Get ready, get set – for kindergarten
Is your child ready for kindergarten? In Crook Count,y a big grant is being put into action to make sure the answer is yes.
A $75,000 grant was awarded to the school district by the Oregon Community Foundation. The purpose is to ensure that the district can place an emphasis on kindergarten readiness.
With test scores on the decline statewide, teachers are concerned that parents aren’t aware of just how unprepared their child may be.
“Some students don’t have experience using a pencil, or even know any of their letters and numbers,” Ochoco Elementary kindergarten teacher Cathy Fall said Monday.
Fall also said students are coming into kindergarten unprepared to learn, and according to the Crook County Commission on Children and Families, kindergarten readiness has an effect on children all through school.
“We’re really looking to ultimately increase those third-grade reading scores, and part of that has to do with having kids ready to enter kindergarten,” said commission Director Brenda Comini.
With the new Common Core standards, Ochoco Elementary has begun to hold meetings with parents to let them know what’s expected of their child.
“We’ve got some plans again to really work hard to be training preschool providers, parents, day cares — everything we can do to help those kids learn the basic skills they need to be ready,” said Ochoco Elementary Principal David Robinson.
Some of those basic skills include being able to count to 100, adding and subtracting to 10 and writing all the letters of the alphabet.
“The preschools weren’t aware how the standards had changed, and how they needed to really help us fill in some of that information the students really needed to know before they got to kindergarten,” Fall said.
She isn’t the only teacher concerned. When I walked in on Jennifer Purswell’s class;, she was teaching students how to decode words and different sounds.
“It is just the basic foundation for everything they’re going to learn in all the grades to come,” Purswell said. “So they have to learn enough in kindergarten in order to be prepared for first grade, and it seems like the expectations seem to be higher and higher.”
Comini said bridging the gap between early child care and kindergarten is what’s needed for your child to start off on the right foot.
“We can get them into libraries, we can get them books, we can help really promote those practices that help kids be successful pretty much life-long in education,” Comini said.
For parents who would like to know more about what your child needs to know going into kindergarten, there will be an “ABC’s of Parenting class” at Ochoco Elementary School on Wednesday from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
The classes will run every Wednesday for a seven-week period.
