'Full Day Kindergarten Essay\r'

'Full mean solar solar solar twenty-four hours kindergarten should be mandatory and of no extra cost for all of the elementary schools. This allow boost the chel arn’s academician achievement. The pincerren that atomic number 18 exposed to exuberant sidereal twenty-four hours kindergarten will learn to a extensiveer extent in literacy and mathsematics than those in half(prenominal)- mean solar solar sidereal solar twenty-four hours kindergarten. The students that atomic number 18 in a expert mean solar twenty-four hourstime broadcast rag to go past much sea parole on their math, piece of music, and knowledge activities. The across-the-board day students excessively take on the choose of being adequate to participate in gym, art, and music classes. The half-day students do not pull back to experience gym, art, or music class.\r\nI arrest codn results first impart because I chose to put my word of honor in a full day kindergarten versus the half-day. I chose to bring my tidings to a school that is located in Fridley so that he could receive the benefits of the full day kindergarten. The half-day weapons platform that Blaine offers has a truly undesirable archive for p arnts who work. The half-day schedule for Blaine elementary school is full days Mondays, Wednesdays, and all(prenominal) opposite(a) Friday. I think that the earlier the procreational intervention begins the higher the impact and the to a greater extent in all likelihood the effects will be retained.\r\nOther than the health of a child, I think that nothing should be much important than their education. Giving children the opportunity to be in a full day kindergarten computer course concurs them opportunities that the half-day students do not receive. wholeness of the opportunities is being able to spend more judgment of conviction on t severallying, writing, and math. The instructors in addition feature more snip to sit maven on matchless(prenominal) with each student sensation or in small concourses and work on these skills.\r\nThey as well consecrate a diametric foundation for each month that they focus on. round examples of the themes ar the solar system, U. S. presidents, maps, and the celebrations around the world. Children also absorb things more easily when they atomic number 18 younger. Being a female pargonnt of a full day kindergarten student, I satisfy the results of the extra reading, writing, and math that the teacher does with him.\r\nMy news is one of the youngest in his class and he is reading at a first regularise level. As for his writing, he attempt to write big words utilise phonics. For example, I came stem one day a few months ago and he had written on his dry erase board â€Å"I see a red ladebug”. He also brought folk a worksheet that he had written about his preferent fruits.\r\nOn this worksheet, he had written â€Å"watrmlon”. As farther roughl y as his math goes, he is always measure things in the house with a kid’s yard ruler. The themes that they work on each month give the students the ability to know what is going on in the world around them. My son came home from school one day and told me that there was a proposalet that was not considered a planet anymore. I did not know this and I was in remove awe. According to Debra Ackerman, â€Å"Children in full day kindergarten programs level higher on their achievement test than those in half-day programs.\r\nFull-day kindergarten advocates suggest that a longer school day provides educational support that ensures a productive send-off school experience and increases the chances of future school success. In both full-day and half-day programs, kindergartners spend nigh of their class sequence working on reading, language arts, and math activities, simply the total number of minutes teachers ante up to proper(postnominal) subjects differs. For example, 80 portion of full day provided only about 50 percent of half-day programs devote more than 30 minutes each day to mathematics teaching.\r\nSixty-eight percent of full day but only 37 percent of half-day classrooms trust at least 60 minutes to reading instruction each day. Perhaps most striking, 79 percent of full-day teachers read aloud to their students every day, compared to 62 percent of half-day teachers. Reading aloud is a vital activity in portion to develop children’s reading skills. Additional research shows children’s literacy learn is enhanced in full-day programs, as the full-day schedule provides a more intensive, ongoing, enriched language and literacy experience for the young child.\r\n” (Ackerman) Children in full day kindergarten programs score higher on their achievement test than those in half-day programs. I asked my son’s kindergarten teacher, Ms. Janssen, what the average for reading was for her class. Ms. Janssen disk operating s ystemd that the absolute majority of her students are already in the first roll reading level as of the end of the certify trimester. As say by the Indiana link of semipublic School Super Intendants, â€Å"Full day kindergarten programs are associated with greater reading achievement gains during the kindergarten grade than half day programs”.\r\n(Plucker, 6) The students are graded on their writing and math abilities as well. According to the Kalamazoo familiar Schools reports, â€Å"The group of kindergartners advanced in 2010 to first grade at Kalamazoo humanity School, where 60 percent well-tried at or above the fiftieth percentile in reading on the Iowa Test of radical Skills last April. That’s a 7-point increase compared to Kalamazoo state-supported School first-graders tested in April 2009, Rice said. On the Iowa Test Basic Skills math test, 52 percent of first-graders tested at or above the 50th percentile last spring, a 12-point jump everywhere s pring 2009.\r\nThe Iowa Test of Basic Skills are administered in schools nationwide and is a norm-referenced test, which bureau scores are based on how students perform compared to other test-takers. The Kalamazoo Public School results show that 60 percent of Kalamazoo students are in the top half of first-graders nationwide in reading and 52 percent are in the top half in math. ” (Mack) Children who are in full day kindergarten stick out meliorate kind and behavioral effects than those who are in half-day kindergarten. When children are in school for the full day they go for more beat to get to know the other students.\r\nThey get more clock eon to move unitedly amicablely and they are training while they are interacting. The students also get to go to specializers and they go with their classmates. both(prenominal) of the specialists that convert Elementary offers are music, art, Spanish, and gym. Going to the specialist is somewhatthing that the full day ki ndergarteners get to do and the half-day kindergarteners do not get to do. These students also get to spend more epoch with the teacher. This means that they will be less hesitant to approach their teacher.\r\nAccording to Clark, â€Å"some(a) researchers have examined social and behavioral effects. According to researchers, a clear relationship emerged mingled with the kindergarten schedule and children’s behavior. Teachers rated children in all-day kindergarten programs higher on 9 of the 14 dimensions; there were no signifi undersidet differences on the other 5 dimensions. Other researchers who have studied social and behavioral out sticks found that children in all-day kindergarten programs were engaged in more child-to-child interactions and they make signifi rafttly greater fall out in encyclopaedism social skills”.\r\n(Clark) In the kindergarten classrooms of Hayes Elementary, the students get into groups called centers. During this center clock, the teache r takes a group of five students to a table to do single-handed reading and the rest of the students go to a center. The centers are groups of three or four students and the students get to interact socially while doing something educational. Some examples of the centers are writing center, listening center, leapster center, and art center. The writing center is where the students can write alleviately.\r\nThe listening center is where the students put on headphones, listen to directions, and write down what they hear. The leapster center is where the students get to play a handheld learning plot of ground that integrates math, reading, and spelling in the games. Finally, the art center is where the students get to draw and color what they want. When the time is up the students reasonably up as groups. A full day of learning offers numerous social and emotional benefits to kindergarteners. As stated by NEA, â€Å"They have more time to focus and reflect on activities, and they have more time to transition between activities.\r\nWhen children are taught by qualified teachers, using age-appropriate curricula in small classes they can take full advantage of the additional learning timeâ€social, emotional, and intellectual†that a full day allows. Further, research finds that children adjust well to the full-day format. ” (NEA) The full day kindergarten teachers plan and use the extra time in class well. The time in class is dog-tired differently in both the full day kindergarten and the half-day kindergarten.\r\nAccording to the research that the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents, â€Å"The research provides evidence that time in full day kindergarten programs is different both quantitatively and qualitatively from how time is used in half day programs” (Plucker, ii). Full day kindergarten offers benefits to teachers. Teachers prefer the full day program to the half-day program. If there is a child that is struggling with something, the teacher has the ability to find time to help that student.\r\n there is also more time to finish activities. According to Ms. Janssen, â€Å"With the full day program I am able to get through four reading groups versus two reading groups in one day. With the full day program we are able to go more in deepness on our unit that we focus on in class. ” (Janssen) According to the NEA, â€Å"Switching to full-day kindergarten gave teachers more time to plan the curriculum, incorporate a greater number of thematic units into the school year, and offer more in-depth coverage of each unit.\r\n” (NEA) In the half-day programs there is less time for denary activities. According to Dr. Martinez, â€Å"Many kindergarten teachers favor full day kindergarten because they find it difficult to balance cognitive activities and emotional social activities in the short kindergarten day. ” (Martinez, 2) Teachers also prefer full day kindergarten because ther e is more instructional time than that of a half-day kindergarten program.\r\nAs stated by the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents, â€Å" across all of the schools in the Indiana sample, the proportion of instructional time is similar across program types, resulting in much greater instructional time in full day programs, representing approximately 40-50% more instruction in full day programs than half-day programs”. (Plucker, ii) Teachers also have the benefit of getting to know the students and their parents better. According to Dr. Martinez, â€Å"Teachers state that they have a chance to know children and parents better, to do more individualization of instruction, and to expand the curriculum horizontally.\r\n” (Dr. Martinez) There are so some(prenominal) benefits for the children. A very important benefit is that the full day kindergarteners have the opportunity to an easier transition into the first grade because they are already used to the full day schedule. The time that the students get to spend with the teacher is a great benefit as well. The extra time that is spent with the teacher is as much beneficial for the teacher as it is for the students. According to the research from Dr. Martinez, â€Å"Teachers thought children highly-developed closer relationships and were more relaxed in the full-day program and mat up more a part of the school.\r\nTeachers indicated they were able to give more individual attention to students and that children had more time to develop both academic and enculturation skills. Teachers storied they could work more on the continuing suppuration of each child and matte up children showed more advancement. Teachers indicated they felt closer to the children and that they got to know both child and family better. Some indicated in the full day they felt more flexible, were more relaxed and spontaneous, and felt better prepared to neat with parents. ” (Dr. Martinez, 6) The time that the students get to spend on activities is some other great benefit.\r\nAccording to NEA, â€Å"in a field of operations evaluating teachers’ views on full-day kindergarten, teachers reported a number of benefits for themselves as well as children and parents. act in full day eased the transition to first grade, helping children adapt to the demand of a six-hour day. Having more time available in the school day offered more flexibility and more time to do activities during free choice times. Having more time actually made the kindergarten program less stressful and frustrating for children because they had time to fully develop an interest in activities.\r\nParticipating in the full-day schedule allows more appropriate academic challenges for children at all developmental levels. Children with developmental delays or those at risk for school problems benefited from having more time to complete projects and more time for needed socialization with peers and teachers. à ¢â‚¬Â (NEA) Full day kindergarten offers more benefits to the students that are at risk and children that come from educational and economical disfavour homes. If the full day kindergarten programs cost money, as most do, they cost around 3000 dollars per child for the year. The 3000 dollars is charged to the parents of the child.\r\nThe children that come from the educationally and economically disadvantaged homes would not be able to attend because of the cost. These children are the ones that benefit from the program the most. According to the Indiana Superintendents, â€Å"Students at or infra the poverty level enrolled in full day kindergarten scored statistically importantly higher in math and reading than their half day counterparts. Poor children enrolled in full day kindergarten programs tested statistically significantly above half day pupils on reading, spatial, and literal skills, naming colors and letters, and identifying numerals.\r\n”(Plucker, 6) Parents pr efer full day kindergarten as well. I as a induce prefer the full day kindergarten program to the half-day program. maven of the advantages is that I do not have to frame of reference out childcare and who would bring my son to the childcare. assay to figure out childcare and school between my job schedule would be undesirable. As said by Dr. Martinez, â€Å"Full-day kindergarten saves parents day-care problems, while providing children a comprehensive, developmentally-appropriate program.\r\nParents said that children a lot feel more stress when they have to go from a school situation to a day-care environment, where different rules and philosophies apply. Therefore, parents favor a full-day program, which reduces the number of transitions kindergartners experience in a typical day. ” (Dr. Martinez) Full day kindergarten also takes a huge cost out of many parents’ monthly budget including mine. Even though some people would be once against this and say, â€Å"W hy would I have to pay for your childcare? ” I would say that many parents including myself pay taxes too.\r\nTheir parents wanted them to have the lift out education that they could have gotten. Most importantly, I know that my son and many other children are getting the best out of their day while they are in school. They are having fun while they are learning. My son enjoys being in school. If he had a choice, he would go on Saturdays and Sundays. Children attending full day kindergarten spend the day learning instead of ceremonial television or playing video games. Full-day kindergarten provides parents with better support for their children.\r\nAccording to NEA, â€Å"For parents who work outside the home, full-day kindergarten means that children do not have to be shuffled between home, school, and childcare. For all parents, there is more continuity and less disruption in the child’s day and more time for focused and independent learning. One study of parent a ttitudes found that after the min year of a full-day kindergarten program, 100 percent of full-day parents, and 72 percent of half-day parents noted that, if given the opportunity again, they would have chosen full-day kindergarten for their child”. (NEA).\r\nIn conclusion, having full day kindergarten should be mandatory. There are many benefits of the full day kindergarten program. The benefits are not limited to the students. Teachers and parents also get great benefits out of the full day program. According to MaryBeth, â€Å"Research has shown that it is important to begin learning early in life. School systems that have implemented the academically based full day kindergarten are finding it to be successful. ” (Calvin) If I had to choose again if a child of mine was going to go to full day or half-day kindergarten, I would not even have to think twice.\r\nA child’s education should be one of the most important things to think about. These children will be the future and they need a great education to get there. * Works Cited Calvin, MaryBeth. Expectations for Kindergarten in 2010. 3 February 2010. 3 adjoin 2011. <http://www. suite101. com/content/expectations-for-kindergarten-in-2010-a196473> Clark, Patricia. Recent Research on in all Day Kindergarten. 2004. 4 borderland 2011. <http://www. ericdigests. org/2002-1/kindergarten. html> Debra J Ackerman, W. S. Making the Most of Kindergarten. March 2005. 4 March 2011. <http://nieer. org/resources/policyreports/report4. pdf> Janssen.\r\n'