What You (and Your Child) Should Know for Kindergarten and Beyond

(Family Features) Starting kindergarten is a major milestone, one that sets the stage for future learning. Ensuring children are well-equipped to enter kindergarten sets them up for a successful school year in the short term and academic career in the long term.

Kindergarten readiness encompasses a wide range of skills, including academic, social and physical abilities. Yet while many parents think of kindergarten as the formal start of their children’s learning, 90% of children’s brain development occurs during the first five years of life.

The brain is incredibly receptive during these formative years, making it a critical time for children to receive exposure and guidance in diverse areas. Enrolling them in a quality preschool or pre-K program is one way you can ensure they’re creating building blocks for the future, but there are also steps you can take at home.

Try implementing these simple habits, recommended by Primrose Schools Chief Early Learning Officer Dr. Amy Jackson, into your family’s day-to-day routine:

• Read to your children daily to build early literacy skills. This is a good habit to begin as early as infancy because it promotes language development, literacy and understanding of others. Make library trips and story times a special treat for toddlers and encourage preschoolers to read to you by describing what is happening in the pictures or making up their own stories. Keep books in the car so you have a fun way to pass the time on long trips or while waiting for appointments.

• Schedule playdates for social development. Once babies are able to sit independently, they’ll likely enjoy playdates. At this age, playdates should be closely monitored since babies explore with their hands and mouths. At ages 1 and 2, young children tend to engage in parallel play rather than interacting, but organizing small groups of toddlers can continue to promote social development. Older toddlers enjoy more interactive play and begin to learn concepts like sharing.

• Practice counting objects to 10 or more together. It’s easy to make “math talk” part of your everyday experience in other ways, too. When reading a story, ask children to count the objects on each page. When eating, encourage math connections by having children count the items on their plates. Children can also explore math through common toys and games, like shape sorters, knob puzzles and nesting cups for infants and toddlers; and large puzzles, sand or water tables and card games for preschoolers.

• Encourage physical activities like playing on the playground. Play isn’t just for entertainment; it’s a building block for healthy growth. It helps children learn from the world around them and develop traits like generosity and honesty. Because it helps children release their full range of emotions and has therapeutic benefits, play also has positive effects on mental health. In addition to supporting their social-emotional well-being, children learn to navigate the world and practice motor skills while at play.

• Establish routines at home. A structured school day is filled with routines that provide familiarity and comfort. Routines can serve similar benefits at home by helping children clearly understand what is expected of them and when. A morning routine makes it easy to check the boxes as you prepare for the day and work to get out the door on time. An evening routine helps everyone settle down and prepare for a good night’s sleep. 

• Encourage self-regulation and social skills. Self-regulation is the ability to understand and manage your own behavior and reactions, often displayed during actions like taking turns, transitioning from one activity to another or cleaning up for dinner. Social skills include interaction and communication abilities like speech, body language and facial expressions, as well as the ability to play with others and make friends. As a parent, you can model these skills and play games that involve taking turns and cooperation. Playdates also help facilitate positive social experiences for children.

Learn more about preparing your child for success in kindergarten and beyond at PrimroseSchools.com/education.

 

SOURCE:
Primrose Schools

Three Ways to Help Students Improve Reading Fluency

(BPT) - The pandemic has created a lot of challenges for students and achievement gaps continue to grow, especially among the most vulnerable learners. According to Amplify, students — especially those in grades K-1in Black and Hispanic populations — have experienced severe learning losses in the past two years. Furthermore, without support, a child that is a poor reader in first grade has a 90% chance of remaining a poor reader.

Reading fluency, the ability to read with speed, accuracy, and meaningful expression, remains an integral component of academic success and future outcomes. Encouraging students to read in their free time, while admirable, does not provide the necessary support for students struggling with reading fluency.

This week as we celebrate Read Across America Day it's a good time to learn how we can help create strong, confident readers. Below are three strategies that can help support students' reading fluency.

1. One-on-one reading

One of the best ways to increase children's reading fluency is to model reading in one-on-one settings. In a classroom, it may not always be possible to read with students individually, but tutors and family members can be enlisted to provide private reading opportunities.

Whether the tutors are parents, older elementary students or college students, having a dedicated person to sit down and read individually with a child can build the student's reading confidence. The reading tutor can model proficient reading fluency, recognize what skills the child needs support in advancing and make reading a fun, interactive experience.

2. Incorporate technology

Technology can be a powerful tool to engage students and encourage reading fluency. Teachers can use these tools to assess reading fluency of more students at once and frees up time to focus on the students’ academic and emotional development.

In an effort to improve literacy, Microsoft Education has created two reading tools that work in tandem to help educators support students with reading fluency.

Reading Coach is a reading practice tool for students that automatically generates individualized exercises based upon each student's specific needs. It identifies words that the student struggled with and provides additional opportunities for practice and guidance on correct pronunciation. This tool engages students and encourages them to want to read more.

Reading Progress measures and identifies correct words per minute, accuracy rates and challenging words, providing teachers and students with insightful data and benchmarks for progress. The newest update will allow the program to auto-detect prosody, that is, the patterns of expression and intonation in a language. Prosody is key to reading fluency and is linked to helping students build a deeper understanding of the text.

3. Repeated readings

Having students read the same text multiple times in different settings is a great strategy to improve fluency. For example, students can read a poem together aloud as a class, read the same poem to themselves and read together in small groups or pairs.

By reading a passage multiple times, students become familiar with the text, fix errors, and increase text comprehension. Repeated reading encourages independence and confidence in young readers.

All students deserve equitable opportunities to develop strong literacy skills for success in and beyond the classroom, and teachers deserve more support in helping their students reach these goals. Using the tips and tools above can go a long way in creating confident readers and increasing reading fluency in and out of the classroom.

To learn more about tools to support teachers and students in reading fluency, visit https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/education/educators/literacy-solutions.