children writing with crayons

Joshua Lide (left) and London Greenish (right) work on their journal entries in their transitional kindergarten classroom at Carver Elementary School in Long Beach on February vii, 2013. Credit: Lillian Mongeau, EdSource Today

LONG Embankment – When California schoolhouse districts were required by state police to showtime a new early on kindergarten class for some 4-yr-olds for the first time this twelvemonth, Long Beach Unified had an easier job than most: to simply expand the existing "preppy kindergarten" program it started v years ago.

The Long Beach program, originally the brainchild of kindergarten teachers Kris Damon and Michelle Woolwine, is non the first transitional kindergarten program in the state, but it is one of the largest. And since information technology has been around for several years, the program will produce the commencement meaning information gear up, expected this spring, on how children from diverse economic backgrounds who nourish transitional kindergarten perform in subsequently grades, based on their grades and standardized test scores.

Offering transitional kindergarten became a statewide requirement this school yr and, based on his experience with his district'due south program, Long Beach Superintendent Chris Steinhauser thinks it's a game-changing idea.

"I truly believe historians are going to write that this was a watershed moment in didactics in California," Steinhauser said. "For the outset time, we are really putting together a statewide early intervention model that if washed correctly can have huge dividends."

School age

California has long immune children to enter kindergarten before they turned 5. But the 2010 Kindergarten Readiness Act is slowly advancing the historic period required for kindergarten entry and so that by 2014, children must have turned 5 by Sept. 1 to enroll, a mutual cutting-off engagement in the residual of the country.

The new law will permit children who have not yet turned 5 past Sept. 2, but who will practice so before Dec. ii, to attend a yr of public school called transitional kindergarten. They will continue on to regular kindergarten the post-obit yr.

This year, children who turn 5 in September and Oct are nevertheless able to nourish regular kindergarten, but those who turn five between Nov. 2 and December. 2 must attend a transitional kindergarten class if they wish to enroll in public school.

The Long Embankment program got its commencement in late 2006 when Damon and Woolwine were instruction kindergarten at Cleveland Elementary Schoolhouse. They identified a demand for a program to serve children who weren't quite set for regular kindergarten. Their main liked the thought of providing an additional "in-between" year for some students and encouraged them to get to commune officials and propose a airplane pilot programme.

Assistant Superintendent Jill Baker recommended the teachers visit the neighboring Torrance schoolhouse district, which offered a class for children whose behavior and cognitive development made them seem younger than their numerical historic period or for children who actually fell on the youngest finish of the kindergarten spectrum.

Using the Torrance program every bit a model, Long Beach launched its own pilot program in 2007 with one "Preppy K" classroom at Cleveland Elementary taught past Damon.

The following year, the program expanded to two classrooms for students who needed more time to get up to speed on academic tasks like recognizing letters and social tasks like taking turns during classroom activities. The program was such a hitting with parents that in the third year Long Beach began expanding information technology to other elementary schools in the commune.

graphic explalining transitional kindergarten

Credit: Lillian Mongeau, EdSource Today

When the land Legislature passed the Kindergarten Readiness Act in 2010, requiring school districts to introduce transitional kindergarten for some four-twelvemonth-olds, Long Beach was ready. The district got a jump on the implementation engagement and enrolled more than 400 students in fall 2011. This year, the plan enrolled more than 600 students.

At present, whatever 4-twelvemonth-old who turns v between Sept. 2 and December. 2 can attend transitional kindergarten in Long Beach. Five-year-olds not quite ready for regular kindergarten as well have the option of enrolling in a transitional kindergarten class at a parent's request or on a instructor'southward recommendation. This year, well-nigh 25 percent of children in Long Beach's transitional kindergarten classes are in the programme despite being eligible for regular kindergarten, according to district officials

Early benefits

Long Beach educators promise the transitional kindergarten plan will help children stay on track in school so that fewer will be held back in subsequently grades. They besides hope the extra twelvemonth will give children a run a risk to outgrow problems like extreme impulsivity that might unremarkably effect in a referral to special education classes.

At the moment, transitional kindergarten isn't costing taxpayers any additional money because Long Beach and other districts are serving the same total number of kindergarten-historic period children as they would have served under California's old constabulary governing admission to public school. It's merely that now those children are divided into two classes: kindergarten and transitional kindergarten. The extra cost to the taxpayer will come when students reach 12th grade.

Until now, the state was committed to paying for 13 years of public school education for every child: one twelvemonth of kindergarten so one year each for grades 1 through 12. The Kindergarten Readiness Act commits the land to paying for fourteen years of public school pedagogy for the subset of children, almost 25 percentage, who enroll in transitional kindergarten.

"That'due south coin well spent," Steinhauser said, considering it volition salvage the district the cost of helping students catch upwardly in later grades, or even the costs of special education classes where he thinks some students finish upwardly without the back up of an additional year of kindergarten.

Veteran Long Beach kindergarten instructor Nancy Jarzomb began teaching transitional kindergarten last year. She said she'south already hearing from other teachers that her onetime students are excelling in their regular kindergarten classes. Jarzomb, who taught kindergarten in Long Embankment for 32 years, said the differences between students in the two grade levels are clear to her. Every bit a group, she says, the children in her transitional kindergarten class aren't able to pay attending or sit down still as long and aren't every bit emotionally mature.

California has clear math and English language content standards for regular kindergarten, setting multiple goals for students to reach by the stop of the twelvemonth. For example, children must know how to count to xxx, name the days of the week and write 3 sentences on a unmarried topic by the end of the year.

In transitional kindergarten, the content standards are the same, but children only need to show progress toward those standards by the finish of the year, not see them, as traditional kindergarten students are required to do. In her starting time year of teaching transitional kindergarten, Jarzomb said she tried to do everything at the same pace as in regular kindergarten, only by October realized she had to slow down.

"Transitional kindergarten introduces them to school," Jarzomb said. "There's structure and academics, but there's not that pressure to pass everything."

Time to grow

That doesn't mean all of her students are performing the same academically, Jarzomb said. Differences in children'southward abilities were evident during "journal time" in Jarzomb's grade. While a dozen children gathered around big tables to draw pictures in their journals, two girls joined Jarzomb at some other tabular array to play "the name game."

teacher with student

Carver Elementary School teacher Nancy Jarzomb helps transitional kindergarten pupil Ryley Thorne larn the letters of her name on February 7, 2013. Classmate Sierra Rodriguez looks on. Credit: Lillian Mongeau, EdSource Today

Each daughter had a plastic baggie with the letters of her name on pieces of menu-stock. The goal was to take the letters out and sort them to spell i's first and last name. Jarzomb sat with the girls and checked their piece of work, then showed them alphabet flashcards and asked them to tell her if those messages were in their names.

Meanwhile, the girls' classmates on the other side of the room were writing simple sentences describing their illustrations, a more complex literacy task.

"They are all at different levels, simply I know they accept two years to become everything," Jarzomb said, referring to the year of regular kindergarten her students volition enroll in next fall. "If they don't go it this yr, they have next yr to master the skills."

Jarzomb said her students get another boost from being in her class, one that's harder to ascertain, but, she feels, equally or fifty-fifty more of import. Information technology'south a concept known in early teaching parlance equally "school readiness." That includes the ability to share classroom materials with other students, control their emotions in course and pay attention to the teacher, skills Jarzomb said she has time to concentrate on in transitional kindergarten.

Long Embankment Assistant Superintendent Bakery said many kindergarten teachers love the focus on social development in transitional kindergarx, which they feel has gotten shorter shrift in the regular kindergarten classroom. Baker said a mutual reaction from many teachers when they first heard virtually transitional kindergarten was: "That's what kindergarten used to be."

Not quite, Bakery cautions. "It is evolution centered merely it also requires students to think and do mathematics," she said. And that, she thinks, is not a bad way for immature students to spend an extra year.

Superintendent Steinhauser is so enthusiastic nearly transitional kindergarten, he'd similar to see the program used equally a stepping-stone for offer universal preschool for all iv-yr-olds. That's an initiative his district is already working on, but 1 that hasn't caught on statewide quite yet.

"Transitional kindergarten is one small pace towards universal preschool," Steinhauser said, "and one behemothic step towards endmost the achievement gap."

Lillian Mongeau covers early childhood pedagogy. Contact Lillian and follow her at Twitter.com/lrmongeau.

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