WAKEFIELD — Superintendent of Schools Douglas Lyons is pleased to announce that Wakefield Public Schools will host a virtual information session about its kindergarten program next week.
The session will provide parents with an overview of what kindergarten looks like in Wakefield, with deeper looks at individual school programs set to happen later in the spring.
Kindergarten night will take place virtually on Thursday, March 24, at 7 p.m. via Zoom. To join, click here.
“Kindergarten is one of the very best things we do in the district,” Superintendent Lyons said. “That’s due largely to our great staff, who are really committed to helping kids develop socially, emotionally and academically.”
Parents are invited to attend this virtual session to learn more about kindergarten in Wakefield, including important information about the process for registering students for kindergarten for the next school year.
According to Greenwood Elementary School Principal Tiffany Back, kindergarten serves as a vital stage in children’s development. It’s in kindergarten, she said, where children learn what it means to be a student in a structured routine, take part in play-based learning and develop critical skills like how to interact with their peers and navigate social situations.
The experiences of the current kindergarten class closely mirror what incoming kindergarteners will experience, as they make the transition to daily schooling after two years of interrupted schedules due to the pandemic.
“For our incoming kindergarten students, it’s a whole new level of social interaction that they’ve been starved for,” Lyons said.
Veteran teacher Kathy DiVasta said that now, perhaps more than ever, kindergarten is an opportunity for students to begin their learning. In years past, about three-quarters of students had some pre-kindergarten classroom experience. As the district emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, that number is much smaller, and teachers are working harder to bridge the gap.
According to DiVasta, her students are learning about how to differentiate between home and school, how to share with others and how to read and react to their classmates’ feelings — all for the first time in their lives in many cases. Each day, teachers and paraprofessionals work with students to develop their literacy and numeracy skills, bolstered this year by a summer acceleration program that gave kindergarteners a head start on the school year.
Wakefield is working to obtain grant funding to repeat that effort for the 2022-23 school year.
At Woodville Elementary, kindergarten teacher Katie Bowers said that kindergarten’s structure builds in time to pause, address, and teach positive behaviors that are necessary for students to learn. Each day also emphasizes building the foundations of reading and writing and helping students further develop their speech skills now that masks are optional in classrooms.
At kindergarten night, the district’s elementary principals will discuss the expectations of students and how parents can help ensure their children are prepared. They will also share general information about school lunches, curriculum, student and family services, as well as transportation, in addition to more insight into a day in the life of a kindergartener.
At the end of the presentation, a question and answer panel discussion will be held.
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