Pre-K Hours

AM-8:00-10:45

 Mrs. Ward's

Pre-Kindergarten Class

September  

~Book order due online September 18 by 3pm

~Tanager Pride Day September 20th. Wear your red and black! 

Sounds in Motion

We are very excited to be offering the program known as Sounds in Motion to our Pre-K friends. 

What is Sounds in Motion?  The sounds in motion program is a phonemic awareness program designed for Pre-K,  kindergarten and first grade that addresses auditory, early literacy, and articulation skills through body movements for speech sounds.  The program was developed by Fran Santore, a school-based speech language pathologist at Horace Mann Lower School in Riverdale, NY.

What skills does Sounds in Motion program address? 

The program addresses the following skills/areas in our Pre-K classroom:

·        active, “whole-body” listening

·        auditory perception and discrimination of commonly misarticulated and/or confused speech sounds

·        sound to letter correspondence (consonants and short vowels)

·        blending sounds into syllables and words

·        manipulation of sounds in words (deletion, addition, substitution and segmentation)

·        recognition of written syllables and words through use of decoding skills

·        articulation practice and proper placement of the tongue and lips when making sounds

How does Sounds in Motion work?  The program combines speech sounds with kinesthetic, gross-motor movements that correspond to the tension, duration, pitch and directionality of the articulators used to produce each sound.  The program begins by addressing auditory skills necessary for recognition and production of these sounds and progresses to the introduction of 2-3 speech sounds and corresponding movements in each session.  Students practice letter to sound correspondence, sound blending, and syllable/word decoding in each session.  The program also includes a pre- and post-test to show individual student progress.

What are the potential benefits of implementation of the Sounds in Motion program? 

Research and anecdotal evidence suggest that implementation of this program could result in the following:

1.       Improved reading ability.  Research in evidence-based practice has demonstrated that working on phonemic awareness skills assist children in learning to read.

2.     Increased ability to identify children with auditory processing difficulty.

3.     Decreased need for articulation referrals/intervention.

4.     Decreased need for reading assistance.

Academic Growth

 The pre-k children will undergo an early screening process to assess academic readiness, fine and gross motor skills, as well as speech and language development. 

• Parent teacher conferences will be scheduled in December to discuss your child's progress in our program. 
•  A portfolio will be used throughout the year to collect work samples from the children to enable you to see your child's growth during the year.  You will comment on this at various points throughout the year.
•  Informal assessments will be ongoing throughout the year assessing colors, name recognition, upper and lower case letter recognition, as well as their sounds, rote counting and number identification in isolation, one-to-one correspondence and a host of other skills.
• The children will undergo a final kindergarten screening again in the spring.

 ~An old t-shirt labeled with your child's name

 ~An extra set of clothes for accidents or spills-labeled

 ~A SIMPLE healthy snack and water daily. Ex. fruit, veggies, Goldfish, crackers, fruit bars, pretzels. 

~A full-sized backpack labeled with your child's name  

  Letter of the Week

• Read a story with the letter of the week in the title.
• Write the letter of the week on an index card and hide them throughout the house.
• Use playdough to form the letter of the week.

   Please review each letter and its sound with your child each time a  letter paper is sent home.  Please refer to your alphabet sounds in motion book to help with the correct motion of each letter.

Please don't hesitate to contact me at 632-5222 ext. 103

or

email me at award@hartfordcsd.org

Welcome to Pre-K at Hartford Central School,

I am thrilled to be working with your child this year to help instill in each special person a love of learning that will last a lifetime.  Our room will allow your child to explore, question, investigate, interact and feel the safety of being a member of caring classroom community.

The New York State Pre-Kindergarten Next Generation Standards will be the basic foundation by which our goals are aligned in order to ensure that each child leaves our room in June prepared to undertake the challenges, as well as rewards of kindergarten. 

Aside from the NYS Core Curriculum Standards, we will also work on a rich literature program utilizing both fiction and non-fiction books.  We will work on recognizing the letters and their sounds, as well as engage in activities to make the letters come alive.  The website engageNY.org will provide our children with domains which is a developmentally appropriate, research-based Pre-K curriculum designed to prepare our young children for academic and social demands of kindergarten by covering several units.

We also will be utilizing a program known as Sounds in Motion.  This program will give gestures and motions to letter sounds while making letter recognition and sounds come alive.  This program will continue throughout the lower elementary grades.

We also are utilizing a writing program known as Handwriting Without Tears.  This program offers very basic skills like practicing straight and curved lines which help the children develop important pre-writing skills.  This program helps to compliment the Common Core Standards in regards to writing with our pre-k friends.

We will also work with numbers and counting, as well as one to one correspondence each day.  We will make numbers and counting a regular part of our daily routine.

Our daily centers allow the children to work in small groups exploring the many activities provided to them.  The children will engage in different centers each day including, but not limited to science, math, fine motor, puzzle, reading, listening, art, music and even spelling centers.

I truly look forward to working with you and your child this school year.  If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to email me at award@hartfordcsd.org, call me at 632-5222 ext. 103 or drop me a note in your child’s daily red folder.

Mrs. Ward

Fun Reading Activities Scholastic.com