Welcome to Kindergarten

From August planning to July reflection, Welcome to Kindergarten is a comprehensive resource that will give kindergarten teachers new insights. Noted teachers and presenters Bonnie Brown Walmsley and Debra Redlo Wing demonstrate how best practices and a student-centered focus can make the first year of school rewarding for kindergarteners, parents, and teachers.

The authors are experienced teachers, presenting you, in clear and direct language, with developmentally appropriate teaching themes throughout the school year as well as specific project topics that get kids interested and excited about learning. All the while, Walmsley and Wing address topics important to your classroom, including:

• assessing literacy progress
• meeting educational standards in a student-centered curriculum
• building students' content-area knowledge
• communicating meaningfully with parents
• keeping useful records
• making time for professional development.

From ideas about setting up your classroom, structuring play, and integrating art and music into lesson planning to invaluable resources like discographies and booklists that Walmsley and Wing have developed in their own classrooms, Welcome to Kindergarten gives you everything you need for effective organizing, communication, planning, and professional development.

Whether you are a full- or half-day kindergarten teacher, a veteran or a rookie, Walmsley and Wing are enthusiastic partners in helping you improve your teaching. Read Welcome to Kindergarten and foster joyful learning in your students-and in yourself.

Bonnie Brown Walmsley has been a kindergarten teacher for eighteen years and an early childhood teacher for twenty-five years. She currently teaches at Karigon School in Clifton Park, New York. She has consulted for school districts and presented at conferences and workshops throughout the United States. She has coauthored, Kindergarten Ready or Not (Heinemann, 1998), Teaching Kindergarten: A Developmentally-Centered Approach (Heinemann, 1994), Teaching Kindergarten: A Theme-Centered Curriculum (Heinemann, 1994), and Teaching with Favorite Marc Brown Books (Scholastic, 1999).

Debra Redlo Wing teaches kindergarten at Westmere Elementary in Guilderland, NY. She is a consultant and presenter for Kindergarten Teachers. She has studied the project approach with Drs. Lilian Katz and Sylvia Chard and presented with them at National Conferences. She has published projects in The Project Approach Catalogue #2 (November, 1998) and #3 (November, 2000). Additionally Debra has been a mentor teacher and administrator over the course of her more than twenty-five years of early childhood teaching.