Greater Heights Developmental and Tutorial Center

es, and preferred learning styles. Our instruction is differentiated to provide enough challenge and support for all children to build on successfully and to develop positive attitudes about learning.We always look for ways to personalize learning and engage the child’s imagination. We believe that emotional engagement is the key to all powerful learning. That is why we bring love, laughter, passion, and meaningful work into our classroom. It is the familiarity with the Filipino and English language that precedes and underlies excellent phonemic awareness instruction. This familiarity allows the child’s decoding to be error-free and reading to be fluent. While systematically and actively “playing with language,” We encourage vocabulary and comprehension skills building. We believe that children deserve to memorize, recite, and perform many wonderful pieces of language in kindergarten — to turn print into sound and the pleasures of sound over to an appreciative audience. Our curriculum invites children to talk, sing, dramatize, and perform language. Developing the child’s capacity for language and thought underlies everything we do. We believe that rich experiences in the many languages of art, music, drama, dance, and storytelling help children find personal meaning in school learning. We intentionally use these multiple “ways of knowing” while promoting creative and higher-order thinking. We believe we must choose only the finest literature, songs, poems, and rhymes to give our children, because these language models are the seeds that inspire our children who love using language and grow them into powerful writers and thinkers. We want imaginative language, poetic phrases, and metaphors to become a part of our children’s thinking, speaking and writing. Quality literature supports quality comprehension instruction. Early reading books must delight the heart and mind. We have discovered that writing unlocks the key to higher literacy standards in kindergarten, and young children love to write. We believe that children deserve strategies to begin writing and to perceive themselves as authors and illustrators from the very first day of school. Within the context of writing, we systematically provide phonics instruction so children can learn powerful decoding skills and understand how the reading process works. We believe that joyful multi-sensory ABC and phonics immersion strategies (singing and signing and finger spelling) accelerate sound/symbol knowledge. These instructional practices are consistent with how the young child’s brain learns best. They are active and engaging strategies that build motivation and enthusiasm for learning. We believe that all young children deserve to learn memorable songs in American Sign Language. Children fortunate enough to learn ASL and experience performing lovely songs for appreciative audiences have a lifelong advantage in developing dynamic communication skills. We believe that we need to support and honor “awesome memory reading” as essential literacy experience for young children who have limited language and print experience. Memory reading with nursery rhymes and song picture books builds oral language fluency and allows children to believe they can read before they are actually reading word-for-word. These opportunities to role-play themselves as successful readers while learning concepts about print must accompany traditional shared and guided reading instruction, especially for children who have not had years of repeated “magical memory reading” experiences at home. This is how we develop language and reading skills simultaneously. We believe that parents and children need to understand that books build memories, and researchers say that reading books of one’s own choosing every day is the best way to become a good reader. Young children can develop skill in choosing just-right books and build pride in their reading stamina. We believe some children need much more carefully scaffolded instruction than we used to consider appropriate. As educators, we love the challenge of building success for each individual learner. We are constantly learning and open to new insights from educational research and other teaching colleagues. Our high expectations for children’s literacy development, thinking skills, and love of learning keep us challenged and reflective. We believe that by awakening children’s love of nature, we create compelling reasons for them to want to read, write, research, and learn. Our goal is to develop a sense of wonder and respect for the natural world. As we bring our connections with nature back into the classroom, we create a more engaging and alive learning environment. Children who learn to appreciate and respect the natural world will make wiser ecological choices now . . .and in the future. We believe that the kindergarten experience must nurture social-emotional skills in each child and create joyful school memories. Preschool is a once in a lifetime journey, and one of our jobs is to develop the imagination and create memorable moments, activities and celebrations that honor childhood. We value dramatic play, block building, dance and movement, and the many forms of literacy play. We want children to respect and honor God,become active learners and disciplined, creative thinkers; to learn to make good choices and to work cooperatively; and to be kind and responsible. We want children to love coming to school each day. We believe that young children deserve a multisensory and differentiated literacy program within a joyful, caring and loving community of learners and staffs. Their lives must be valued, celebrated, and incorporated into the literacy curriculum so they care about school and develop a love of learning. A classroom with authentic, meaningful learning always elicits a SMILE. To Teacher Nellie Edge...Thanks Ma'am, we share the same heart!!