• The College Heights PreK program aligns its curriculum and instruction with the Georgia Early Learning and Development Standards (GELDS). The GELDS framework ensures that children develop skills in language and literacy, math, science, social studies, creativity, motor, and social emotional skills. The GELDS are taught through the below scientific research-based instructional programs:

    • HighScope

    • Foundations in Emergent Literacy 

    • Inquiry-Based Learning

    HighScope

    The HighScope Curriculum is uniquely designed to provide a rich academic foundation while promoting young children's independence, decision-making, cooperation, creativity, and problem-solving. How? The HighScope Curriculum includes; Learning objectives, Effective adult interaction strategies, and Assessment measures that help ensure a high-quality experience for all learners.

    HighScope is an instructional framework founded on effective teaching and learning strategies that encompass the developmental domains of early learning. Drawing on the child development ideas of Jean Piaget, it emphasizes the idea that children are intentional learners, who learn best from activities that they plan, carry out, and review afterward. Adults introduce new ideas to children through adult-initiated small and large-group activities. Adults observe, support, and extend the children's play. Adults arrange interest areas in the learning environment; maintain a daily routine that permits children to plan, carry out, and review their activities. In addition, adults join in children's activities, asking appropriate questions that extend their plans and help them think and adding complex language to the discussion to expand the child's vocabulary. Using essential experiences derived from child development theory as a framework, adults encourage children to make choices, solve problems, and engage in activities that contribute to their intellectual, social, and physical development. 

    Reference:

    Schweinhart, Larry J. The High/Scope approach: Evidence that participatory learning in early childhood contributes to human development. The crisis in youth mental health (2006): 207-227. 

    Foundations in Emergent Literacy

    At CHECLC, our evidence-based literacy instruction prioritizes children's development in four key areas: Print Knowledge, Phonological Awareness, Vocabulary, and Oral Language. These are considered the building blocks of emergent literacy. 

    Print Knowledge includes intentional instruction in letter names, the ability to recognize and say the names of letters; letter sounds, knowing the sound a letter represents; and concepts of print, understanding how print works.

    Vocabulary is knowing words and word meanings. It includes expressive vocabulary (words said or produced) and receptive vocabulary (words heard and understood). Vocabulary is essential for later reading comprehension, decoding, and language comprehension. 

    Phonological Awareness includes identifying and manipulating sounds in language. Such as rhyming words, clapping out syllables, or recognizing the beginning sounds in words. Difficulties with phonological awareness are often at the heart of most children's later reading challenges. 

    Oral language is the system through which we use spoken words to express knowledge, ideas, and feelings. Oral language is the foundation on which all emergent literacy and later reading is built and supports children's math, science, social, and self-regulation skills. 

    Inquiry-Based Learning

    The National Association for the Education of Young Children states that play is essential to children's development and is the vehicle for helping children make progress toward learning goals. In our play-based classrooms, teachers encourage students to ask questions about what they notice in their world and scaffold children in planning and carrying out investigations, proposing explanations and solutions, and communicating their understanding of concepts in various ways. In addition, children have opportunities to engage in playful activities and provocations that promote creative thinking and collaboration with their peers to construct knowledge and theories about their world.