Adventures of a Kindergarten Reading Teacher

The committee I am on to study the feasibility of full-day kindergarten for my town is coming to a close.  We have done extensive research on full-day kindergarten from many angles.  From an academic point of view, there are no studies to date that show any difference in long-range achievement between those who have whole-day versus those who attend half-day kindergarten. 

But there are certain intangibles that studies have a hard time quantifying.  When I think of how much curriculum needs to be packed into the two and a half hours of school, it makes me tired!  If the kids went for the whole day, there would be much more time to get everything done at a reasonable pace.  There’d be more time for social interaction and development, for exploration into nature and science that kids just love, and more time for specialists like me to get to see the children who require extra support.   

If it’s true that everything you need to know, you learn in kindergarten, I think we should have more time to get that important work done!

Our committee meets  this week to vote on what our recommendations will be.  I’ll keep you posted!

The idea of kindergarten kids doing podcasts seemed pretty impossible to me when I was given a podcasting assignment for the course I am taking.  So I took the other assignment option and began looking around for some already-done blogs by kindergarten students.  What I found was astounding!  If you take a look at my link to the KinderKids Podcast, you’ll find some amazing stuff! 

I was sure that it would be very rehearsed, with only the top students participating.  What I heard was quite the opposite.  It was very real and you could tell that it was the kids’ work all the way!

What a great introduction for young children to this new technological world!

I was surfing around looking at other blogs and I came upon an entry titled”Eddie and Leslie in Full-Day Kindergarten.”  Now this might not seem like much, but I am on a committee at school to study the feasibility of full-day kindergarten in our town.  So this was right up my alley!  The other entries were varied and interesting too!  You never know what you might stumble across!  By the way, it looks like full-day kindergarten is the way most school districts in Massachusetts have gone, to some degree at least. 

You might think that the title of this post refers to my being a kindergarten reading teacher!  Actually, while my job is very exciting and fulfilling, I have been doing it for the past six years, and have been teaching for twenty.  What is new for me  is blogging!  So here I am!  I would love to be able to use this tool to get in touch with other people who do the same job that I do!  I’m always interested in new ideas!