Gerrish-Higgins District Preschool Transition Plan

The Gerrish-Higgins School District believes in the importance of helping families of preschool age students to make a smooth transitions from other programs to preschool and preschool to kindergarten. The district has two preschool programs, one in Roscommon and one in St. Helen. Each building plan for connecting with preschool-age children is to provide a Preschool Open House the same night as the Kindergarten Open House for children who are coming from other programs before the first day of school to see their classroom, meet their preschool teacher and to meet the kindergarten students and teachers. Both buildings annually invite area preschool-aged children to attend school events and assemblies annually.

Both building preschool teachers work together to create the class lists for the following year. The preschool teachers and paraprofessionals meet on a regular basis with Kindergarten teachers to coordinate planning. Every attempt is made to make sure that our preschool classrooms are offering many of the activities that the students will be participating in the following year in Kindergarten.

The Preschool staff attends two home visits for all children in the preschool program. The final visit is used to give parents a packet of information that will help their child to easily transition into Kindergarten. They receive a list of Kindergarten expectations, and projects to work on during the summer months that incorporate necessary Kindergarten skills.

Both buildings have developed a teacher to teacher transition plan for students entering kindergarten. In September of 2009 and April of 2010, grade level meetings will be held for teachers in the following programs:

* Head Start

* Kindergarten

*Early On

* Private Schools

*Area Daycare Centers

The Gerrish-Higgins preschool teachers and aids will meet with personnel from the agencies listed above with one of the topics being to facilitate transitions between preschoolers and kindergarteners. Another topic will be how to train parents in regards to kindergarten readiness skills. During these meetings they will also continually revisit and revise the alignment Early Childhood Standards and the Michigan Grade Level Content Expectations.

Word doc - preschooltransitionstrategies

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