A number of educators presented a report on full-day kindergarten at the Board of Education’s Tuesday, November 18, meeting.

Full-day kindergarten was first implemented in the district last school year, and this is the second year the school board has heard a report about how the program is doing.

“They have a little presentation for us and just a few words about what their experience has been for… a year-plus,” said Assistant Superintendent Linda Gejda.

According to Dr Gejda, the group of educators along with others worked to plan for the change to full-day kindergarten.

“I want to thank you all for staying engaged and for sharing and for helping us to pull our program together,” said Dr Gejda.

Middle Gate lead teacher Peggy Kennedy began the presentation.

“The benefits of full-day kindergarten that we saw in last year’s program, we continue to see as we move forward into this year,” said Ms Kennedy. “We do have the time, not feeling rushed, to develop our speaking and listening skills, which are so essential because they carry directly over to the literacy experience of reading and writing.”

Kindergarten students, Ms Kennedy continued, have the time to work collaboratively. The presentation also shared examples of what students do during the school day, and broke down different programs, like Reader’s Workshop and Writer’s Workshop, in which students participate.

Ms Kennedy said more differentiation is possible with full-day kindergarten across all lesson areas.

“We definitely have time to individualize our lesson planning and to work with small groups,” said Ms Kennedy. “The students themselves have a greater opportunity to communicate between and among each other.”

Ms Kennedy thanked the school board on behalf of the group for supporting full-day kindergarten.