My students come to kindergarten extremely well prepared. Eighty percent of them enter kindergarten with literacy skills well above district norms. Still, as in any classroom, they have a wide range of instructional needs because of their differing abilities, stages of development, interests and values. At the beginning of the school year, my students’ literacy skills ranged from several children who had acquired few concepts of print and did not know the letters in their own name to one child who read at the second grade level. I use a variety of learning experiences in my classroom to provide multiple paths to learning.

Southmoor Elementary is the only school in my school district that teaches native English speakers a second language in the elementary years. All students receive instruction in Spanish several times per week. This school also houses the only self-contained highly gifted classrooms for the school district. Because of Colorado’s free choice plan, about half of the students in the school come from the neighborhood; the other half of the students come from other schools within our district and from other surrounding districts.