ELP Open House

1. ELP Open House 2013-2014

2. Who is in our classroom? • Kristin Iorio, classroom teacher • Donna Bruno, Corie White and Eira Emke, paraprofessionals • Lynne Longo & Barry Wasserman, School Psychologist • Lauren Pakkala, Speech and Language Pathologists • Gerri Campbell, Occupational Therapist • Brooke Clark, Occupational Therapist • Karen Kraus, Physical Therapist • Jacalyn Papstein, Board Certified Behavior Analyst

3. School Hours • Arrival: 8:30 • Students’ start time is promptly at 8:30 a.m. Please drive your car through the parent drop off loop and a paraprofessional will walk your child to his/her classroom (unless other arrangements have been made with the teacher individually) • Arrival: 9:30 • Please park your car in the parking lot and enter the building through the front doors. Paraprofessionals will greet students in the Great Hall and walk them down to their classrooms. • Dismissal: 1:30 • Dismissal will occur in the Great Hall. The students will be walked to the Great Hall and dismissed there. Teachers will dismiss one child at a time to ensure that each child connects to the appropriate adult. Since school is still in session during ELP dismissal, the Kindergarten playground is closed to parents and children during the school hours. Please do not park in the front loop or Fire Lane.

4. School Closings/Delayed Openings/Early Dismissals • Delayed Openings:all students attend school from 10:00- 1:30. • Scheduled Early Dismissals: 8:30/9:30 – 11:30 • Emergency Early Dismissals: follow the Tokeneke School dismissal • Register for School Messenger for notifications via e-mail/text message. Information can be found on the Darien Public Schools website.

5. School Lunch • Students may buy school lunch. All the information about setting up a lunch account can be found on my blog. • Lunch menus are available on the Tokeneke School and Darien Public Schools websites. • We check each day to see if your child has a lunch box. If not, we order him/her a lunch. There is no need to notify me unless you have a specific request about lunch selection.

6. Snack • In an effort to provide nutritiously sound snacks for our students, parents will be helping by providing snacks for a given week. Each classroom’s room mothers have organized a schedule so you will know when you are expected to provide snack and beverage. When it is your turn to provide snack, please keep in mind that we are aiming for healthy snacks and juice. • All snacks should be peanut-free and nut-free, regardless of whether or not there is an allergy present in the classroom. Snacks should also be delivered ready to be eaten (i.e. apples sliced, grapes cut in half, etc). • We are requesting that snacks be delivered on Monday (or the first day of the school week) for the entire week. We have plenty of refrigerator space available to store them. The ELP program will provide paper goods.

7. Health & Safety • Please call the Health Office at Tokeneke by 8:15am every day your child is absent. Your message should include: child’s name, date & time, child’s teacher, and reason for absence. • It’s helpful if you can call or e-mail the teacher as well. • See the ELP Handbook for further information about medication, physicals, returning to school after an illness.

8. Conferences • Conferences are held in December, March and end of May. In December, conferences are scheduled with parents of all students. In March, conferences are held for special needs students and for typically developing peers by request. At the end of May, conferences are again scheduled with parents of all students.

9. Daily/Weekly Communication • Due to a district-wide effort to “go green,” daily/weekly communication will be made electronically. • Each day, an email will be sent briefly describing the day’s activities. • Communication from therapists will arrive regularly via e-mail for those to whom it applies.

10. Observations • Consistent with Darien Public School policies, all observations MUST be scheduled in advance through the Assistant Principal of ELP. This policy is available for reference on the last page of the ELP Handbook.

11. Room Mothers & Volunteering • Our room mothers are MaryJo Miller and Lucie Ventker. • They have scheduled snack providers, classroom readers, and volunteers for parties. Reminders will be sent via daily classroom emails. • Should you need to cancel or reschedule a volunteer slot, please contact the room mothers and teacher.

12. Curriculum • We are currently using Toni Linder’s Trans-Disciplinary Play-Based Curriculum called Read, Play, and Learn. This program is literature-based, with play center activities related to storybook modules. Each module lasts approximately 2-3 weeks. Parents will be informed at the onset of every new unit of study. • The Early Learning Program has adapted the CT Preschool Assessment Framework (PAF) as a means of measuring growth in the personal-social, cognitive, creative and physical domains. The PAF was developed as a companion to the CT Preschool Curriculum Framework and Benchmarks for Children in Preschool Programs and is directly aligned with this document. The PAF enables teachers to plan and implement curriculum, activities that address specific learning standards, and to observe and assess children’s progress on these same standards. • One of the primary purposes of the CT PAF is to organize and mutually share information between families and program staff, as well as to share information with receiving teachers and to support effective transitions. The CT PAF is administered in the fall and spring of each school year and will be discussed with you during conferences.

13. We have also adopted a literacy curriculum. All ELP classrooms are implementing the Literate Days program in conjunction with Read, Play, Learn. The following are the district goals for literacy: • Through the implementation of balanced literacy in preschool, it is the district’s goal that students will: • Establish literacy habits, including the ability to sustain attention and interest in reading and writing texts and the structure of the workshop model; • Develop oral language skills through conversation and vocabulary development; • Develop language/story comprehension skills through read-alouds; • Develop awareness of print concepts through interactions with texts in print-rich environments, shared reading and writing, and interactive reading and writing; • Develop phonetic and phonemic awareness skills such as rhyming, alliteration, blending and segmenting sounds/words, and letter-sound correspondence; • Understand the role of various text media as it exists in real world experiences.

14. Our Schedule • Our class will have Music based on Tokeneke’s 6-day rotation schedule on A days.

15. Enrichment Opportunities ELP has several opportunities for enrichment through out the year which include the following: A visit by Fireman Bob and his truck Author visits (We have one coming up on September 30th) A visit from the Darien Nature Center in the Spring A performance by Theater Works Visits from community helpers