Kindergarten allows children and teachers time to explore
topics in-depth, provides for greater continuity of day-to-day activities, and
provides an environment that favors a child-centered, developmentally
appropriate approach.
Many experts feel that seat work, worksheets, and early
instruction in reading or other academic subjects are largely inappropriate in
kindergarten. By contrast, developmentally appropriate, child-centered all-day
kindergarten programs at Marion City Schools offer:
• Integrates new learning with past experiences through hands
on project work and through mixed-ability (heterogeneous) grouping in an
unhurried setting.
• Involve children in firsthand experience and informal
interaction with manipulatives, small groups of children, and various adults.
• Emphasize language development and appropriate literacy
experiences.
• Communicate with parents to share information about their
children, build an understanding of parent and teacher roles, emphasize reading
to children in school and at home, and set the stage for later parent-teacher
partnerships.
• Offer a balance of small group, large group, and
individual activities.
• Assess students' progress through close teacher
observation and systematic collection and examination of students' work, often
using progress monitoring.
• Develop children's social skills, including conflict
resolution strategies through school wide Positive Behavior Intervention
Strategies (PBIS).
When your child attends kindergarten he/she will learn the
basics. This means the basics in math, science, reading, writing, social
studies, and more. Kindergarten, in Marion City Schools, will expose your child
to all the things he/she should know to be ready to enter the first grade.
Kindergarten prepares
children for the following school years because they meet new friends and learn
how to communicate. Developing these communication skills early on is important
because the sooner children learn how to communicate well the sooner they can
do so. When children are required to engage in
learning, sharing and playing with others they will store that information and
it will shape how they interact with and treat others for the rest of their
lives.
