SMASD PreK
The SMASD is kicking off its first district operated PreK program in the fall of 2022, with teacher Mrs. Valerie Nedimyer and paraprofessional, Mrs. Jackie Shuttleworth.
- We are excited to offer another early learning opportunity to students in the St. Marys Area school district! We recognize that there are other high quality programs for the children in our community and our hope is that this program is another great option.
- Early childhood education can have an enormous impact on student achievement for years to come! In John Hattie's Visible Learning research he determined more than 250 influences on student achievement by analyzing over 95,000 studies involving 300 million students. Among those 250 influences, two factors: Preschool programs and Early years' Interventions were found to have a significant positive impact on student achievement.
- The preschool program, while housed at South St. Elementary School, is open to any child who turns 4 years old by June 1st and lives in the St. Marys Area District. In fact, the children in this year's program live from Bennett's Valley, Fox Township, and South's communities. There were no income requirements for this program and the program is provided free of charge to families.
- This year we have 20 children in one classroom with a teacher and an aide. Our program is a full school day. The children in the program will attend "specials" like art, gym, music, and library with our district teachers. They have access to our district's free school breakfast and lunch program this year too!
- The program has been developed with Pennsylvania Early Learning Standards as our guiding post. Believe it or not, learning standards are clearly mapped out for educators from a child's birth through highschool. That includes over 200 learning standards in preschool that incorporate everything from learning numbers and letters to social emotional skills, approaches to play, and participating in simple science investigations.
- Our classroom will be set up to enhance play based learning. Mr. Rogers said it best, “Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.”- Fred Rogers
- We will also be aligning our curriculum with other high quality, researched based programs that other grades in our district are already using. For example, we will be learning letters and phonemic awareness from Wilson's Fundations reading program and Heggerty Phonemic Awareness program. Our math program will come from Eureka Math which is used in Kindergarten classrooms and beyond. So when the students in this program enter school district kindergarten they will have great alignment and exposure to those programs.
- The PreK uses a program called Creative Curriculum. Creative curriculum is a state approved program that has a strong emphasis on social emotional skills, play based learning, science and social studies investigations.
- Our program will work closely with Seneca's Highlands' IU9 Early Intervention preschool program to provide any special education services needed to the preschoolers in our program. It is very important to me and the district that we are providing high quality inclusive learning opportunities to our students. More than 40 years of research show that inclusion benefits children with and without learning disabilities so we are going to do everything in our power to support that!
- Dr. Ramsey and all of our school district administration has been an amazing support in the development of this program! They truly believe that children are part of the St. Marys Area school district community from birth, not just when you enter kindergarten. They chose to develop this program to support the needs of the families and students in our community. It has been a great pleasure to build this program from the ground up with them.
