 gearing up for kindergarten training session. I am so happy that you're here tonight. I'm going to invest wisely in your time and hopefully answer questions you have and help you be well prepared to answer questions and implement the gearing up for kindergarten program. First thing I wanna do is thank Scott. We actually spent about an hour getting this set up earlier today with some issues and Scott is persistent and patient. We explored all possibilities and here we are tonight. And then thank you, all of you. The gearing up for kindergarten program is a really good program. But what makes it great is who you are, who you show up to be and who you are for us, for families that help them understand school readiness and take away some of that fear, some of the unknown and you invite them into your world, a world which you operate easily in. And yet, as a teacher, what comes easy to you is actually so very important to parents, helping them feel competent and capable and build confidence into their children. And so thank you for taking the time tonight to just do what you do well, which is invest in the lives of children and be who you are. I could not be the state coordinator in this program without the fine people throughout the state and you are what makes this program so highly successful. So I wanna thank you. I just absolutely wanna thank you and now I would like to get started with our evening just with this great bunch of people that's on board. So when we look at the Gearing Up for Kindergarten program, I do wanna ask a question, can you signify with your check mark or your hand raised how many of you have had this training before? It does help me to know if I'm talking to people before. Okay, all right. Thank you very much for letting me know. So some of you have, most of you have not. So the Gearing Up for Kindergarten program I hope you had a chance to watch the video on the website. Our website is www.gearingupnd.org and if you go on the educator link, we actually took that video and walked you through an evening. And I appreciate that because you get to see the visual of what it looks like when you walk into a room. You get to see families interacting. You get to see some of the centers. So if you've not done so and you've not had the program before, your first thing that I would love for you to do because it just will, it will just actually jet down some of the anxiousness you might feel, some of the unknowns because you'll see it in action and you look at it and you'll say, oh yeah, this is what I do every day in every way. But let's do the nuts and bolts because behind what you do well every day in every way is always some kind of preparation. We like to treat Gearing Up just like a kindergarten classroom. We wanna have things prepared ahead of time. And because this is new, we wanna sign on the front door that says Gearing Up for Kindergarten. We wanna sign on the classroom doors, particularly if you're a school that's gonna have more than one classroom. We take those signs often and we might say the yellow room or the blue room or you can do bunnies and cats. However you do that, but differentiate. So when parents walk in that front door, when they walk to the classroom, we want them to see that we're marked up or ready for them. When parents get to the door, we want them to see a sign that says, okay, Mike Jones is in the bunny room and then there's a sign in sheet for parents. These are things that people have to do to prepare ahead of time. If you finish at the end of a long day and you have to do that, you're gonna go, oh my goodness, none of these things is big and in and of themselves. But if you have to do it right at the end of the day, especially the day that Gearing Up starts, you're gonna feel quite overwhelmed. So the first thing I wanna say is when you look at your curriculum or this PowerPoint, either one can be a useful guide for you. Look at the prep work ahead of time. I always tell teachers that you're gonna wanna take, just for this first time that you've implemented the program, you're gonna wanna take about four hours and you wanna look through this PowerPoint, you're gonna want to look through that video so that you know the prep work ahead of time. Welcome signs, classroom signs for the doors, a sign in sheet for parents. Notice the last thing on this list is snack purchase. We try to buy our supplies in like five week increments. Most of you I believe are doing the 10 week program and we buy our supplies in five week increments so that we're not running to Walmart all the time. It's just too time consuming. It's one thing to take your own family grocery listing, go with you and say, oh, I don't mind picking this up, but we don't want teachers to have to make extra trips. We already know that you are very busy doing what you do well and successfully, but we all have very full lives that live in real time in real world. One of the things that I ask you to look at too when you look at our classroom supplies is what can I get from my own local district that's already available to me? Checking in with your principal of course, but most of the supplies, especially some of the very basic supplies, some of the paper, even sometimes the markers, the painting supplies, those are things that teachers already have in their classroom and are free to use. But you buy what you need to buy with this program. If you don't need to buy it, please go ahead and make sure that you've checked it off and know that it's readily available for you. So when the coordinator looks at what it takes to get ready for gearing up for kindergarten classroom, those are some of the things you need to think of. So if you look at slide two, this is an example of walking in. If you look on the left side of your screen, that's actually as they've walked in the front door and they've seen, okay, here's a list of rooms. We have the yellow room, the green room and the blue room. And then to the right of your screen is an example of further down the hall when families go to find their room, how we delineated the blue room. But we had parents come in that first night, we had them see, okay, find their child's name, find the room they're assigned to and then walk down the hallway and find that classroom. And as you notice, it looks very inviting and welcoming. This is an early childhood classroom obviously, but you can just see what we did to make families feel like we were ready and welcome for them. I'm going to go to the next slide, okay? So some of the preparation thing, now notice that it says coordinator preparation. In some of the larger school districts, they've actually hired somebody who oversees the gearing up program, maybe buy supplies, maybe makes arrangements for things to be printed. In a smaller school district or in a school district where there's only one or two classrooms that usually falls to the teacher's teaching the program, sometimes you get some support from your principal who's saying, yes, I want to support you in this program, I would be happy to pay for something or get you a PO for this. But looking ahead, what do you need? Well, that supply list, we say two weeks in advance, we really try and go for five just because I know how fast five weeks goes. Take that CD that came with your curriculum and print the take home lesson materials for teachers to distribute. Print up those things that you need. As we walk through this, you'll see some of the things that will be printed off of the CD. When we look at the CD and printing that stuff, it doesn't take that long. But if you do it in advance, you're not rushing around going, where did I find that? How do I do that? And I just want to take a moment to encourage you. If you have not opened up your curriculum because you're not gonna do it for a few more weeks or whatever, please take that CD and check that it is the correct CD for gearing up for kindergarten curriculum. I think some CDs were labeled gearing up for kindergarten and they were something like banking on strong bones. We thought that it was all taken care of. I got word from NDSU today that there was yet another site that had banking on strong bones. So if you've not yet looked at your CDs, please take a moment to do so when we're done with this training and make sure you have the ones that pertain to gearing up for kindergarten. So you're looking at your supplies and getting them ready and distributed. You're looking at the things you print. Do you have to send your things to a print shop or do you print them in your school? But you want to have a couple weeks ahead all the time so that particularly if you have a week where you have report cards due or other things, these things are taking care of for you. If you are a site that is doing childcare, make those arrangements. We encourage you to have supplies for the children whether it's coloring sheets, whether it's some trucks to play with or things that you bring even sometimes some of you bring from another classroom to use. Making sure that everything's ready. It is amazing how fast let's just say you do the six to seven 30 p.m. time frame. You run home real quick, kiss your family, feed yourself real quickly and get back over there. And before you know it, it's quarter to six. We want you to make it as easy as yourself as possible by having as many things kind of just like anything in life. The more you do ahead of time, the easier it is to implement. Gearing up for kindergarten, one of the strengths of the program is letting children check out books. And by that I don't mean that you have to check out every book formally and make sure that you know that Mary took home, you know, Pete the cat rocking in my new school shoes and Johnny took home the other book, not at all. Do it what works for you in your school. Some of you are going to say, here's my book bin. I'm gonna lay them out for the children and they can pick a book and next week bring it back and pick up another book. Some of you don't put out those books that you absolutely do not want to lose because of course that would be the book that didn't come back. But I do encourage teachers to keep your detail work to a minimum, especially unnecessary detail work. And so hopefully you do have a bin of books that you've been able to procure, whether it's from, you know, books from the library or books that you're willing to share, books that you were able to purchase for the program. And hopefully you have some books that can just be used easy and easy out and you're not keeping track of that. But one of the strengths of the program is really encouraging literacy, especially for our parents who are working a couple, three jobs. So the last thing they're going to do is take the time to go to the library and if this is their first child, they may not have a lot of books at home. And so we strongly encourage you to have book checkout as a part of your program. The other thing is your program evaluations. Those arrive from NDSU Extension and they should be coming from Divya Saxena, Sean Brotherson, or Cindy Silestead. Please make sure that you have those by the start of the first week of your program. We had a site that starts tonight and somewhere on their paperwork that somebody else had filled out, they don't start till April. Those evaluations were not sent out. And of course they went out in a hurry today. I will talk about evaluations toward the end of this training tonight, but I recommend that evaluations be done on week two. There's an awful lot going on on week one that makes the evaluations one more thing to do, and especially since it's not a regular part of the program, it's a required part for the reimbursement, but it's not a regular part. So we'll talk about that later, but I would not put that on your first week to do this, but I do, however, want to phase by the first week of the program, make sure that you do have them. Okay, I'm going to the next slide. Some of the other classroom preparations. Classroom teacher, as you saw those lists posted. You know, you want to have a list of your children so they can look and see, oh, I'm in Mrs. Jones's room. We do ask our teachers to list and post the schedule of the evening's activities, just like you would do in any classroom. It doesn't have to be elaborate, but you might just say, from seven to 725, we're going to have the centers, and you might just list what your centers are. 725 to 745 is reading time. 745, children with the parents with the parent educator. That just kind of again, helping people see what to expect when they come to school. Parents and children's name tags. We strongly encourage those, and I really appreciate if you can find something that helps you have the same one week after week. What we actually did, and you'll see this in another slide, we had the name tags printed up for parents so that children can begin to pick out their name. Here's Greta. Oh, Greta finds her name. Greta begins with G, and then even as the program carries on and progresses, that Greta can find her mom's name, Kim. Everyone wears a name tag, and a great part of that is just having children become familiar with what their name looks like in print. We also have sign-in sheets. We want a parent sign-in sheet. We ask parents to commit to eight out of 10 sessions, so their signing-in is kind of that accountability piece. We also have a children's sign-in sheet. You can either have it below the parents. Of course, that one is going to want to be a little bit bigger, but we also can look at the progression of the children's handwriting or not, and most of the time it is quite a nice progression of handwriting, and having children know how to write their name is such a sense of competence and confidence. We do have recommend. This was recommended, not necessary, a requirement, but attendance charts with stickers. We have had to order those from online. We no longer can get them at Walmart, but we use an attendance chart, and it just kind of helps children with sequencing. It helps them to do that fine coordination with the fingers of bringing together their name and the date, and then the book bin labeled with books. Again, talking about just having books for checkout, but we really like a specific book bin, and then a welcome to gearing up for kindergarten sign. Many of those, as you can put up around your place, that is great. So here's some examples. There's a book bin, and then backpack books. The teacher just says, please return your books, and you can check out a new book at the end of class. If you look to the left of that screen, it's the schedule for the evening. There's an example of a parent sign-in sheet on the left and name tags. Some of our teachers use them with Velcro. Some of our teachers use them, have used clothes pins that clasp and close, but definitely if you can have those name tags for children can identify their names. All right, continued. If you can, it's wonderful for children to be able to have a coat hook where they find their name and hang their coat or a locker or a cubby for the children. That's what's going to happen when they go to kindergarten. In one of our locations, they have doors on their cubbies, and so they just put the Gearing Up for Kindergarten name tags on the inside of the door and then pop them out on the outside of the door at the night of gearing up, and when the children have gone home, they pop them back in. Again, allowing the children to check out a book each week. You'll see that we have cable tents. Those are on the Gearing Up for Kindergarten CD as part of the centers, and we'll talk about that as you see the visual of it, but that's something to have ready. Have your story time ready with parents and routines. You want to, when your evening starts, let's say you start at six o'clock and you're going from six to 6.45, and at 6.45 begins the parent half of the evening, you want to have a story time, perhaps around 6.30, 6.35, where children are sitting in their parents' laps and they're hearing the story. That's one of those things where you really want parents to see what model, what shared reading looks like, getting their children excited for reading. Some of your families, the kids are gonna know exactly what to do and they're used to this, and other families, their children have not sat that still for a very long time, at least not without a television or a video game. So we encourage, as you see, it says story time with parents and again with students. What that means is story time with parents and children together, and then after the parents have gone, story time again with children. At the beginning of each lesson in the classroom teachers curriculum, there's a list of recommended books for you to use. Each evening, if you look in the children's curriculum, there's the centers that are there and there's a list of the theme for the evening and recommended books and kind of the objective of the evening. When you do story time with parents, you can use some of those books that are there. I think the first week is what to expect when you're going to kindergarten and Pete the Cat rocking in my new school shoes is the book. Well, if you don't have Pete the Cat, what do you have that talks about starting school? You don't necessarily have to use those books. Those are suggestions and certainly if your district has the funds, I would encourage you to buy them. And then when the parents leave doing stories with children and you might just have a favorite book that is not there and we're great with you using that and maybe even a take home activity. One of the things last week was a site that we visited Pete the Cat rocking in my new school shoes. They actually made Pete the Cat and they gave him shoes. It was just adorable. I can tell you that is not in the garing up curriculum, how adorable and how appropriate. I wanna take this minute to say, do what you do well. We are about intent of adhering to the concept of the lesson, not necessarily each specific activity because if you're going to do something at the end of the day after you've taught all day and you've got centers in your classroom, I want you to feel so comfortable with using what you have already and adapting it to that concept of letter recognition for the first letter in the name or some patterning activities. Please use what you have, keeping it in mind that it is at a four year old level, developmentally not a five year old level. I want you not to reinvent the wheel, I want you to do what you do well. And at the same time, these are certainly guidelines because there is an evaluative process where we wanna see are the children making progress? Can they recognize the beginning letter sounds more than they did when they started the program? So that's the kind of thing that we're really encouraging you to be who you are. Establish a snack time routine. You know, snack is not necessarily the most important thing in the world, but snack in a classroom is one of those things that allows people to take turns, it allows them to wait, it allows children to be part of cleanup. So we just do something very simple, we don't do bottled water at all, we do cups of water that we poured out of a pitcher, and we have like three rotating snacks, I think Goldfish crackers, Mila wafers, and I believe gummy fruits or something like that, not expensive snacks, but that whole part of the children being part of community and sharing a meal together or a snack if you will, and just spending that time together being part of community. So that snack time routine, five, 10 minutes tops, but boy, there's a lot that you can pack in as a teacher. You well know that about keeping things, about keeping things, building community there. Literacy activities. Once the parents have left using what you have, taking those stories that are there, but using what you have, songs and charts and marches, that's where you draw on who you are and what you do well each and every single week. So definitely I want you to be able to use what you're doing in your classroom currently, what you did with your children today, and as long as it's at a four-year-old level, that's a wonderful thing and we want you to be able to do what you're already doing well with these gearing up for kindergarten children. And then at the end, it's nice to have a transition song, a goodbye song, basically saying we'll see you next week, we're glad you were here. All of you have those, I know that. And just go ahead and, you know, that's kind of creating that process, that procedure, that routine. So children know what to expect and hopefully children know what to anticipate as well. So some of the things we talked about in that last couple of slides was there's an example of an attendance chart. And if you notice on this attendance chart, we actually went every other line because they are so small, but we had all our dates on there and we had the kids putting up stickers for attendance. They loved doing that. There's an example. We had three children to a cubby or to a little bit of a coat hook. There were room for three hooks. We just popped those on the inside during the week and then then either gearing up, we just pulled those out so the children could find their name and their cubby. There's a great deal going on, as you know, in the world of a four-year-old where the children are finding their cubby, they're finding where they fit. They're finding their place of belonging in the classroom and gearing up is very, very much like that. So if you can do things like this ahead of time and get it ready, then boom, you're ready to go that the night of gearing up for kindergarten. And then it becomes a little bit easier for you to just implement the program because you've got all the pieces that you need in place and ready to go. All right, let's go to the next slide. If you have any questions, go ahead and type them in the box as I'm proceeding. For a lot of you, this is up. Yup, this just makes sense, but if something comes up, especially if it's for the good of the group, I would love to address it. If you didn't have a coordinator, that belongs to where you're going to be assigning jobs. Who's gonna handle this? Who's gonna handle that? Who's gonna make the signage? The great part about making the signage is once you've made it for the first time, you're done and you don't have to make it again. And also too, then, if you did it last year, we have our signs up over from last year this year because we laminated them, which I would encourage you to do if you can because then you don't have to do it again next year. So as you prepare, the nothing but was program preparation for how it's gonna run smoothly at your school. Teachers individually, when you start to look at week one, it's what to expect, an overview of the topic because the topic is what to expect, well, what to expect where, when you come to kindergarten. The classroom book for the teacher is literally got a booklet. The parents have the binder where there's the PowerPoint materials in there. And also on CD, the reason you get to it with each set of curriculum on the CD is all the information needed for both of you, parent, person and child educator to print out the materials that you need to do the program. So get your materials, know your topic, get your materials printed out. When you look at a lesson plan to meet the needs of all learners, I really do know that you already do that. When you're putting a center out there and you're doing letter identification or sound identification somewhere, we know that children are gonna do it at the level that they're at. As we progress on in this, you will see where the table tent comes into play to explain to parents what it is they're doing with their child. And this is a great place to stop and say to you, you know, you're not orchestrating exactly step-by-step do this, then this, then that, but sometimes in your role as a classroom teacher, you're going to see during center time when parents are coming in with their children, maybe mom's texting, and we really do talk about, this is one-on-one time opportunity for you to build into relationship with your child, but also opportunity for you to see what school readiness looks like and obviously if they're texting, they're not fully focused. We ask the parent person to definitely address that in their session and we ask the classroom teachers to model that, that your cell phones are put off in a way during your instructional time. There have been a couple of times where I've had to say to people, in this role that I'm hiring you for, this is the expectation that I have. And sometimes we try and be, we walk softly around things when we need to just be politely direct and say, this is the expectation. So my expectation as the coordinator of this program is that educators will model being the hardest-working person that these families see and also that these are people who are invested fully into relationship and we're putting our cell phones away. When we see that then, we're able to, as we're not, as we're focusing on the families, we're able to go in and help parents say, oh, well, this is how we could do this or this is how we could do that or your name is Nancy, so we would find the N and say to your little one, everybody's name begins with the letter. Mommy's name is Nancy, it begins with M. Mrs. Conurs's name is Judith and then they'd find the J. You could have modeled for parents when they don't know. Most of the time what happens is they learn from each other, just like a group learning situation. But sometimes the teacher needs to really be observant and be that eagle eye to go in and support them in implementing this opportunity, this learning opportunity with their child to support them in success in doing that. Your supplies, I can't say this enough. Two weeks in advance helps so much just so you're not scrambling. However, I have said it enough times that I won't say it anymore. We do say to teachers, we'd like you there 15 minutes before the start of class and 15 minutes after to set up so that you're ready for your day the next day. If there is more than one classroom in the building, we want you to open your doors at the same time. So we all know that there are some families who are gonna slide in the door right the minute class begins and there's other families who are gonna be there 15 minutes early. I would encourage you to have some books for parents to read, something that they can do while your classroom door is closed before you open it up. If there's two of you and you decide we're ready five minutes before we're gonna open the door, that's great. But I would like it to be at the same time so parents feel like, oh, I get more. I don't get more out of this room than that room kind of situation. But let's just say you do start at 6 p.m. My thoughts are that you plan on being there at 5.45. I'm guessing that you've got your materials ready when you left to run home and grab a bite of dinner. And then plan on being there 15 minutes after getting yourself ready. Be a clockkeeper though. Be a clockkeeper if parents are talking to you, clean up while they're talking to you because you have to be to work the next morning. And I know that people don't need to take advantage of us but sometimes they do. And so as we just say, oh, I'm so excited for tonight. It was a great night and I know that your little one needs rest and so do you. And I wanna be fresh for my class tomorrow. That sends a signal of self-respect but it also puts a thought into parents mind, oh yeah, that's right. My child does need to rest and maybe help them think about their time and are they using and respecting their own time and other people's time. So it's not a lecture kind of thing but it is definitely a kind of a respect thing where you're showing respect for yourself and respect for them. Feel free to be cleaning up but if you're hitting that 15 minute window, put your code on and say, I'll walk out with you. Most of you know that and I hope you do that anyway but in case you're just feeling like what if they have 10 questions? You can tell them that you'd be happy to answer their questions during class next week or send them to the parent educator and have that person address them but I don't want you stuck there late at night. Wear it all possible, walk out with the buildings and twos, threes and fours as well and try and park in a lighted spot. Know who you are and where you are in your building. Some of you are in small schools and you've been there 20 years, that's great but if you're in a place where the parent person is in, you know, the parent classes are in one room, the child cares in another, we had a situation where it was actually really across the building, one on the east side and one on the west side due to where rooms were assigned so that you know where parents go, having arrows sometimes, you need to do that depending on the size of your school and the familiarity but as a classroom teacher, know where everything is, know where the parent session is, know where the child care is located for other children. All right, so if we take a look at this next slide, this is from the evening. What is this going to look like? What to expect in kindergarten? And this is one of the parent handouts that parents will see. As a classroom teacher, you can see this. Okay, what we're going to have in gearing up for kindergarten, the overview of what gearing up for kindergarten is going to look like, the beginning of the evening is a parent child activity time. We are together, we're doing these centers that I talked about. Then that is followed by a circle time where parents and children read together, do a lot of literacy activities and that time is specifically designed as a literacy based time. So if we look at six to 6.30, 6.35 and then 6.35 or so to 6.45, really locking in that great enjoyable literacy time. And then the parents go and they do a parent session and for the next 45 minutes, and usually actually the truth is it's about 40 by the time that transition has taken place. And then the children are with the classroom teacher. So the parents are learning from a parent educator. This is actually a copy of a handout that they would take home on that first week. So that they remember, oh yeah, that's right, that's what's happening every week and gearing up for kindergarten. This is how our protocol looks. So then the children are with the classroom teacher and they are doing social integration, social activities, marching activities, reading activities. This 40 minute period is where you as a classroom teacher, you absolutely get to shine with your children and do what you do best. And that is all the things that make you naturally, creatively and resourcefully a teacher. Reading with them, doing some patterning in the way that you do them. Make something, that's just fine. Letting them play at the centers for a little bit and then probably checking out a book at the end of the evening. The parents are in there and every week there's a topic for them. This week, this first week, the topic is what to expect. And so it's telling them about the expectations of the program, what to expect it to look like for them, but also then following dovetailing and that the creators of this were very wise, they dovetail what to expect when your child enters kindergarten. So that's setting the table for, we're going to set the table for you to prepare you for success for your child in kindergarten. One of the parts of the parent session that is vital and just kids love it, it takes a little bit of tweaking, especially if you've run the program before and you're not used to this, is each week in the parent session, parents create a take home activity that they could do during the week with their children. And you'll see an example of one on here tonight. That piece there takes a little doing. It's kind of like juxtaposing something side by side. You're putting that parent education where you're interacting and talking with parents, but at the same time, they're also doing this take home activity, getting it ready so that everything that we're talking about, education's every day in every way, we're giving them something they can practice during the week at home with their child. So this first week, it takes a little bit longer to get through it just because they have not done it before. But by about the third week, parents are used to this. They come in and whether you have it, if you're the parent person and you have it laid out on the table for them, ready to pick up, or you have it at their tables already for them just to pull off, however you choose to do that is just fine. But getting yourself, you need to have a sample of it for them so they know what it looks like. And then helping them get started on that before you get started on the parent session in that week's topic. The parent session materials are fabulous. There are also more that you can, more than you can possibly use. One of my sites voted there's an icebreaker in there. In fact, every week, there's two icebreakers. I love it. Kim Busch, I did those and oh, she's so creative. But that site decided that that first week when they got to know each other, they were going to this fence with the icebreakers each week because they wanted to talk about their successes and even their struggles that last week in implementing the program or something they learned. And so they opted out of the icebreaker portion in order to have that portion of let's talk about last week so let's kind of review it. What's working well for us? What questions do we have? Also too, each of the PowerPoints is, you have to go through it at record pace if you're going to get through it all. So choose well. I had one sweet little teacher think she had to read every single word and it was almost falling flat and that's what I don't want. In fact, if the PowerPoint doesn't work for you to do piece by piece, don't do it. Make highlights for yourself and cover it in the way that as a parent educator is true to you. We want this to reflect an interactive, friendly, non-threatening learning atmosphere. So do it how it works for you. However, before there was no structure and now there is a structure for you to use. So I'm going to move on to the next slide which kind of focuses on what the parent-child activity looks like. So each week in the parent-child activity time, that first 45 minutes, there are centers and there in your curriculum in that booklet, there's a literacy center, a math center, sometimes two, a science center and a sensory motor center. And they're all color coded so that you know I believe it's math is green, sensory motor is purple, that every week when you flip open your book, one of the things and I so credit the talented team at the NDSU Design Center, I said, you've got to make this easy for educators. They've been working with children all day, they've taught all day, they're going to run home real quick. We can't make this so that they have to peel the layers and figure out what it's supposed to look like. So those centers are super easy, easy, love and squeezy as my brother would say. Easy to look at, easy to see what it is and what I hope is even easier for you to say, oh, I've already got this center here, it's very similar to that in the tweak of the tish and I'm going to use that. Again, I don't want to reinventing the wheel but the curriculum is so nicely done that you can see what it is. I will say that the researchers pull some of our science activities in particular and tweak them with their own. If you're having success, I want to hear it and if you're having struggles, I want to hear it. That was the one piece that, as I saw this go to press, I was feeling like, wow, we're still going to need some input from the people in the field. So if you're having great success in it, now this is a fantastic activity, just shoot me a quick email and tell me that. Science activity in this lesson was just great or conversely, oh my goodness, what were they thinking? There's a couple on there that I wasn't real clear on. When the educators who wrote those activities did them, they actually walked through them and for whatever reason some of the researchers pulled them. So we don't have quite the marriage that I'm looking for. That being said, it might just have worked out just well but your input is valuable and I welcome it. Then in that first part of the evening where parents and children are still together, that part that I talked about, that circle time where you're having stories with children and discussion with children and parents, one of the teachers was so sweet. His parents said, yes, but isn't using picture clues cheating and she said, oh well, actually that's a great pre-reading learning activity and a way for children to identify this word is telling, this picture is showing us something in these are the words that describe it. So sometimes it's also that opportunity to help parents understand what is literacy based and what is not. So I just got kind of excited about that, that opportunity to help parents see that literacy is not cheating, it's not cheating to point, it's not cheating to use pictures. And sometimes two of them say, well, you know that word and a child gets frustrated to say to parents at four years old happily say the word for them. That's the word story and the word right next to it is time. We want parents to feel empowered and not expect, I had one teacher report to me this morning that her grandson was at gearing up for kindergarten and she said, well, he only did one thing wrong and I said, oh, he was making eyes at the little boy sitting next to him and I said, well, actually, you know, he's learning, he sat well in the evening, he listened and he participated and remember we're on a learning journey, we're not on a journey of perfection, we're on a learning journey. That grandma was so keyed onto that he was born, he could do all these things right and I wanted to encourage that, I'm happy that he could at the same time just because he was making Google eyes at the little boy next to him, he was not disrupting, he was not interested and you know, we're on a learning journey, we're not here to have little robots and I just said to that grandma, wow, sounds like he's doing a great job and he's in the learning journey, we can sure support that, can't we? And I don't know if I gave her food for thought or not but I wanted her to know, we don't expect them to sit there and be robots, they're little peoples and at that, they're learning little peoples. Okay, so if you look at this, this is in the booklet that the classroom teacher gets and so it says, okay, here's your literacy center's red, your math center's are green, your science center is blue and your sensory motor center is purple. So you see in a glass what centers you're gonna have, you see the books, this is the first week for the classroom teacher as well, Pete the cat rocking in my new school issues, the kissing hand which I just love and Tom goes to kindergarten, you can use any and all that you have, if you don't get to all of them, use some of them, then it talks about gathering together at that circle time because especially that first week, they will not have experienced that before. And then just that discussion, what takes place with the children? You know, about coming to school, what are your feelings about coming to Gary Nut for kindergarten? That'll be kind of like going to school and using what books and talking about how the kids felt about going to school. We give you some thumbnail bullet points of what the evening should look like and then I love at the bottom the big idea. So we give you what we hope is what you need to set you up for success in the evening but also and probably more importantly so that you just have that sense of knowing what you're doing and also not feeling like, okay, this is not another full-time job but this is something that's just an extension of what I'm doing every day and every way with my children at school, if I'm a mom with my children at home, in my case with my grandchildren when I see them. So this is the front page of your lesson each week and here's what you can expect and it's always what the title of the lesson is. The next one is, here's an example of the learning center. So if you look at that, literacy alphabet letter play. So our rationals letting children learn how to spell their names, the names of their family members, they gain some letter and sound recognition, your supply. So if you have a set of alphabet letters and you're ready to go, you could skip this part and just pull out your alphabet letters but these very creative and resourceful teachers said take the lid off a milk and juice bottle and with a Sharpie permanent marker, use those as for your letters. So you'd have a capital A and a lowercase a, capital B, lowercase b and use those. Some of you if you start now and your program doesn't start for three more weeks, you're gonna collect all you need from your other staff members and some of you are gonna say, oh, that's way too much work. I'm going to use the letters that I have. So then there's a little bit of direction. You just want to have parents help children find the lids with the letters of their name on it. So you probably want a couple of sets going on there and then have them put their name in order while naming them. What you see below that, that alphabet letter play is actually an example of the table tent and that table tent is gonna be in the middle of the table because this literacy alphabet letter play, this thing is in your book but what you print off of the CD is that table tent. And so when you print that table tent, I would strongly encourage you to print it on card stock. If you get a chance to laminate it, great, because then you can use it again next year but print it, put it as a table tent on that center so that parents can see what to do with it. You could even have an example and have the letters written Mary or something, just have it when you have those letters set out. I like less and less structure in that way to let parents look at the table tent, see what other people are doing, see what they come up with as the program goes on. This first couple of weeks, it's kind of guiding them that modeling of how we do these centers. Sink or float, there's a plastic container with water and paper towels and the children get to see what those objects do and then obviously pulling them out. You're gonna need lots of paper towels because of course this is a great fun activity for children. But this is an example of two of our centers from that very first week of gearing up for kindergarten. The table tents are just kind of served as a guide for parents of what it looks like. If you look at your next slide, that's an example of a table tent card. So you'd print that off, again, I said on card stock would be a great idea and then fold it over. That way parents know what to do with their children and especially if you're busy greeting people and other families are coming in and they're getting ready to go, they can look at that and see what to do. You invite them in and say, we have lots of learning centers. If you wanna go ahead and spend some time with your child exploring what we have out there, I will be visiting with you a little bit more later on some other things but enjoy the first few minutes together at our learning centers or whatever. All of this is on the CD for you. The previous slide, I'm gonna go back to it for a second. That classroom teacher who's teaching children, children's classroom teacher, this is in your book. This piece here is on your CD for you to print up. So sometimes you have to go back and forth till you get familiar with what's located where. So one of the things we did for you and I'm gonna take a quick sip of water here. Okay, so one of the things that we did for you as we wanted you to have a list of all the books in the Gearing Up for Kindergarten program. It's kind of like the supply list, which by the way, should be up on the website. I'm pretty excited. If you were doing a 10 session Gearing Up for Kindergarten program, the supply list for that should be up on the website. We tried to make a general supply list that pertain to all the lessons of gearing up for kindergarten if you did everything. And so I'm sorry, my opus phone is ringing. I'm actually gonna see what I can do to shut it off. Okay, there we go. I hope they don't call me back. This is not my phone, it's my secretaries and at the moment I can't see the buttons. Anyway, let's take a look here and you look at this book list. And so when you looked back at that overview for the week or for the lesson, you saw Pete the cat rocking in my school shoes, the kissing hand and Tom goes to kindergarten. What we wanted to give you was a general sense of before you start the program, I'm just gonna let it go. We wanted to give you a general sense of the program before you started it and say, oh, okay, what books do I already have, especially like starting school books, what books do I already have in my library or what books are similar to it so that you get that opportunity to look at what you have and be ready ahead of time. It's the same with the supply list that we put on the website for you. We put that supply list on the website so that you can look at ahead of time what you might need and what we're hoping is that we've actually saved you some time by doing that. So if you follow through and you look at that session two is on parenting style, session three is on brain development. Now, this is all the sessions in order. There is also a 10 week book list and I believe that that is on, I think when we go through at the end of this PowerPoint, it's what the 10 sessions are if you do the 10 week gearing up for kindergarten. It was originally designed as a 16 week program. Some sites are doing 16, the majority are doing 10. So this is the 16 week book list. As we head the end of this training, you will see what 10 lessons we recommend you use if you are only doing the 10 week series. But we just wanted you to have this 16 week book list. And okay, so what just dawned on me and I will make a note of this right now. Okay, I'm just checking something really, really quick here. I'm looking at your questions. I'm gonna finish my thought here, which is I actually need to send you the attachment of the 16 week book list. I realized what I did was I sent you a sample and I did not send you the 16 week book list. So that will be sent out to you tomorrow. Okay, a couple of things. Do you typically have the parent child share the letters with the other parent child teams? You know, we don't. Basically what we do is we put the letters out and when our children go, and Cory, if I'm not answering this right, type it in there and tell me, but we put the letters out and I try and have three or four sets of letters out there and we're letting people play with them. But then when they leave to another center, I just then the next team walks in and does them. Our families flow freely back and forth from centers. The only thing that I can think of unless I'm not reading your question clearly is do you share your letters with, let's just say, you're teaching on Monday night and somebody's teaching on Tuesday night. You absolutely can do that. What I find is that most classroom teachers have their own letters and so, you know, they have enough. But if not, absolutely share with other teachers. Some of us are doing it, you know, some of us are doing it one night and we're doing it with you two next door to us. Obviously we can't share because we both need them. Okay, Mary Kay, you don't have the CD. I'm not sure what district you're from. If you would send me an email, your CDs should have arrived with your curriculum and they should actually be tucked in the binder. I would ask you to go back and check because we've had a number of people say, I didn't get them and then they go back and they check and they're tucked in to the very front pocket of the parent educator binder. And sometimes what happens is the classroom teacher gets the booklet and the parent educator has the binder and my golly, she finds out there's two sets of CDs in there, one for you and one for her. Please go back and check and if not, please email me and with your district, here I just see Mary Kay too and I don't have all the information, we will see to it that you get one. We don't want anybody not to get their materials. So if you are missing materials, I do ask you to go back and double check because that has happened before and then if not, we sure want to know about it. Okay, all right, so 16 week book list. Here's something to get you started and you'll get the real one tomorrow from me. Okay, let's go on to the children's class time. So we've had that 45 minutes together, parents and children and then the parents leave. And this is where I just absolutely love and I've said this already this evening but you're doing what you do best. I always say classroom teachers and they close their door and it's just them and their kids. They have so much fun but that's when the real learning happens. And so we're looking at, you know, they wash their hands and have a snack. They read another story and maybe they do some actions to the story or they make an activity to go with the story or they do book checkout and they do some marching to a song. This little teacher that you see here, Marina Kojak, she gets her kids marching and they do some patterns and they do some right foot, left foot. They do some all kinds of things. This is not a structured time that you have curriculum for actually. This is a time again where I say, please be who you are, do what you do well and excuse me, I'm conducting your training so I wouldn't be able to visit with you, I'm sorry. But this is actually a time where we're able to just let us be who we are and instead, just organically, those things that our children are learning, right foot, left foot, you know, some of those clap, clap once, clap, clap twice, those kinds of things. So we are just super excited to let you be who you are and if you've not done this before and you have any questions or concerns, that's where I want you to call me and I'm gonna put you in touch with some other teachers who do this because most of our teachers say that is one of their most fun times of the evening but I wanna be sure that you're feeling supported in that because it is a time, especially if you're a new teacher, where that might seem really vague for you and you would like a structure and so I could put you in touch with some people who are very good at that sort of thing. So if you have any questions on that one, please make sure that you let me know, okay? So I actually just said that. You are on your own for this timeframe. This is classroom educator, okay? So things that you can do and one of my teachers who is just so cool, she said, well, I read the book Who Stole the Cookies from the Cookie Jar and then I have a game with that Who Stole the Cookies from the Cookie Jar and then she said, I believe it's a Dr. Jean thing and this game works great. Oh no, the song letter size is a Dr. Jean thing but she said this game works as an ice breaker because they put the kids' names on the cookie jar and they pull the names out. So this is an idea of what you could do during that time if you were wondering what it is I would do. So this teacher, this is from Jacob. I just absolutely love her and she said, well, I read Who Stole the Cookies from the Cookie Jar. I've got these little cookies that I print out with their names on them and then they take their names on and we just kind of get the rhythm going Who Stole the Cookies from the Cookie Jar? Mary stole the cookies from the Cookie Jar and then she has her name on it and she finds her name out of the cookie jar. The letter size song is from Dr. Jean. They eat a snack and they talk and they check out books and Jacob said, my goodness, I would love to do more but really that took 40 minutes, especially the first night when you're getting to the news to this whole new wonderful idea. All right, let's go to the parent education portion. This is our fabulous parent. Cory, we talked about the checking out books when we started, how about if you and I chat after we hang up and we'll get that going for you, okay? I'm gonna write it down so I don't forget. In the parent session, in the parent session, this is our fabulous Laura Knox. This is when we put three groups of garing up for kindergarten parents together and I'll tell you we decided that was too big. These were very large classrooms of 15 students each, which meant 15 parents, sometimes times two and so we had too many parents. So we do recommend no more than two per one parent educator per evening but this is Laura working with the parents and so Laura meets with the parents and so she's, if you can notice, this one mom is kind of leaning here at the front but there's somebody looking at, he's cutting out his stuff. In the parent session, Laura always laid out on the table at the front materials for parents to pick up as they walked in and so she'd say, please pick up your materials from the evening as you walk in, come on over and have a seat and then right away, she would show them, this is our take home activity for this week, this is what you're going to be working on. I've got the supplies there for you. You picked up the materials and now I've got the crayons and the markers in the glue, by the way, before I forget, please tell parents, if you've got a pair of good working scissors, bring them. Pop them in your purse and bring them because it's very hard for a classroom teacher to come up with that many needed sets of adult scissors. Children's scissors, no problem, but adult scissors, that's one of those things that, you know, we don't have multiple sets of usually. So, and a lot of our activities do involve some cutting out but we, Laura has parents pick up the stuff and she shows them right away that parent take home activity, gets them working on it and then she starts talking with them about the topic of the evening. That way they can get started right away, they can be working on it throughout the evening but they don't have to be so intense about worried about getting it caught up. So, that's a picture of what it looked like there. This was actually before we had the PowerPoint so Laura doesn't have a PowerPoint ahead of her. She does use the PowerPoint now. Some of my facilitators do and some do not. But this is the purpose of the parent educator program. It helps them understand the importance of working with their child during the class. You know, oftentimes we have parents say, oh, I'd love to enroll my children in this program and they have no clue that it's about them. Why are you there? Because we want you to know that you're building a relationship with your child. You're also learning how to support them in their readiness for school by doing appropriate developmental things for your children and with your children at home. We want parents in the parent session to share their experiences. You know, sometimes people are free to say, wow, I tried that and that didn't work. And other times nobody is free, you know, they don't have that openness. And so just really saying, we have this common shared ground that we want our children to succeed in school. School has changed what does readiness look like in sharing the things that they're doing that are working. That take home activity, especially after about the second week is a great platform for discussion. Did you do this with your child this week? What were the aha moments? What did they like about it? You know, one mom said to me, yes, we play it every day, 10 times a day. She said, I'm ready for the next activity next week. But that was a great thing. They did it, they applied it and the child loved it. And mom's like, okay, I'm kind of dense. Your parent person, who you are, is really not necessarily have to be an early childhood teacher. It might be somebody who is just so great with parents. It might be the reading coach. It might be the principal. It's whoever you have, whoever in your district you have thought would work really well with parents and that's the key. Sometimes as a classroom teacher, they'll say to me, I can do anything with kids. And when the parents walk into me, I get a little bit, oh my goodness. So we don't want somebody to be intimidated by that. That being said, if you have a crackerjack teacher and she is not going to teach to the children, but she's interested, some of my best parent educators are people who have not been initially comfortable working with parents, but love empowering parents. I have one over at a school right now and she's fantastic. The first few times she did it last year, she was, am I good? Is this working? Am I okay? And now she's such a natural, it's unbelievable. And parents just love her. If you're not a kindergarten teacher and you're the parent educator and you get a question you can't answer, then you ask a kindergarten teacher. That's normally how it works or give me a call. I'm certainly available for that. Most of the time, you know the answers, but if you don't, you don't have to find your way through and say, you know what, I'll give that to you on that. And so again, record that question. That's probably more for my benefit because I forget, but record the question and then get an answer and if you can respond next week. And then begin each session by reviewing last week session. Again, I mentioned to you that one of our groups just said, we're gonna dispense with the ice breaker because we want to review last week's session. And in a way that is an ice breaker for each week. So that's some stuff about what you can do as a parent educator. What we also want parents to understand is that this is preparation for your child to learn responsibility and routine and procedure. Look at all the things that are up there that you know, oh my goodness, maybe they're not used to one teacher and 15 children. Maybe they're used to just boarding out because it's you and them at home all day as a mom and they have no idea that in a classroom we're gonna learn to raise my hand to be heard or routines for cleanup. The cool part about this is in some ways this program is a parent's best friend because these are things parents want. They want their kids to learn to clean up. They want their kids to use an appropriate voice level. I always tell parents in this program that if you're the parent educator, say you know how many of you, especially if you just have one or two children, always let your children choose. You should choose once in a while and say, you know, it's family night tonight and you chose pizza last week and the week before you chose hot dogs. You know what, I think I'm gonna choose soup and grilled cheese and be comfortable in your choice of not always letting your children choose. Sometimes parents don't understand that single-minded attention to their child has not been entirely beneficial in helping their children belong to community and that's really truly the underpinnings of this is belonging well, safely, effectively and feeling confident in being part of community. And of course for some of our children they've not been away from parents and this certainly sets the table to build them up for success so it doesn't happen the first week of school. So those are some things that we really emphasize to parents and as a parent educator that is absolutely your privilege to help them do that. So this is what the evening looks like for parents. Can we introduce the topic that create family activities to take home that's part of the evening. We do introduce it right at the beginning of the evening so parents have that opportunity to get that project going from the get-go and it gives them something to do quite honestly it gives them something to do. This is one of our larger schools that's another shot of having way, I think we had like 60 sets of parents in there that's a lot of parents. So we do make it a little smaller the more intimate it is the more connected families can get. We did notice however though as large as this group was tables certainly connected up well. So in the lesson you're going to see the topic introduction you're going to see the objectives of the program the icebreaker, the main content switching gears is when we move to a new area of the curriculum, creating the family take home activity and then every week there are handouts for parents to take home and parent tip cards. And those parent tip cards are fantastic you'll get a chance to see them in this slide show. Some of them are take a walk and you flip a, do me a flip a quarter head you go right, tails you go left. What do you see on your walk? It might be a discovery walk. Some of them are simple rhymes you can do with your kids. For these take home cards I encourage you whoever prints them up I encourage you to print them on a card stock have a hole punch and then you get an O ring so that parents can put them on a ring and just kind of hang them from their fridge or have them in the car with them. This is by far one of our most popular pieces of the program. Parents love those parent tip cards. Easy peasy simple things that parents can do with their children. So the parent tip cards and the take home activities definitely are those tangible things that people take home with them and they're reminders of the topic of the week. So if we go to our next slide this is what it looks like for the parent educator this is kind of okay over to the right it's showing you exactly what's going to happen in the children's session. They're the centers that they're going to go through in the circle time. So the parent educators got a clue of what's happening with the children and really they should be working together. In fact I wanna say parent educator your official role begins when you take the parents. I encourage you to be the one when the classroom teachers in her classroom getting ready I'm encouraging you to be the one to meet them at the door and greet them and welcome them and help them find their child's name and what room they're in. I encourage you to walk around in the classroom and support the teacher particularly that first couple of weeks for families who might be on the cell phone or might be where proximity is a great thing. You know if you don't wanna be condemning but you wanna be inviting and welcoming and saying oh you know I'm so glad you're here and let's go ahead and do this activity and kind of just support them in doing things well with their child. Parent educator I also understand that you need to have your stuff ready and so you might have to pop out but boy if you can support that classroom teacher in rounding the kids up for that first week of story time around the carpet and where children are sitting on their parents' lap you are a great resource and everything you do with the classroom educator is stuff that you can take with you and tell parents of the parent session. For instance if you see that parents are doing things for their children you can talk about how wonderful it is that parents wanna support their children in that way and then encourage them in letting the children do some of that because the really cool part about that is a loving parent often does things for their children and sometimes doesn't understand that you're really setting them up for confidence and success when you do it with them and then let them do it independently. So parent educator you're kind of like the eyes and the ears to things that you can bring up to support parents and being effective and good parents for their children to excuse me there's some talking out here so I'm just gonna have to my head out but you're the one can be the eyes and ears to what's going on with the parents and then support the classroom teacher in that by talking with the parents about how they can be effective in using that with their children. The next page is a parent session handout. What do you expect in kindergarten? And so this is something that goes home with parents at night. This is one of the handouts. You don't always have to print all the handouts. You take the ones that you think are effective and useful for you. When I look at this one what to expect in kindergarten if I were to go over that with the parents that's just way too many points. You might pull a couple of key points and then use this might be one of those things that you could even look at it as a progressive list. At the beginning of gearing up for kindergarten we wanna support you in identifying a couple of these things. Identifying some are all the letters of the alphabet or how does my child play with other children? How can I support them in playing better with other children? But if we went through that whole list it would take up our whole 40 minutes. Sometimes I hand out the handout, sometimes I do not or sometimes I do and I say let's highlight a couple of these that you think your child does really well and let's circle a couple of these that you would like to work on. Otherwise you just get inundated with something that's just too much. All right, the next slide is the word find walk. That's one of the parent tip cards. I just absolutely love it. And this is one of those things like I said if you print this on card stock and you put it in a whole bunch and put it on a three-wing binder, look at this one before leaving the house make a list of words you will likely see on the walk. Well mom and dad you're gonna be doing that, right? Maybe you see a stop sign, maybe you see grass, maybe you see children playing. Some of it is signs, maybe some of it is people. And then you can look for those, this is a lot of you try to look for those words so maybe this is not grass because obviously you're not gonna see the word grass on top of grass. But how fun is that? And you can take that word find walk and maybe you're the mom and you say, well there's not a lot of signs in our neighborhood but you can help parents see this and you say I might take the four by six cards and write the word grass in green and draw some little green grass and when your children find grass show them the word grass or sun, S-U-N and draw sun. You can take any of these parent tip cards and use them in a plethora of ways and that's what's so neat about this is that you as a parent educator you get to put your creative hat on and help people see the possibilities of education being every day in every way with their child. When you think about your children growing up it's not that we did things one way all the time. As an educator you have a lot of creative and resourceful ways and you can use these parent tip cards. You can use that last page that we just had in ways that bring the learning to life and bring parents' abilities to bring learning to life, bring them home to them. And that's really when you think about that that's what we're empowering parents to do is bring learning to life for their kids and know that they have the tools within them. This next family activity is actually not one from the first lesson that I just wanted you to see it. This is where in the social and emotional realm you would take five pennies and you would put them in your pocket and you would remember to commit to giving yourself some positive feedback. I was working with a mom last week and her little girl happened to be at mom's mother's of preschoolers and we were setting up for the next day and this little girl was helping her mom. She was putting the things on the table and placing them and all the while mom was talking to the little mom next to her and saying about, yeah, she's really a bossy one and I have to remind her that bossy girls aren't nice girls and I thought, she is missing what this little girl is doing. This little girl was so wanting to please mom. Mom, can I put it here? Mom, should it be there? And I thought about how even that grandma said, well, he only did one thing wrong. So I love this praise activity. This would have been where that mom could have put a penny in her pocket, pulled it over and said, Abby, I absolutely love how you are making sure that the table's set up so the ladies know what to expect tomorrow morning and you have placed those things so beautifully. Sometimes as parents, we over praise about nothing and then sometimes we're so critical and so I like this activity. Parent educator, again, you're the one who brings it to life, being specific. You know what? I like it how you showed up on time when mom called you down for breakfast this morning because you knew that we had to leave and wow, you came when mom called you. Now that's an effective praise. They actually know what they did and they can be appreciated for making that effort to show up on time. So who you are as the parent educator, you are the one who is helping this come to life for moms and dads to see how effective and how important their work is as parents. Okay, so now this is the family take home activity for the first week and it's called the Launching Letters Folders Game. So as a parent educator, you're gonna see in the CD, this is what it is, the directions are there, the supplies that are needed are there and what does it focus on? The early literacy learning curriculum area. And so this is something that you would see and you would print out and you would need to know what supplies you needed for it. I'm going to go to the next slide. So this next slide is the first page of that activity, Launching Letters. And what would happen here is that you would color the rocket ship and whatever however you wanted to color that and then you would cut out the rocket ship and the instructions and you would cut out each of these letters individually. That's why we give these to the parents as they start out because if you go to the next slide, okay, inside of this activity, and by the way you'll see it in its entirety in a minute, it's inside a file folder. There are nine rocket ships. If you flip back to the first page that I did, okay, now you see where those letters would fit into the rocket ship. So I do recommend this be done on card stock. It does not have to be because it does get pasted onto a file folder. The card stock part really comes in handy for those letters though, okay, the B, the E, the H, the K. So parents are going to, it says color, the nine rocket ships and the game label. This Launching Letters is the game label, okay? Then it says cut them out and glue them in alphabetical order on a sturdy file folder. Then you're going to cut out the game label and glued onto the front of the file folder and then you're going to cut out the letters. Now, so I'm going to just move forward here a little bit, okay? So there's the second set of the first set of rockets. Now, what would have happened is at the end, this is what it would look like, that Launching Letters that we saw three slides ago, it's been cut out and glued onto the front of the folder. You open up the folder and there are your rocket ships and you can see where the letters would fit, A, B, C, D, E, F and so on. Now, the next slide is the back of the folder. On the back of the folder, we tape a ziplock baggie, so that's one of your supplies and some clear tape and you put those letters in there. So you have a ready-made game for your child. Let's go back here now a little bit because even though we have to fill in the missing letters, you look and be on either side. Well, this is what an A looks like, this is what a C looks like. You know, and say, oh, A, and's name begins with A, D, Dan's name begins with D. This game can be, again, like everything else, can be used in such a multiple of ways. But what's important about this is as the family activity for the week, if we don't get started on this right away, let's just say we did all this other stuff, not a shot, it's going to get completed and the parents will be able to take it home. But if you look at this now, okay, and you see this, you're like, oh my goodness, so you open it up and the game is inside, the label's on the outside and on the back are the playing pieces. This is just a great way to build letter recognition. Later on, it could be letter sound recognition, but it's such an amazing way for children to begin to learn their letters and what a fun way. And the thing that's so cool about this, it makes and differentiates it if you will, from technology is it's hands-on. It's not a click of a mouse, it's not moving an icon somewhere, it's actually hands-on. So we've got some finding gross motor stuff going on. We've got some identification going on where you're literally moving it from here to there. And so that's the I-hand coordination. I just, I love the hands-on activities. I absolutely love technology, I think it's a great thing. I also know that it's both and. And so this great take-home activity, parent educator, you are the one setting the table for that. For setting families up for success and the importance of it. But what we also know is if we don't send it home with them done, the likelihood goes down substantially of it ever getting created and then parents being able to use this with their children. And that's exactly what we want. We want parents to be able to use this with their children and we want them to be able to enjoy the learning process. Look how much fun this makes learning. And for those children particularly who haven't experienced a lot of literature or read books, done things with kinesthetic find motor kind of things, this is an important piece to them, especially if children have been exposed to a lot of TV and a lot of video, we wanna give them some hands-on and help them to be able to attend and follow through with something. So this family take-home activity serves a multitude of purposes for us. All right, in this program, the reimbursement piece, and by the way, I got an inquiry from somebody today and I just want you to know that if you find up for the program, you get the full amount as long as you complete the requirements, which are using the new curriculum, doing the parent evaluations, and having this training. So you are meeting those requirements to be reimbursed. You get reimbursed at the conclusion of your programming. So part of it is we do have program evaluations. There is a parent evaluation that is a pre and a post evaluation and I recommend doing that on the second week, not the first week. The first week, as I said, we have so much going on and you're introducing that parent-child family activity that's going to be taken home. There's just so much going on that it's a little bit too much to do it all in that first week. So there's a pre and a post and I do say week two on the pre-evaluation. I'm going to go through the evaluation instructions and then there is also a child evaluation. So that's what our next focus is going to be on is the evaluation piece of the evening. Okay, so the parent evaluation is called the Practical Assessment for School Readiness and it comes to you from NDSU. If you are near your first week, you should already have received it from NDSU and the forms come in to you along with the program labels and the instructions. It happens again at the end of the program that you get the post program evaluations and they come again with the labels and the instructions. So as the parent educator, you are going to be administering this PPASR and the instructions are going to happen to do it. So I'm going to walk you through that. So in this case, the Practical Parent Assessment, this is the short form time one and actually they're all short forms. So the parents are going to take a look at this and they're going to fill out these questions. My child explores the environment and participates in new opportunities and you're going to have the parent evaluate hardly ever as a one to all the way to almost always. Parent Educator, it's really key for you that you work with parents and helping them understand that our job is not to make their child look like the most stellar child. Our job in this is to see where we can focus on areas of growth that are needed. So we have what's called feeling effects where parents want to look like a good parent and want to rate their child as well, want their child to be the smartest child and so they rate them very high and in reality they might be a little bit less, sometimes they might be a little bit more but it's called feeling effects and so Parent Educator, how you present this is very important in helping parents understand this helps us know what to focus on to help your child be ready and successful for school. So Parent Educator, you look at this form you get this form the PPASR and we're gonna go over how you label the form. You actually don't fill in all those pieces it's actually going to be a label and we'll go through that but if you look at this PPASR form it's actually folded over so it's a four piece it's four pages front and back but it's like the cover of a book and on the back is some demographic information and so this is information that helps us know what the general ability level of the children coming into the program is through the parent's eyes and your role again is important in helping parents understand we wanna support the learning process because if they're a tip top on everything then we need to up the ante but if they really do need to learn how to take turns with friends or whatever those are things that we can focus on in the classroom. So this comes to you in an envelope and the next thing that comes in the envelope is evaluation instructions. So in the evaluation instructions there's going to be a registration form that comes and actually what happens is when you give this parent perception of school readiness to parents they sign on the line and you are going to peel a label and you're actually, I'm gonna go back to that other slide and you're going to put that label in the upper right hand corner because while this is not anonymous it is confidential and everyone gets identified by a number. So in the computer we don't know that it's Mary and John Smith that's 001. All we know is 001 but as we do these evaluations 001 is Mary and John Smith and 001 is Mary and John Smith's daughter Abby. That's how we keep track because we're looking at the correspondence of the children's evaluation and how they perform to the parent evaluation. We're also looking at the cohort as a whole is how do they progress but so that upper right hand corner is going to have a label on it rather than the name. They don't have to put their names at all and we do tell parents that it is confidential but it is not anonymous, okay? So when those forms come to you also the evaluation instructions come and so we talk to parents and we say I'm talking to you now and I say okay there's gonna be the forms that the parents fill out there's an evaluation sheet and it tells you what to do with it. Okay, there's a registration sheet for parents to sign in so when you give the parents their form they're gonna sign their name and you're gonna put a label on it, 001 and the label also goes on that form and the label also goes on their child's evaluation sheet. That's how we keep track of who they are. And then the parent gets the evaluation form and we'll talk about the parent child score sheet in a minute. And then it says first session but we do the second session. We actually have the parents sign in we put the ID label there on the upper right-hand corner and then we have the parent fill out the evaluation then we put the evaluation in the envelope. If you look at the bottom we complete all of that and we send it back to NDSU. You can fax the copy of the registration sheet and then you mail a copy of the evaluation form and you don't have to fax the copy of the registration sheet if you wanna just mail them all but you mail them back to NDSU. NDSU is the gatekeeper for our pre and post data. They're the ones who are watching how our children progress. One of the things that was noted when I did my doctoral research was the significance in the social and emotional realm. As classroom teachers I know that you know that you know that if you have a child that's socially and emotionally ready. Ready to take turns, ready to listen, ready to experiment with new things. That child, even if they're a little bit low academically is going to succeed eons between a child who doesn't know how to adapt to the school environment. This program, that's where the significance in the research has come and particularly my doctoral research and showing that kind of growth in this program. So that's an amazing thing and it is also we've come to recognize then an identifier for supporting some of those special needs children as well and giving them the support that they need. So then at the end of the program you get the same packet again and if you have not gotten it by week nine we sure want to know about it because we don't want you going oh my goodness I finished the program and I don't have the evaluations. That being said, oftentimes I advise people especially if they think that week 10 is going to be a busy, exciting week I advise people to do the evaluation week nine. It's not, it's the second to the last week your children have done some extensive learning and growing and we still get a good snapshot and we seem to have a good population there the night week. That is your call to do week nine or week 10 but absolutely we need the, it works for whichever works for you but we definitely need both the pre and post data from people. So then you also mail it back just like you did the other one. Okay, so this is what that registration form looks like that you get and on that form you can see in the left that you would put that label. So Mary Jones signs in her name is Mary and her daughter's name is Anna and Mary's 001. So she puts her label there and then as the parent facilitator you're keeping track of how many times they were there and the evaluations that were completed the parent one pre and post and where it says teacher there that's actually now going to be a parent one in the classroom on their child and we'll talk about that one next. There is a new form that you get that's been tweaked a little bit. Those of you who've done the program before there is no teacher evaluation form anymore. It really was not a useful form and teachers I have so appreciated them letting us know that they did not have the children enough to really evaluate in that intensive of a manner. So there is a new form that has come up that we are using with families. So this sheet gets sent back to NDSU. You can however fax them if you want to or send back just the first week the copy of the ID label on the left the parent's name and the child's name and session one maybe even session two because that's when you did the evaluation and then you keep track of three fourths all the way through 10 and then at the end send back the total number of times that they did attend. That's your call. What I've seen done the most is the parent educator holds on to this one. Send the copy of it to NDSU with the first time evaluations. The parent educator holds onto it so they keep track of families who have attended but the classroom teacher is doing their own attendance registration and again that's so that there's some procedure routine going on so that parents have a chance to be accountable for who they are. That's just a nice way of kind of overlapping and making sure somebody's keeping the information. That's not necessary. That the classroom teacher have a sign in sheet is a great idea. The name tags, they are necessary. The sign in sheet is just a great idea and it's not hard to do and have ready but this official one where that ID label is that one doesn't need to be floating around. That one needs to be kept particularly if it's a parent educator kept tightly where nobody else could see it because that is again that confidential data that we wanna respect. We're also keeping track of people's attendance because that's part of the program and also seeing how successful it is for the children. Well, is the ratio of their success because they hit six times or is it because they did go 10 times? That data can be sifted out for us. All right, this is new this year and I'm kind of excited about it. This that you're seeing here is an assessment that the parents do on their children in the center time week two. So classroom teachers please hear this and parent educator week two, the parents are you're gonna have probably one less center or if you have room for it have an extra center but the parents need to assess their child. So if you take a look at this page what would happen is this would be on the table and there's a place where the label goes 01. It's Anna now, it's Mary Jones' daughter Anna and Mary has this sheet on the table and what she does is she puts another sheet right on top of that sheet. So she's gonna cover up, let's just take a look at, we're gonna cover up the colors and number identification. We're gonna have her look at the shapes and she's going to point to the first one and say Anna what's that? The second one, Anna what's that? The second one, Anna what's that? The fourth, or excuse me, the third one and the fourth one and so on. If the child does not get it right, mom puts an X through it and there are instructions with that. This evaluation was designed so that there was an objective evaluation that parents could do with their children the first night of class and then send it back and then see how the children do at the end of the series. So this is what's on the table. When you do that particular one, parents do not take it with them. That's not what they take with them. So what happens here, I beg your pardon, this one does not get the label. This is on the table along with a cover sheet. So just have a plain white sheet of paper. I'd like to have two cover sheets and the reason that I do is when I look at those little eyes, I don't want them to have to focus on too much. So at the beginning, you're covering up colors on down so they can look at the shapes. When you get to colors, it's nice to cover up the shapes at the top so the child can only focus on the colors. So that's the important piece that we have there. And then when you get to number identification, covering up the colors and the shapes. This sheet has been tweaked somewhat. There are now only two numbers over 20. As I worked with the researchers at NDSU, I said this is, I don't even think we need numbers over 20. Well, they decided they wanted some because there might be children who do know those numbers, but I said four is just way too many. So we split the difference and so there will be only two numbers. So this was the prototype and the real sheet actually only has two numbers over 20. And so if the child doesn't get it, the parent puts an X through it basically. And so I'm gonna go to the next sheet. This is the score sheet. Okay, if you look at the score sheet, then you're gonna have that label on there right away. You're gonna have that label. So we know it's 001, it's Anna. The instructions are there for the parents and we tell the parent what to do. So it says point to the shape and ask your child to tell you the shape. Circle each shape that you're, oh, I got this. Circle each shape that your child names correctly on the first try. Put an X on the shape your child does not identify. So basically the parents are the ones doing this as a classroom teacher, we're gonna coach them and say we want the first response. Even if Mary knows that and she doesn't remember it tonight, that's okay. What we wanna know is just at first blush. This is not something that's gonna be written in their, you know, cube folder. We just wanna know at first blush, what are the things we need to be working on to set your child up for success in kindergarten? And in turn really, mom and dad, what is it that you will need to be working on with them during the course of the remaining time before your child gets ready for school? So when you get the instructions, you're also going to get three labels. One for the registration sheet, one for the parent evaluation, and then one for this evaluation that the parent does with the child. Parent educator, you are the one who is the gatekeeper for this, we asked you to collect those. Classroom teacher might collect them for that night, but then parent educator, we want you to collect them from the classroom teacher, put them in the folder, and then mail them back to NDSU. And all the instructions that you need will be on that, that the registration letters and the evaluation instructions. So everything you need. But I wanna tell you, at the beginning of tonight, I told you that there's our Gearing Up website, www.gearingupnd.org. If you go on the website, there's a video of what to do. I'm a visual person and you're doing this training with me and you're gonna be able to even go back and look at this PowerPoint. But I gotta tell you, it's great to see that video. And since you're only doing it twice and then at that you're doing it at 10 week intervals. So if you go on the website, evaluation instructions is on there and it walks you right through it. So if you get to that point and you think, oh my goodness, I forgot and where are those PowerPoints? Go on the website and it'll be there for you. And of course you could certainly call me. But when you get your evaluation materials, they should arrive in time for you to do it by the second session. You should have parent evaluation. You should have some evaluation instructions and you should have the parent child sheet that they look at and the parent child score sheet. So if something doesn't quite look right to you, give me a call and I'll walk you through it. Check that website, but absolutely don't be going, oh, I haven't done this before and I feel like I'm missing something. I just give me a call, we'll walk through it, we'll get it all set up for you. Hopefully make it nice and easy. So if this is something, any questions on this portion of the training, go ahead and write it out and I'll come to it. I'm going to move forward. I don't see any questions yet, but if I do, this is now what you would use when I handed you that book list. So week two, you're not actually doing session two, you're doing session three brain development. Week three, you're doing raising a reader, which is session four. Week four, you're doing responsible and independent, which is session seven. Week five, it's actually combined the importance of sleep and healthy habits. So when you're doing the 10 week session of Geary Dump, this little part is also in the guide that you got in your handbook and in your binder, but I gotta tell you, this is the one I keep by me to just remind me. So week six is learning styles, week seven is temperament, and you can see this. The last week is week 16, parents' role in school success. So this is the kind of thing where we're absolutely working with families on these topics because we want parents to understand your temperament and your child's temperament. We wanna help them to understand what is responsible and independent look like. When I did the training in Minot, I talked with the teachers about, sometimes I bring snow pants, snow boots, jacket, gloves, hats, scarf, and I put them on the floor and I say, okay, if I was a classroom teacher and I said, children, let's get ready to go out for recess, would your child put his boots on first and maybe his hat and his gloves? Or would he know that it goes a little bit easier if you put on your snow suit, you zip it up, and then you put your boots on. Then you put your coat on, then your hat and lastly your gloves. It's the kind of thing that when you do it as a visual for parents, they're like, oh my goodness, I do that for my child. Yes, absolutely. Well, when they're responsible and independent and you have 23 little children, when they can do something, there's a real sense of confidence there. And then parents see it through a different set of eyes. Sometimes parents do it just because they love doing things through their kids. And sometimes they do it because they're in a hurry, they don't have time to teach them. And you help parents see, yeah, but when there's 23 kids in a classroom and your child can do this, number one, they're gonna feel kind of confident and capable and they're gonna feel competent, but then they're also able to teach other children how to do it. So it's setting them up for success. So these lessons are carefully thought out lessons, but we do have a math lesson. We do have reading lessons. And really all of our overarching emphasis is both social and emotional and academic readiness for the children. So you look at those weeks of gearing up and that's kind of for you and for me, that's my guideline of how it looks for my lessons and just my reminder to me. Sometimes you can put sticky notes in there and say I'm doing these lessons and not these lessons. I will also tell you though, if you have a few minutes, explore the other activities for the take home activities. Sometimes you'll find one that just brings so true to you and to who you are. Feel free to go ahead and use that and use a different one. What it will mess up, quote unquote for you is the supply list that you will see on the website. So on the website there's some things that you can take a look at. The 10 week gearing up supply list on the website is the evaluation instructions. I think I'm going to put on the website what the 10 week session of gearing up is and I think I'll also put the book list on there for you. But those are the kinds of things that the website's handy to go to when we don't do it often enough every single day. So we actually ended a little bit early because this is the end of the training. Are there any questions from people? Okay, I am not seeing questions but I'm going to do is stay online. If you have anything that comes to you after this, don't hesitate to call my office, 701-787-4216 or email me and I know you have our contact information for emailing. Don't hesitate to give me a call or email me. I'm going to answer Corey's question. Corey, we talked about earlier that part of the success of a gearing up for kindergarten classroom wait before I answer you, those of you that don't have any questions and you feel ready to start your program, you will get full credit for the training tonight. Feel free to log off into home and be with your families and I always love it when I get a few extra minutes and you certainly have tonight. If you think of anything and want to connect up with me later, please feel free. Otherwise, have a great evening and I look forward to hearing about how gearing up is going at your site. Okay, Corey, going back up to your, going back up to your question, this is something that we talked about earlier and that is that if you have a classroom library or your school has a library that you can take advantage of, we'd love for the kids to be able to check out books because this is setting the table for reading. This is setting the table for things that are happening in regular kindergarten classrooms. We do not supply the books for you in the gearing up for kindergarten program and I believe, Corey, you're in Fargo. You might check with Jolene Guardi and see, do we have books? Are there books that you can give us or in your school? I'm not sure what school you're at, Corey. If your principal can provide some books for you. What we don't try and do is have the children have to check out a book and you can't check out next week's book because you didn't bring yours back, but we do want to get kids used to taking a book home and bringing it back, taking a book home and bringing it back. So that's one of those things that we don't provide that but it is definitely an integral part of the program. Most schools can spare some books from their library. A lot of teachers say I've got enough extra books that I could use them for my gearing up for kindergarten children and so they take them home and bring them back each week. So I hope that answers your question. It was something we addressed earlier on in the evening and just, good, I see where you say, okay, great. Anything else I can do for you, let me know. And since you are in Fargo, check with Jolene Guardi. And by the way, Cori, I know you were a tish wait. Don't worry about that. Just if you have any questions, especially that didn't get answered for you, I'm happy to do that but I am giving you full credit for the training as well. So thanks so much. Any other questions, Ashley? I see you're on and Dem and Carla and Chantel. Well, the training is officially ended. Thank you for a great evening. There is my email information and my contact information for in case you need to get a hold of me. Everybody have a great night.