Recaps and Highlights from Eight PreK-3rd Webinars

Since February 2012, we’ve been tracking (and live-tweeting) the PreK-3rd Grade National Work Group’s series of webinars on reducing the achievement gap by fourth grade. Today  the work group, of which New America is a part, released a four-page brief with webinar highlights. The group's site also includes PDFs of press coverage from Ed Daily, which reported on each session.

The webinar series featured teachers, administrators, and researchers employing strategies designed to foster “high-quality learning experiences for children from prekindergarten through third grade.” The eight webinars covered:

• Research-based justifications for focusing on the PreK-3rd grades
• Effective administrative leadership in early
• Strategies for encouraging parent investment in their children’s early school years
• The Common Core State Standards’ implications for the PreK-3rd grades
• The development and implementation of aligned, high-quality PreK-3rd grade curricula
• How to measure and develop effective early childhood instruction
• Best practices for using student assessment data
• Strategies for scaling an aligned PreK-3rd grade agenda to reach all levels of government

This weekend, several members of the work group will be holding a panel discussion in San Francisco, at the annual Professional Development Institute hosted by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. The panel—titled “Developing appropriate practice in preK through 3rd grade: It can be done”—is one of the institute’s featured sessions.

For more information on the webinar series, including videos or slides for each of them, see the work group's site.