School Readiness with SPARK

About four years ago, we introduced you to a new partnership with SPARK Ohio. The SPARK (Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids) program–an initiative started to ensure children and parents are ready for Kindergarten. The program is a collaboration between schools, families and the community in nine Ohio counties and almost 40 schools! In the last five years, we have expanded our role with SPARK to include three school districts, seven parent partners, and an office space for all parent partners in four school districts. As you can probably see, we are still very excited about this partnership!

The program is grant-funded and operated through the Early Childhood Resource Center in Stark County. It is free and open to any family of a 3 or 4 year old (depending on the nature of the program) living within the boundaries of the school where it is “based.” A parent partner visits the home of each family at least once a month to work on learning goals ranging from letter knowledge to using scissors correctly. It could also include social, emotional, and behavioral skills like the child dressing themselves or doing an activity independently. It is all based on several assessments the parent and parent partner complete during the initial visits.

Once the assessments are complete, the parent partners begin visiting once a month to work on a specific story and extension activities. It is essential parents participate as the SPARK parent partner models these skills for parents to replicate on a daily basis. They begin with a story (which they will get to keep) and end with a series of extension activities that can and should be done throughout the month until the next visit. During the bulk of the lesson, they are working a variety of skills that are important for children to know prior to Kindergarten, such as literacy, counting, and fine motor skills.

SPARK’s goal is to help improve parents’ abilities to educate their children and help them become more engaged in the process as a family. 

The results speak for themselves: SPARK children score higher on state testing than children who were not in the program–even years after they graduate the program. By the end of the program, most children and parents show growth in all assessments. SPARK children show significant growth in areas like story recall, letter recognition, spelling, and applied problems. For more SPARK Results, click here.

The Stark County District Library provides parent partners in the Canton City School District, Plain Local School District, and Sandy Valley Schools. This year, nearly 300 children graduated from SPARK in Canton City, Plain Local, and Sandy Valley. We are so proud of our graduates! (In Stark County, you will also find SPARK in Perry Local Schools, Canton Local Schools, Massillon City School District, Minerva School District, and Alliance City Schools.)

If you have a child in preschool (or preschool-aged), visit SPARK’s website for more information to see if there is a program near you and how to enroll.

Kindergarten Readiness Checklist

It’s Kindergarten registration time! Each year around this time, schools set aside special times to have parents and children register for Kindergarten. Sometimes there is a special program attached to the registration day. Sometimes children get a tour of the school or get to meet the teacher. Sometimes there are also health and academic screenings offered during the day.

Regardless of what your school offers for Kindergarten registration, it is important to make sure your child is on track and ready for school. Last year, we wrote about this same subject. You can check out that post here.

The Ohio Department of Education has put together a great little checklist of social, emotional, and physical skills you and your child can work on together to help get them ready for school and ready to learn!

The New Ohio Kindergarten Readiness Assessment

If you have a child entering Kindergarten in Ohio this year or in the next couple of years, you have likely heard that schools are changing the assessment they use to determine a child’s school readiness. The original KRA-L only tested a child’s literacy and language development, but the new Kindergarten Readiness Assessment will look at the whole child.

The new assessment will provide more information on the areas of physical well-being and motor development, language and literacy, mathematics, science, social studies, and social skills. This is exciting because a child’s school readiness is more than just his knowledge of the ABCs or 123s. It also includes how well he can sit still for periods of time, talk with friends, share, verbalize his needs, etc.

This will be done through formal and informal observations of everyday activities and responses to questions or other activities. According to the Ohio Department of Education’s website, the assessment will not prevent a child from entering Kindergarten, but it will help the teachers provide a baseline so they can customize the learning experience for each child.

Click here for a checklist of the physical, emotional, and social skills you can use as a guide to determine where your child is. But keep in mind that every child develops at their own pace. It’s important to give them guidance to help learn these skills, but if they aren’t doing an activity quite yet, give it a week or so to see how they progress. This checklist does not include the academic skills children may need to know.

Physical, Emotional and Social Checklist: http://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Early-Learning/Guidance-About-Kindergarten/Kindergarten-Readiness-Checklist 

 

Skills to Practice for Summertime Kindergarten Readiness

School will be starting before you know it, but we still have about one-half of our summer left–depending on when you start school. While summer is a time for relaxing and taking a break from studying, it’s also a great time to get your child ready for their first day of Kindergarten because there isn’t any pressure or deadlines.

Lalymom has a great post on creative and fun ways to practice skills like learning personal information (phone numbers, address, name), following directions, getting dressed independently, strengthening those gross motor skills (running, jumping, etc.), understanding routines, writing and more! She has put together a great round-up of blog posts–so instead of duplicating her efforts, I’m going to post a link to her blog and ask you to stop by at some point this week.

And then I’m going to remind you to stop by your local library to check out a stack of books that you can read with your child to help get them ready to read and get them excited about school!