DEPARTMENT: Pre-K 4 SA
DEPARTMENT HEAD: Sarah Baray, Ph.D.
COUNCIL DISTRICTS IMPACTED: Citywide
SUBJECT:
USAA Grant Award
SUMMARY:
This item approves Pre-K 4 SA to accept a grant totaling $50,000 from USAA for continued work with Wolf Trap.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
The Wolf Trap Institute is a proven national model for utilizing the performing arts to support young children's cognitive, emotional, and physical development, while enhancing academic skills in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) content through developmentally appropriate arts-integrated professional development and coaching for teachers, while providing engaging learning for children in content that is infrequently taught to young children. Wolf Trap addresses two primary concerns: first, the school readiness of children, many of whom live in educationally disadvantaged circumstances, and second, access to effective professional development and coaching for teachers who work with these children.
A recent independent study funded by the U.S. Department of Education in Fairfax County, Virginia indicates that teachers who use the Wolf Trap Institute's arts-integrated early childhood strategies have a significant, positive impact on children's learning in math. Additionally, a new analysis released in 2016 shows that students in the classrooms of Wolf Trap-trained teachers gain the equivalent of more than a month of additional math learning. Participating teachers also developed skillsets to engage students in performing arts learning experiences (music, dance, drama) that develop early childhood mathematics learning skills in number and number sense, measurement, geometry, algebra, data analysis, statistics, and probability. Students in these classrooms received the equivalent of 1.3 additional months of learning, or 26 additional days, compared to their peers in the control groups. In the second year, a sustained impact was found amounting to 1.7 additional months of le...
Click here for full text