Wolfle Elementary amps up kindergarten prep

Educational expectations continue to increase, almost at an exponential rate.

The rising expectations hit kindergartners too, and nowadays 5-year-olds are expected to enter the schoolhouse doors already having met a slew of “Washington State’s Early Learning and Development Benchmarks.” Among the benchmarked domains: physical health, well-being and motor development, social and emotional development, approaches toward learning, cognition and general knowledge and language and communication and literacy.

It’s up to parents or preschools to ensure the littlest students meet the benchmarks, but some parents don’t have the time or ability to help their children prior to entering a classroom setting.

This is especially true for low-income families, and unfortunately some kids begin school a step behind and reality is, never quite catch up.

This scenario plays out at Wolfle Elementary as it serves a high poverty population with approximately 44 percent of its student-base at poverty level.

“Kids in high poverty schools don’t tend to have a lot of exposure to books, reading and cultural events,” said Wolfle’s Principal Ben Degnin. “When kids start school they’re at a bunch of different levels, some way below standard.”

Degnin said the education world has gotten very adept at accelerating the learning curve, but added some students start so far behind they’re still not caught up by the fourth, fifth or sixth grade.

“Instead of trying to accelerate their growth every year, we need to start hitting them before they even get to us,” Degnin said.

After several months of planning and brainstorming on how to level the entering-kindergarten playing field, Wolfle Elementary is now collaborating with staff at ESD Head Start, S’Klallam Head Start and Wolfle’s own preschool to ensure all the kids entering Wolfle are on the same page. The three organizations’ students feed into Wolfle and they’re piloting a common pre-K assessment and learning curriculum called “Preschool First.”

“We’ve started working with those three so when kids start kindergarten they all have a similar knowledge base and a similar set of skills,” Degnin said, adding when students arrive on day one kindergartner teachers at Wolfle spend about the first six weeks teaching kids how to sit in a group, walk down the hall and basic counting. “We’re trying to address that so we can begin teaching on day one.”

“Preschool First” is an online software program complete with assessments, reports, learning activities for all the pre-k developmental areas, specific activities for areas needing improvement and there’s even parent involvement options. A parent can go online and review how their student is doing and see what areas still need progress. Parents also can look up activities to help their student improve.

While it is just a pilot year and the program has only been available since October, Veronica Linke, early childhood special education teacher for the Wolfle preschool, is pleased so far.

“I love the way it works,” Linke said as she sat at her computer and scanned through an assortment of activities. “It’s all there, and it’s fun and exciting and dynamic and the kids get excited about it. It’s what young children do. You can tell I’m excited about this program.”

“Preschool First” covers the first five years growth areas of cognition, communication, fine/gross motor skills and social/emotional skills.

Linke said activities that adhere to the state’s standards are incorporated into the program. She also said it’s accessible, has a very sequential order and it’s incredibly easy to look up and find activities that work, versus rifling through a book.

In addition to collaboration and the new pre-K program Wolfle’s summer school, concentration was on kindergarten preparedness. Degnin said being able to spend six weeks with students prior to their arrival helped immensely with getting kids on the same course.

“We we’re able to go right into academics almost from day one and we’ve never been able to do that before,” he said.

Needless to say Degnin is excited about the progress, however, the “Preschool First” software is slightly spendy. He said Wolfle received a good deal this year and it’s funded solely from the building’s budget. He’ll be turning to grants for future year’s funding. He also anticipates implementing several other collaboration ideas between teachers, grades and schools, as a combination of working together, summer school and “Preschool First” will dramatically pay off.

“This is probably the most significant thing we’ve done in helping kids along their academic career paths,” Degnin said. “I think this is going to be a really big thing.”

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