Kindergarten Visiting Address: Social History

That time of year, when pre-k special needs class, you begin to think about the process of transition to kindergarten.

This year is a little girl in my class an interesting combination of strengths and challenges.

She has a good level and cognitive ability to learn the vocabulary and concepts through incidental learning. She has a great capacity of the stem base of pre-college (which knows all the letters of the alphabet in uppercase and lowercase letters, can count to 15, can identify 11 colors and 6 shapes Commons. She knows a lot of consonants beginning, knowledge of rhyming words, you can read the names of all students in the class and read about 10 sight words.)

She is overwhelmed by new experiences and challenges in the transition to new activities (especially if it is in a different location on campus). She still needs support staff to potty training. Her fine motor skills are significantly delayed, and she always support staff to many tasks involving visual motor planning.

We decided to try to address specifically the strength of the region lies in an area that is a big challenge for him while he is still in pre-k. Is going to start going to a common reading and phonetics lesson kindergarten for about 20 minutes a day. Because he is a good cognitive abilities, and he does not need to support staff ready for the big group, Circle K, we're going to try to reconcile the challenge of new experiences. We hope you will become familiar with the construction of nursery, kindergarten, and a wider group of kindergarten students. We also hope that the staff pre-k can not go with him for a short time and then disappear in order to increase the independence and comfort in our kindergarten class.

To help prepare for this, we developed a simple social history (you can download a generic copy here.) Subject to walk in the kindergarten class. She has a copy at home that his family has read it for the last week and there is a copy at the school, staff in the classroom have read with her, too. We are also starting to go to the kindergarten room and have conversations about visits to kindergarten on Monday.

We hope by overlaying the support of staff and also build on its strengths, it will start to feel comfortable and be able to learn new skills in preschool.

Displacement Before And After

Last year my pre-k program was moved to another elementary school in my district. I had a choice to move with my program or teach a different grade level at the current school. I chose to move.

Since it was a district decision to move the program, they provided staff to physically move all of the boxes and furniture, but I was responsible for the packing and the unpacking.

When I walked into my classroom after the movers had all of the boxes placed, I knew I had my work cut out for me. This is one of the before shots:

Clearly, I had to figure out a plan of attack to get everything organized and ready for the first day of school. I started with my necessities: iPod, coffee and Gatorade and then got to work.

I organized my actions by prioritizing what HAD to be in place for the first day of school and what materials I would be using. I keep most of my units of study in large Rubbermaid tubs with labels. You don't see it in the picture, but in one corner of the classroom is a storage room.

I needed to to get some space in the room to move the furniture, so I started by taking all of the tubs for my units and organizing them in the storage room. Once that was done, I could push the tables to the middle of the room, put all of the other materials on and under the tables and start working on the physical layout of the perimeter of the room. Here's the start of that:

Thinking about the physical layout is HUGE! Your physical layout in the classroom can either help you diffuse problems or can actually make the problems worse. The following are some of the things I think about as I set up a new room:

What is age/grade appropriate?

What areas need to be included?

Where are materials stored for the teacher, assistant, students?

How are materials accessed? Does it support independence?

Is there a quiet space when needed?

Where are the electrical outlets and computer drops?

Traffic patterns to and from:

• bathroom and fountain
• backpacks and lunchboxes
• time out, chill out chair, etc (if needed)
• teaching tables and support materials
• fire exit and alternate routes
• line up

And most importantly,

• Do I have visual supervision of all areas at all times?

At this point, I started moving centers around, figuring out how to address all of those questions regarding the physical layout and then unpacking materials that belong in each center.

It finally came together like this:

After living with it for a year, there are some changes that I'll make when I go back into school next week. But, I have found by thinking about the physical layout questions, I can address the most important issues first and do so efficiently....without having to do tasks twice because I "forgot" I needed to have a computer table near the computer drop or that I needed a wall for my housekeeping unit because it is too high to see over.

Moving and organizing a new room takes an enormous amount of energy and time. (That's why this post did not get posted last year when I actually moved! I was too busy attending to other things.) Make sure to ask your principal, department chair or mentor what is your responsibility and what the school/district provides. In the course of fifteen years of teaching I probably had to move classrooms 6 or 7 times before I found out that the district would provide boxes and I earned a comp day for moving. It took 3 days to organize my classroom last year. While the district didn't pay me for every bit of time I spent in there, it sure was nice to enjoy that day off that I did earn!

If you are moving or re-organizing your classroom this year good luck!