Kindergarten is the critical year that sets the tone for young students, as Medford Board of Education Superintendent Joseph Del Rossi put it.
The Medford Township Public School System implemented its first-ever full-day kindergarten program in 2015 to allow for more instructional time to prepare students for the elementary school curriculum.
However, Del Rossi also wanted to better prepare parents for this big step in their child’s life, so he collaborated with the district’s kindergarten teachers to put together the first-ever informational night for parents of incoming 2016 kindergarteners on Jan. 20.
“The better job that we do educating in terms of prior to their kindergarten year, the better off we’re going to be during their career in the district,” Del Rossi said. “We’re giving these students an advantage to a degree.”
If you have a child who will be 5 years of age on or before Oct. 1, he or she will be eligible for the 2016–2017 kindergarten class.
Due to the increased rigor of the expectations provided by the curriculum for these kids, Del Rossi conducted research to seek the benefits of being developmentally ready for kindergarten.
This led to the four-week program during the summer in which incoming kindergarteners are identified through a district wide pre-assessment used to acquire information regarding where that particular student is in the continuum of being developmentally ready for kindergarten.
The program is called SPARKLERS, and there is also a similar summer program for incoming first graders known as SAIL.
“Expectations have increased for these kids, so we decided to brainstorm what we could do for our incoming kindergarten students regardless of where they’re at in the continuum,” Del Rossi said.
As for parents, they will have the opportunity to be prepped for the upcoming year at the informational night.
This event will focus on social and academic expectations for students and provide parents with resources to build kindergarten readiness.
The event will begin in the gym, and from there parents will take part in four breakout sessions all delving into a different aspect of their child’s kindergarten experience.
There will be a language arts literacy section, a writing/oral language section, a math section and a social emotional needs section.
Each division will be led by an expert in the area, Del Rossi said.
Reading specialist at Taunton Forge Elementary School Lori Ann Cassidy, supervisor of instruction for the district Dr. Beth Asbury and Kirbys Mill Elementary School teacher Melissa Slocum will be among the many instructors that will be presenting and assisting with the event.
“(There are) no better experts in this field than kindergarten teachers themselves. They are on the cutting edge, trained for primary education,” Del Rossi said.
The night will conclude with a Q and A session in which the experts will be fielding any questions that parents might have.
There will also be prizes given out. Along with these prizes, each parent will receive various instructional materials to go home with.
Music teachers have been working on instructional CDs for parents to use with their kids to give them a head start on learning things such as the alphabet and numbers through singing songs.
There will also be a list of things parents can buy for less than $10 to help get them get ready for specific lessons.
“We’ll be putting resources in their hands to help them assist their child, such as preferred books used in preschool that match the direction that we are headed in with our curriculum,” Del Rossi said.
Parents will also be given the opportunity to see kindergarten classrooms during a video montage of classes such as reading, math, social studies and science. The video will provide a quick snippet for the parents to see what instruction actually looks like in a classroom setting with actual teachers teaching the content areas.
As Del Rossi said, the majority of these parents have never seen this firsthand before.
“For most of these parents, this is their first child, so they don’t know what to expect,” Del Rossi said.
There have already been more than 100 responses from parents interested in attending this event, so space will be limited.
To reserve your seat, call Pat Dyer, administrative assistant to the superintendent, at (609) 975–6442.
If the weather provides complications, the snow date for the event will be Jan. 27.
