The beginning of the new year promises many opportunities as well as challenges for early childhood education, including our UPK Program in Rochester. We will kick off the year with our School Expo, a showcase of our district’s prekindergarten and school age programs and a spring calendar of pro-fessional learning opportunities for early childhood staff. Despite the budgetary chal-lenges our country, state and district are currently experiencing we remain encour-aged that our legislators recognize the val-ue of quality early childhood education and will act accordingly when budget decisions are finalized for New York State.

The School Expo will mark the beginning of our recruitment for the UPK program with registration available at the event. Current PreK parents will have an opportunity to learn about elementary school programs in the Rochester City School District and to register for the schools of their choice at the Expo. The Early Childhood Department and all of the district’s schools will have booths with informational displays providing highlights of various programs with an em-

phasis on school selection this year.

During the months of January and Febru-ary weekly professional learning sessions will be offered on AVATAR, the district’ s online system for early childhood educators focused on aspects of the High/Scope Pre-school Curriculum. The sessions will fea-ture a combination of videos, discussion and web meetings with High/Scope staff.

On January 21st, the officers of the New

York State Prekindergarten Administrator’s Association (NYSPAA) will meet in Albany with New York State Education Department representatives to share information, dis-cuss the draft prekindergarten standards and plan for the upcoming year. Early indi-cators from our Board of Regents regarding continued support for the Universal Prekin-dergarten program in our state appear promising. In Rochester we have strong advocacy groups supporting our youngest students. In these financially challenging times it is heartening to know that people in Rochester recognize the importance of sup-porting early childhood education for our city’s future.

Looking forward to a New Year in the UPK Program submitted by Dr. Robin Hooper

January, 2011 Volume VI, Issue 5

Prekindergarten News Rochester City School District

Our lives begin

to end the day we become

silent about things that

matter.

-Martin Luther King. Jr.

Professional

Development see page 3

***

High/Scope

Working with Children

with Special Needs

Supporting Children in

Resolving Conflicts

see avatar for details

***

Spring Seminar

Crafting Curriculum:

Transforming Teacher

Observations into

Planning for Each Child

Children are engaging in conversation while

engaging in pre-reading activities and sing-

ing songs from our class song book.

Child is creating a representation of her own skeleton using shapes as well as the Concepts of symmetry.

Active Learning at #08 School submitted by Jessica Shapira

Page 2 Prekindergarten News

Family Science Day at the Sully Branch Library submitted by Bonny VanDerMeid

Children experimented with hand washing techniques by viewing their dirtied hands their dirtied hands under a magnifier and black light, then viewing them again after hand washing. The goal was to promote effective hand washing for eliminating germs.

Children enjoyed making slime. Parent and child explored sound.

The Rochester Education and Lit-

eracy Commission, RPPP, Florence

S. Brown Pre-K, the Rochester

Public Library, WXXI, Wegmans

and community scientists collabo-

rated to provide hands-on activi-

ties on Family Science Day. The

first one of this school year oc-

curred on November 20 at the

Sully Library.

Esther Glwinski’s 6th grade students

from #33 school facilitated activities

which explored the properties of mag-

nets and electricity, engaging children

of all ages.

Page 3 Prekindergarten News

Professional Development Opportunities—see more details on avatar

Video sessions and Webinars:

Working with Children with Special Needs

Supporting Children in Resolving Conflicts

The Early Childhood Department in partnership with

High/Scope will be offering video and webinar mini-series on

our most requested topics. In January our focus will be on

working with children with special needs and we will follow in

February with conflict resolution. (Look for other topics in the

months to come.) Our topics for January and February will be

covered in 2 parts, with one session featuring the High/Scope

video while the other session will be in a webinar format. Ide-

ally, participants will view the video, participate in the discus-

sion and generate questions. These questions will be ad-

dressed in the Webinars which follow (on different days).

Participation in both the video sessions and webinars is rec-

ommended but not required. All sessions can stand alone

and require separate registration. Please register on avatar.

The bilingual UPK class at #06 school enjoyed a

pancake breakfast, which they participated in mak-

ing themselves. In addition to learning how to

make pancakes, they learned new words in both

Spanish and English. Dr. Robin Hooper was among

their special guests.

—submitted by Tony Aponte, Bilingual UPK teacher

Spring Seminar

for Educators of Young Children

Keynote Speaker: Gaye Gronlund

Crafting Curriculum: Transforming

Teacher Observations into Planning

for Each Child

The Rochester Association for the Education of

Young Children (RAEYC) in partnership with the

RCSD Early Childhood Department, ECEQC and

the Children’s Institute are once again sponsoring

this annual event on Wednesday, April 13.

Expert teachers of young children are keen observ-

ers. They observe children in action at all times and

get to know each child well. They see what others

cannot. They have a sixth sense about what the child

is about-how he feels, what she understands, where

his interests lie, why she behaves the way she does.

But even the expert teacher is often frustrated by the

question of how to use those observations. The ex-

pert teacher asks: How can I observe, document

those observations and transform them into planning

for children? How can I accomplish this process in a

time efficient way and still be in the moment with the

children, being the best teacher that I can be? See

details on avatar or at www.raeyc.org. Register with

RAEYC for $40.

Outdoor play offers

an opportunity for explo-

ration and investigation

that creates exciting dis-

covery for children.

Cooperative play was

fostered outdoors with

tools provided to stimu-

late gathering of ice and

snow.

Young children remind us

to notice the wonder of our

everyday surroundings. As

one recent immigrant student

once exclaimed on venturing

outside with the class while it

was snowing, “the sky love

me!” The children shown

here, from the Wilson Com-

mencement Park UPK class

enjoy their outdoor space

year round.

Please send your pho-

tos/stories of outdoor time.

Rochester City School District Department of Early Childhood 131 W. Broad St. Rochester, NY 14614

Phone: 585-262-8140 Fax: 585-262-8273 jeanne.herrick@rcsdk12.org www.rcsdk12.org/PreK

It might be fun to add some “muscle-building movement” to the songs

that the children know. For the song, “Willoughby, Wallaby, Woo”, children

pretended to have an “elephant” sit on them. The elephant was made by:

taking a 5 lb. bag of flour, placing it in a large plastic freezer bag, covering it

with construction paper, and taping it with packing tape, then taping the

elephant picture from the song

card to it.

The song was sung as usu-

al. When we came to the

verse, “an elephant sat on

you”, the “elephant” was

placed on that child’s lap.

Then that child would carry

the “elephant” and place it on

the child’s lap whose name is

mentioned next. This contin-

ues until all of the children had

a turn.

This song and a few others,

can be found on the Early

Childhood Embedded program website under Moving Minds.

(Thank you to Linda Grennan’s Bubbles Preschool students for demon-

strating the song movement.)

MOVEMENT TIDBIT from Moving Minds

submitted by Carol Bedenik-Carmel, PT and Andrea Gerhardt, OT, RCSD