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by Rebecca Wallace1 view·Updated Nov 18, 2021
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  1. Hi I am here to present my leadership and collaboration project for the end of
  2. Our clinical study, it's kind of exciting.
  3. Um so I'll just kind of jump right in first,
  4. I just have a quick side that has those in task standard 10,
  5. the standard itself and then the guiding questions within it.
  6. Um as a reference as well as the vision statement for my school,
  7. which is to instill a lifelong passion for
  8. learning and a strong sense of self and community
  9. because you know,
  10. incorporating the vision into the project is in there in those standards,
  11. wanted to put that in there.
  12. So my project was to create a kindergarten readiness assessment for my
  13. school's preschool classrooms to use um in the spring of each school year
  14. to determine which students were eligible to move into our great School program,
  15. which begins at kindergarten.
  16. So the purpose of the project is to ensure that
  17. the kids who are coming into kindergarten are really ready
  18. to be here so that they're able to thrive and
  19. when I say ready to be here in kindergarten,
  20. I do mean academically, but more importantly actually,
  21. um is if they're ready socially and emotionally to be in a kindergarten classroom.
  22. And so we're looking at things like can they sit and focus for five minutes at a time,
  23. can they follow two step instructions?
  24. Um
  25. can they work independently?
  26. Those sorts of things are really big determine
  27. ear's and how successful our students are.
  28. Um and we,
  29. what we really don't want to risk is undermining the love of learning that kids
  30. naturally have by putting Children into a
  31. situation that they're just not prepared for.
  32. So objective same thing.
  33. The objective is that our preschool teachers would
  34. use this assessment in the springtime of each year
  35. to determine whether families are offered a position
  36. in our transitional kindergarten or our kindergarten classroom.
  37. So the project impacts the impact for our students will be that
  38. will get students into the classroom that they're best suited for,
  39. to promote their,
  40. their learning and their passion um and their drive to
  41. grow as people and to just make sure they're happy.
  42. Um the impact for our teachers will be a few things. Um
  43. for one, it's easier to work when you have a clear rubric, it makes our jobs easier.
  44. Um and then we also,
  45. well just make sure that we have in our classrooms and groups of students that
  46. are ready to be where they are and are ready to thrive where they are.
  47. Um and then finally our families and our communities,
  48. I think this is where it's um kind of surprisingly helpful to them
  49. as a parent.
  50. If you are given an assessment that just says your kid is developing the skill, well,
  51. what does that really mean?
  52. Um having a rubric with really clear definitions of what qualifies as beginning,
  53. what qualifies as developing what qualifies as
  54. securing each category of our assessment actually
  55. will help parents better understand their child
  56. as a learner in a classroom setting.
  57. Um and then, you know, that all then spills over
  58. into our community as we have parents who have
  59. a better understanding of what's going on at school,
  60. a clearer idea of what the expectations are and we have kids in the classroom,
  61. they're better fit for.
  62. That means their their community relationships are going to be better as well.
  63. So the project implementation, the first thing we did, I spoke to our director
  64. and the preschool teachers and actually our first grade teacher as well
  65. about this idea and they were all super on board with it.
  66. I'll get to that my reflection
  67. um and the project grew.
  68. Um So I um we now have a committee that we formed
  69. our curriculum committee that's kind of born out of this product.
  70. It has grown beyond the scope I had intended.
  71. Um That's going to look at starting with this kindergarten readiness,
  72. look at our not only our curriculum but our assessments across the entire school
  73. to ensure that our assessments reflect the pathway in the trajectory and the goals
  74. For students exiting the school after 3rd grade.
  75. So that committee has been created has
  76. representation from every single grade on campus.
  77. Um and our office staff and then we are going to begin meeting.
  78. Our first meeting is december 1st we're going to meet every
  79. other Wednesday um after school basically until this work is finished.
  80. So that's starting after we get back from our
  81. things doing break and then I've already created,
  82. there's a link to it at the end of this,
  83. a draft rubric for our kindergarten readiness that has been shared with
  84. our office staff and our preschool teachers and our first grade teacher,
  85. um and our former kindergarten teachers here as well.
  86. Yes, we had a 30 year teacher retired two years ago
  87. um
  88. to have them start to look at them and provide their feedback. And then
  89. the goal for completion of the kindergarten readiness portion of this is March 1st.
  90. We have conferences at the end of March, so we want to have that.
  91. He's completely ready to go before our March conferences.
  92. Um, and ideally then we would also have other
  93. other grades may be ready to go as well as other teachers
  94. kind of spearhead the creation of those rubrics for each grade level.
  95. So that's the project in a nutshell. And then when I get to my reflection, I think the,
  96. the biggest thing I take away from this is
  97. something I've learned in the program is the value of
  98. a rubric in general, but also a really clear rubric.
  99. They're really benefits
  100. people on both sides of
  101. the document.
  102. So I just,
  103. I've really kind of seen the value of that and how much it
  104. can bring peace and harmony into an entire community really of learners.
  105. Um, the other thing though,
  106. that I really learned from the leadership aspect of this is
  107. if you see something say something because I kind of thought,
  108. oh, this is something I really want to do, like no one else is going to care.
  109. Um and now the enthusiasm for it has been such that it has just blossomed into this
  110. huge project that's going to really kind of
  111. transform how we assess for our entire school,
  112. which is really cool.
  113. Um
  114. but so, I mean, that's my biggest takeaways, you know,
  115. we're all we're all living in this educational
  116. world and we're all noticing different things,
  117. and the truth is, we're probably all noticing some of the same things,
  118. but no one's speaking up.
  119. Uh and so that's my big takeaway from me,
  120. is to always just say something I noticed this, I'm wondering if you work on that,
  121. I'd love to help improve it, and the amount of support that
  122. came in behind that was really
  123. amazing.
  124. So that's, that's kind of it for me, I've been, the rest of this is just
  125. my evidence that
  126. anyone who's pierre watching this can just skip, but
  127. these are some of the emails that have gone back and forth.
  128. There's a link in there too.
  129. Um
  130. the draft rubric, which is then linked here as well as my project proposal.
  131. So that is it for me. Thanks.
  132. Hi