PRE-K

(previously Teaching Strategies Gold)

🎯 Intended Use:

The curriculum is used by preschool teachers to plan and implement developmentally appropriate activities in their daily instruction. The Creative Curriculum is an early childhood curriculum that focuses on project-based studies/investigations as a means for children to apply skills and addresses the following areas of development: social-emotional, physical, cognitive, language, and mathematics. 

The curriculum is designed to foster development of the whole child through teacher-led small and large group activities centered around 11 interest areas (blocks, dramatic play, toys and games, art, library, discovery, sand and water, music and movement, cooking, computers, and outdoors). The comprehensive curriculum and formative assessment platform,  SmartTeach, provides teachers with details on child development, teaching strategies, and how to engage families in the learning process.

🪜 District Level Implementation Support:

• Modules for completion of Inter-Rater Reliability (certification for ongoing assessments of students)

• Platform usage (lesson planning, data collection, curricular resources, and interrater reliability is embedded within the online platform SmartTeach)

• Instructional Coaching and vendor training is available for teachers 

📋 Program Use Requirements:

Creative Curriculum and Teaching Strategies Gold is an observation-based system for children from birth through kindergarten, designed to document learning, inform instruction, and facilitate communication with families.  Lesson plans following a rubric are to be entered and submitted weekly, student performance documentation is entered on an ongoing basis, development and learning reports are sent home to families each nine weeks, and district-wide data is analyzed at PLC meetings. 

🎯 Intended Use:

Waterford Early Learning SmartStart is a multimodal resource designed to teach age-appropriate reading, math, and science concepts in preschool classrooms. Preschool teachers can offer select online activities in reading, math, science, and social-emotional development during one 15-minute session per day as a learning center during free choice. There are additional online and print resources, such as YouTube videos and adapted visuals, which can be used during whole group instruction, to differentiate instruction and align with each child’s strengths, current skills, needs, and learning pace. 

🪜 District Level Implementation Support:

• Training and ongoing support from vendor, Waterford professional learning consultant, offered both on-site and virtually

• Instructional coaches available to support instructional implementation of Waterford 

• Built-in desktop platform with integrated teacher tools and resources

• Monthly Waterford newsletter from Professional Learning Consultant with relevant online and print resources 

📋 Program Use Requirements:

In DPS, the Office of Early Education provides the Waterford Program for preschool students to support instruction with kindergarten readiness skills. Waterford is an adaptive learning program designed to meet every child’s developmental level, and design a customized path to Kindergarten readiness skills. Students are administered the WACS (Waterford Assessment of Core Skills) assessment three times a year.  Lessons are assigned to students based on their WACS benchmarks. Smart Start lessons are assigned fifteen minutes per day to guide growth. Students and teachers access Waterford through Clever.

🎯 Intended Use:

In DPS, the Office of Early Education utilizes the Eureka Math² curriculum. Eureka Math² for preschool is a knowledge building  curriculum that blends print and digital format. Math lessons are in the form of stories and the stories and math skills build on each other.

🪜 District Level Implementation Support:

• Ongoing training from Office of Early Education leadership staff

• Pre-K Instructional Coaches available to support instructional implementation

• Online modules

📋 Program Use Requirements:

Teachers receive Eureka Math² manuals, teacher manual access through Clever, student workbooks and manipulative sets are  provided for each classroom. Math lessons from the kits are a required component of teachers instruction and is required to be outlined on weekly lesson plans.