How can you help your child's teacher nurture and enrich your child in the classroom?
There are a couple of different ways that you can volunteer in your child's classroom to help the teacher nurture, enrich and extend the curriculum to foster the strengths and talents of many students.
1. Kids Into Thinking Skills Programs (KIT)
The KIT Program includes extension tasks that will assist classroom teachers in effectively differentiating instruction for the highly able students in his/her class. KIT will develop each student's potential through active participation in the learning process. Collaboration among parents, teachers, students, and volunteers is vital.
Each KIT provides:
- Small group experiences that involve higher level thinking activities centered on a theme
- Each theme is broken down into weekly activities that are lead by a trained volunteer
- KITS are aligned with Common Core
- Activities follows the higher level thinking skills of Blooms Taxonomy
- Each KIT provides "Home Connection" activities
2. CMAPP Enrichment Lessons
CMAPP is the online Wake County Curriculum Resource Management System that teachers use to help guide and pace their classroom instruction. WCPSS has supplied teachers with a variety of enrichment math lessons to help them extend their instruction. Once again, parent volunteers are vital to making these lessons successful. If used on a consistent basis (Ex. weekly) high ability students can benefit from these higher level enrichment activities. Please see your child's teacher for CMapp enrichment lessons you can do with a small group!
3. Jacob’s Ladder
Jacob's Ladder is a reading comprehension program designed for students who need more rigorous material and scaffolding to work at higher levels of thinking in reading. It is intended to be used in small groups to facilitate discussions that stress collaborative reasoning which foster greater engagement and higher level thinking. The reading selections include carefully chosen classic and contemporary literature.
4. U-Stars-Plus
U-Stars-Plus is a program designed to create a higher level thinking environment around literature connected with high interest science topics. Books and activities are intended to be used with a larger science unit of study or independently. It is organized around Blooms Taxonomy to support a range of thinking levels and to scaffold learning and included home science experiments for further learning.
5. Math Superstars
The purpose of Math Superstars is to provide extra challenge that self-motivated students need in mathematics. It is an opportunity for students who like challenges and want to be rewarded for their extra effort. Math Superstar pages are in order according to curriculum pacing. Problem difficulty is rated from 1 star to 4 stars (4 being most difficult). Students work through problems independently or with a volunteer. Math Superstars allow students to “earn rewards” after so many stars. Please see your child’s teacher for the next set of Superstars!
If you're interested in being an Enrichment lesson volunteer please email me at [email protected]
