Early+Childhood

Our Title 1/Early Childhood Advisory Committee consists of eight members representing families, community members, early childhood teacher, special Ed. staff, K-12 guidance, and administration. This is the third year that Cody-Kilgore has had a Pre-Kindergarten Program.(NDE recognizes this as our second year.) It is always a fun and challenging experience for our early childhood and elementary staff. Our school is small in enrollment but we have well thought out programs and caring dedicated professionals that work together for each and every child. Our Pre-Kindergarten Teacher has a NE Teaching certificate and a South Dakota Early Childhood endorsement that has been converted to a NE Early Childhood certificate through the NDE Certification Office. Our program operates 14 instructional hours a week. PreK currently meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays as requested by parents in a Parent Meeting held this summer. (Transportation was an issue.) Fourth quarter we may transition to a three day week Each instructional hour represents sixty minutes, which is used for teaching in the following areas of child growth and learning: social-emotional development; cognitive learning in the areas of language and literacy, mathematics, science, problem solving; creative arts; health and nutrition; and physical and motor development. Snack time is provided twice a day as part of the program curriculum and provides opportunities for learning and social development, as well as nutrition, and therefore is included as instructional time. (Our students may participate in our breakfast/lunch program.) Family development and support are key components in establishing a strong home-school connection. Cody-Kilgore School strives to provide a working relationship with each parent. Written information is shared with parents on a weekly basis providing program information including but not limited to philosophy, policies, and procedures. Opportunities are presented for home visits between the parents and the teacher to discuss the child’s development and learning. (Sometimes these visits occur at the home and sometimes at the school due to distance constraints and families requesting to meet at the school.) Specific family needs are always taken into consideration for support and services. Early childhood staff is included in all staff development opportunities. Early childhood staff completed all five days of APL training with credit through Doan College. Administration attended an early childhood sectional at administrator days and shared current information with the early childhood staff. Staff attended a Teaching Strategies Gold Objectives for Development and Learning all-day In-service. Our program staff student ratio follows the Chapter 11 guidelines of one adult for each 10 children with a maximum size of 20. Our early childhood education program provides a developmentally and culturally appropriate curriculum which includes a play-oriented learning environment, which facilitates growth and development of each of our children, with opportunities for age-appropriate learning experiences through active involvement with people and materials. Our Pre-Kindergarten Program is funded through our General Fund.
 * Cody-Kilgore Unified Schools Pre-Kindergarten Program Plan 2011-2012**

Our Cody-Kilgore Continuous School Improvement plan has a written transition plan. Our written transition plan insures continuity, identification, and implementation of processes necessary to facilitate the transition of children. Our Cody-Kilgore early childhood program emphasizes early literacy with a well defined plan. This plan involves parents and family literacy activities. We even provide reading materials and brain research information to first time parents as a welcome to our school community. We provide a spacious classroom, play area protected by a fence, safe, durable, age appropriate equipment and materials for indoor and outdoor activities are provided. (If needed modifications are made for children with disabilities.) All fire safety and health codes are maintained. Written verification of CPR training is available. Our school nurse updated our first aid training. Our staff uses positive, age-appropriate techniques of child guidance including encouragement, retraining, redirection, anticipation, and elimination of potential problems. Child assessment (evaluation) practices are based on documentation gathered through an established system of ongoing observation and assessments to provide objective measures of each child’s performance and progress in development in learning. Assessment data is used to meet the individual needs of children and to plan activities. All assessment tools meet excepted standards of reliability and validity. Our staff uses anecdotal notes, benchmarks, progress monitoring for all verified early childhood students using Teaching Strategies Gold, Handwriting Without Tears, Results Matter, and The Nebraska Early Learning Guidelines for Ages 3-5 as our Pre-Kindergarten program foundation. Cody-Kilgore Unified schools participates in periodic evaluations to assure program quality and positive child outcomes. Our assessment of program quality will report child outcomes and one objective measure of child performance and progress. The plan for the dissemination of evaluation results includes administration, early childhood advocacy/title 1 committee, parents, and lower elementary teachers.
 * Our written plan includes:**
 * Activities which promote and develop positive self concept and social skills in each child, encourage each child to think, reason, question, and experiment
 * Fosters both receptive and expressive language development and provides early literacy experiences for individual students and their families.
 * Develops an understanding of quantity of things, time, and of space and enhances each child’s development and skills.
 * Encourages safe, healthy, and nutritional practices including avoidance of drugs and alcohol. We feel that these lessons must be introduced and practiced in many ways at an early age.
 * Includes exploratory play in a language and literacy-rich environment during a majority of the daily schedule
 * Shares stories with children and children retell stories using puppets or pretend play.
 * Stimulates each child to express themselves creatively with an emphasis on the appreciation of the arts and music.
 * Respects the diversity of cultural, ethnic, physical, and mental abilities of the children enrolled in our pre-kindergarten program as well as all of our programs.

All staff are encouraged to provide Needs Assessment information that guides planning of speakers, workshops etc. for all staff. Early Childhood teachers choose topics of interest pertinent to their needs with administrative approval and support. They are provided with at least 12 hours of staff development in early childhood or child development. Early childhood staff is encouraged to seek staff development opportunities such as those listed on the NDE Early Childhood Training site. Early childhood staff has completed all five days of APL training. Administration attended an early childhood sectional at administrator days and shared current information with the early childhood staff. Summer opportunities find our staff gaining professional growth points as well. (Topics pursued last summer included early childhood assessment (evaluation) practices and Teaching Strategies Gold.) Staff participates in First Aid renewal.
 * Staff Development Plan**

Presently this committee consists of eight members representing our school, our families and our community. At our next meeting in March of 2012, we will be adding to our committee a student, to replace the one that graduated, and another parent. The current makeup of this committee includes an administrator, a parent, a Sp Ed Teacher, Title 1 Teacher and Aide, Elem. Teacher, Guidance Counselor, Jr. High Teacher, Community Member, and a student.
 * Early Childhood Advisory/Title 1 Committee**

Our Cody-Kilgore Continuous School Improvement plan has a written transition plan. Our written transition plan insures continuity, identification, and implementation of processes necessary to facilitate the transition of children. Our Cody-Kilgore early childhood program emphasizes early literacy with a well defined plan. This plan involves parents and family literacy activities. We have the philosophy that parents are our partners. Students transition from home to pre-kindergarten, elementary school to junior high school, and from junior high to high school. These transitions are made easier by the fact that we are a small school and in most cases everyone knows everyone. This happens through mixed grouping activities such as Career Day, FFA elementary visits, National Honor Society Day Staff Swap Day etc. We have holiday meals when parents and their children are encouraged and welcomed to see classrooms and visit areas of the school where student work is on display. Parents are involved in Parent –Teacher Conferences and Science Exploratoriums and many other activities. Students and parents attend Pre-Kindergarten Round Up and Visitation Day. Visitation Day provides activities where sixth graders and new students to Cody-Kilgore have a junior high buddy and they follow a modified schedule of classes. Students and parents meet with the guidance counselor and the NHS where students get the chance to ask those difficult questions that can best be answered by a student in the trenches. In the past we had a local Head Start that was in partnership with C-K. Our sixth graders took them to lunch and prepared many activities to help them transition to our school. Upper elementary students read to pre-kindergarten students. Parents are welcomed to our school and our teachers offer the opportunity to come to the students’ homes to work with students if it is in the best interest of the child/parents involved. (Most parents prefer to meet and/or work at the school. We all travel quite a distance to do most anything and this is said to be least intrusive for families. Our Pre-Kindergarten students interact with all of the other elementary students and staff which helps provide a smooth transition within our school. Student records, reports, and parental input are maintained in student files. Students are oftentimes worked with individually to monitor progress toward goals. We have a Pre-Kindergarten Guide that includes our Cody-Kilgore Mission and Belief Statements, Curriculum Descriptors, Subject Summaries, Philosophy, and Basic Skills. Weekly parent communications “What’s Happening in Pre-K” provides schedule, calendar, skills, and topics of interest to be shared with the family. Staff meets twice a year with parents formally plus many informal get-togethers to share health information, helpful advice to extend the learning experience practiced at school. Elementary staff work together to create the best educational environment for each student. Collaboration provides opportunities to address student needs in a timely fashion. A needs assessment provides staff with topics that we as a team desire to see addressed. All staff have input and a Pre-K-12 philosophy abounds.
 * Transition Plan**

Cody-Kilgore Unified School > >
 * Our Early childhood advisory committee/title one committee consists of eight members representing families, community members, early childhood teacher, special Ed. staff, k-12 guidance, and administration.
 * Our program operates 12 instructional hours during the school year. Each instructional hour represents sixty minutes, which is used for teaching in the following areas of children’s growth and learning: Social-emotional development; cognitive learning in the areas of language and literacy, mathematics, science, problem solving; creative arts; health and nutrition; and, physical and motor development.
 * Meal or snack time is part of the program curriculum and provides opportunities for learning and social development, as well as nutrition, and therefore is included as instructional time. Family development and support are key components in establishing a strong home-school connection. Cody-Kilgore schools strive to provide a working relationship with each parent.
 * Written information is shared with parents on a weekly basis providing program information including but not limited to philosophy, policies, and procedures. Opportunities are presented for home visits between the parents and the teacher to discuss the child’s development and learning. (Sometimes these visits occur at the home and sometimes at the school due to distance constraints.) Specific family needs are always taken into consideration for support and services.
 * Our early childhood program education teacher holds a valid Nebraska teaching certificate with an early childhood endorsement. Early childhood staff is included in all staff development opportunities. Early childhood staff was allowed to take all five days of APL training. Administration attended an early childhood sectional at administrator days and shared current information with the early childhood staff.
 * Our program staff student ratio will follow the chapter 11 guidelines of one adult for each 10 children with a maximum size of 20.
 * Our early childhood education program provides a developmentally and culturally appropriate curriculum which includes a play-oriented learning environment, which facilitates growth and development of each of our children, with opportunities for age-appropriate learning experiences through active involvement with people and materials. Our written plan includes: activities which promote and develop positive self concept and social skills in each child, encourage each child to think, reason, question and experiment. Foster both receptive and expressive language development and provide early literacy experiences for individual students and their families.
 * Develop an understanding of quantity of things, time, and of space. Enhance each child’s development and skills.
 * Encourage safety health and nutritional practices including avoidance of drugs and alcohol.
 * Stimulate each child in creative expression and appreciation of the arts. (Music, Art, Etc.)
 * We include exploratory play in a language and literacy-rich environment during a majority of the daily schedule. Stories are shared and children retell stories using puppets or pretend play.
 * We respect the diversity of the cultural ethnic physical and mental abilities of the children enrolled in our pre-kindergarten program.
 * **Our Cody Kilgore continuous school improvement plan has a written transition plan.**
 * Our written transition plan insures continuity, identification, and implementation of processes necessary to facilitate the transition of children. Our Cody-Kilgore early childhood program emphasizes early literacy with a well defined plan. This plan involves parents, and family literacy activities.
 * We provide a spacious classroom, play area protected by a fence, safe, durable, age appropriate equipment and materials for indoor and outdoor activities are provided. (If needed modifications are made for children with disabilities.) All fire safety and health codes are maintained. Written verification of CPR and first aid training are available.
 * Use positive, age-appropriate techniques of child guidance including retraining, redirection, anticipation, and elimination of potential problems, and encouragement.
 * Child assessment (evaluations) practices are based on documentation gathered through an established system of ongoing observation and assessment to provide objective measures of each child’s performance and progress in development in learning. Assessment data is used to meet the individual needs of children and to plan activities. All assessment tools meet excepted standards of reliability and validity.
 * Cody-Kilgore Unified schools participates in periodic evaluations to assure program quality and positive child outcomes. Our assessment of program quality reports child outcomes and one objective measure of child performance and progress. The plan for the dissemination of evaluation results includes administration, early childhood advocacy/title 1 committee, parents, and lower elementary teachers.
 * **A continuation plan**
 * Proposed operating budget (per pupil cost)
 * Need 12 clock hours annually of staff development in early childhood or child development.