the day we become
silent about things that
matter.
-Martin Luther King. Jr.
Professional
Development see page 3
***
High/Scope
Working with Children
with Special Needs
Supporting Children in
Resolving Conflicts
see avatar for details
***
Spring Seminar
Crafting Curriculum:
Transforming Teacher
Observations into
Planning for Each Child
Children are engaging in conversation while
engaging in pre-reading activities and sing-
ing songs from our class song book.
Child is creating a representation of her own skeleton using shapes as well as the Concepts of symmetry.
Active Learning at #08 School submitted by Jessica Shapira
Page 2 Prekindergarten News
Family Science Day at the Sully Branch Library submitted by Bonny VanDerMeid
Children experimented with hand washing techniques by viewing their dirtied hands their dirtied hands under a magnifier and black light, then viewing them again after hand washing. The goal was to promote effective hand washing for eliminating germs.
Children enjoyed making slime. Parent and child explored sound.
The Rochester Education and Lit-
eracy Commission, RPPP, Florence
S. Brown Pre-K, the Rochester
Public Library, WXXI, Wegmans
and community scientists collabo-
rated to provide hands-on activi-
ties on Family Science Day. The
first one of this school year oc-
curred on November 20 at the
Sully Library.
Esther Glwinski’s 6th grade students
from #33 school facilitated activities
which explored the properties of mag-
nets and electricity, engaging children
of all ages.
Page 3 Prekindergarten News
Professional Development Opportunities—see more details on avatar
Video sessions and Webinars:
Working with Children with Special Needs
Supporting Children in Resolving Conflicts
The Early Childhood Department in partnership with
High/Scope will be offering video and webinar mini-series on
our most requested topics. In January our focus will be on
working with children with special needs and we will follow in
February with conflict resolution. (Look for other topics in the
months to come.) Our topics for January and February will be
covered in 2 parts, with one session featuring the High/Scope
video while the other session will be in a webinar format. Ide-
ally, participants will view the video, participate in the discus-
sion and generate questions. These questions will be ad-
dressed in the Webinars which follow (on different days).
Participation in both the video sessions and webinars is rec-
ommended but not required. All sessions can stand alone
and require separate registration. Please register on avatar.
The bilingual UPK class at #06 school enjoyed a
pancake breakfast, which they participated in mak-
ing themselves. In addition to learning how to
make pancakes, they learned new words in both
Spanish and English. Dr. Robin Hooper was among
their special guests.
—submitted by Tony Aponte, Bilingual UPK teacher
Spring Seminar
for Educators of Young Children
Keynote Speaker: Gaye Gronlund
Crafting Curriculum: Transforming
Teacher Observations into Planning
for Each Child
The Rochester Association for the Education of
Young Children (RAEYC) in partnership with the
RCSD Early Childhood Department, ECEQC and
the Children’s Institute are once again sponsoring
this annual event on Wednesday, April 13.
Expert teachers of young children are keen observ-
ers. They observe children in action at all times and
get to know each child well. They see what others
cannot. They have a sixth sense about what the child
is about-how he feels, what she understands, where
his interests lie, why she behaves the way she does.
But even the expert teacher is often frustrated by the
question of how to use those observations. The ex-
pert teacher asks: How can I observe, document
those observations and transform them into planning
for children? How can I accomplish this process in a
time efficient way and still be in the moment with the
children, being the best teacher that I can be? See
details on avatar or at www.raeyc.org. Register with
RAEYC for $40.
Outdoor play offers
an opportunity for explo-
ration and investigation
that creates exciting dis-
covery for children.
Cooperative play was
fostered outdoors with
tools provided to stimu-
late gathering of ice and
snow.
Young children remind us
to notice the wonder of our
everyday surroundings. As
one recent immigrant student
once exclaimed on venturing
outside with the class while it
was snowing, “the sky love
me!” The children shown
here, from the Wilson Com-
mencement Park UPK class
enjoy their outdoor space
year round.
Please send your pho-
tos/stories of outdoor time.
Rochester City School District Department of Early Childhood 131 W. Broad St. Rochester, NY 14614
Phone: 585-262-8140 Fax: 585-262-8273 [email protected] www.rcsdk12.org/PreK
It might be fun to add some “muscle-building movement” to the songs
that the children know. For the song, “Willoughby, Wallaby, Woo”, children
pretended to have an “elephant” sit on them. The elephant was made by:
taking a 5 lb. bag of flour, placing it in a large plastic freezer bag, covering it
with construction paper, and taping it with packing tape, then taping the
elephant picture from the song
card to it.
The song was sung as usu-
al. When we came to the
verse, “an elephant sat on
you”, the “elephant” was
placed on that child’s lap.
Then that child would carry
the “elephant” and place it on
the child’s lap whose name is
mentioned next. This contin-
ues until all of the children had
a turn.
This song and a few others,
can be found on the Early
Childhood Embedded program website under Moving Minds.
(Thank you to Linda Grennan’s Bubbles Preschool students for demon-
strating the song movement.)
MOVEMENT TIDBIT from Moving Minds
submitted by Carol Bedenik-Carmel, PT and Andrea Gerhardt, OT, RCSD