Early Learning Kindergarten

Welcome!

Kindergarten classrooms all over the province of Ontario are changing to the new All Day Early Learning Kindergarten Program. Each board is changing at it's own rate and so many staff are at different stages with the program. If you happen to be new to the program and you find yourself having a hard time wrapping your head around how to implement this new program, then you have come ot the right place. This blog is meant to help educators find resources to help them understand how to incorporate play-based learning into their classroom. Please feel free to post information that you may have found or thoughts on how these resources worked for you. Remember we are all in this change together! This is a new process for many experienced and new educators. This blog is dedicated to helping you navigate your path through the process.

Besides the ELK Curriculum Document itself this resource is for me the second most important resource to have when trying to organize your ELK program. The document is broken up into parts in order to make looking through the document more easily done. There are eleven chapters in all Thinking it Through, Child Development, Playing is Learning, Assessment that Informs Instruction, Planning for Learning, Learning in Centres, Thinking Mathematically, Literacy and the Young Child, Health and Physical Activity, The Arts - Joyful Learning, and Science and Technology. This tool is a step by step guide on how to not only implement the program but to maintain it. This resource allows you to understand you classroom layout, how to implement play-based learning centres that will reach the whole child development. This resource is an essential for your classroom.

Kindergarten Matters: Intentional Play-Based Learning

A great series of video clips that really help educators get a grasp on the new ELK program. There are six sections to the video: It's About Re-Thinking, It's About Self-Regulating, It's About Documenting, It's About Inquiry, It's About Thinking, and Print Resources. This video really helps educators get a full picture of how the program is beneficial and provides insight into how to set up an effective program. Make sure ot have a paper and pencil ready because you will want to make some notes.

Kindergarten Makeover

The Elementary Federation of Teachers put out a series of webcasts as well as a document entitled "Kindergarten Makeover". These webcasts address how to makover your classroom in order to incorperate play-based learning for not only experienced kindergarten teachers but those who are new to the program as well. It discusses that the old method of teaching a whole group lesson, moving onto a whole group activity with a follow up of centres is now shifting. Centres are shifting from having little imput on assessment to being tailored to address specific expecations. This video is a great start about how educators can start wrapping their heads around how to take what they are doing and either get rid of it, change it or what they may need to add. It also includes a great document which outlines some questions to ask while watching the webcasts. This is great for organizing the information the webcasts deliver. Post in the blog, how this resource helped you change your classroom set up.

Assessment

Assessment and Documentation is key to a successful play-based learning program. Students, Parents and Administrators need to be able to see progress in learning. Traditionallly Black Line Masters (BLM)(known as worksheets) wer e highly used and understood by all who looked at them. The problem with BLM's is that it excluded students who maybe did not have the fine motor skills to complete the document but could demonstrate the skill in a different format (e.g. patterning). We need to keep frequent documentation on each child's learning through the use of a variety of assessment tools. Below are some highlighted assessment tools as well as list of assesment tools that you may choose to use in your classroom. I have also included a variety of ways that you can organize your assessment pieces.