While Jennie and Leslie plan mostly for their own classes, their regular partnering has created consistent, cross-grade content that benefits all children. Following are a few of the strategies they use that contribute to a smoother preschool-to-kindergarten transition.
Establish Professional Relationships
Setting aside time to connect with other teachers about their practices helps to build a shared understanding of each other’ s work. Administrators at Andover Elementary help facilitate this kind of collaboration by providing coverage for small groups of teachers to spend 15 minutes observing colleagues’ classrooms. Through their observations, Jennie and Leslie have become familiar with each other’ s curricula, teaching strategies, and expectations. In addition to the time allotted by administrators, the two often work together during scheduled planning sessions and after school as they prepare for the next day.
Relationships are also strengthened when educators jointly participate in professional development. During the NAEYC accreditation process for Andover’ s pre-K and kindergarten classes, Jennie and Leslie joined local accreditation support groups and began participating in coaching sessions together. This allowed them to set common and individual goals and to share ideas on how to connect their work to quality practices.
Strengthen Children’ s Peer Relationships
Establishing relationships among pre-K and kindergarten children is critical to successful transitions: Kindergartners become leaders; preschoolers build a sense of excitement and security as they begin to understand what’ s to come.
As illustrated in the opening vignette, the kindergartners in Jennie’ s class were eager to show preschoolers how to use gardening tools and how to plant seeds, tapping their communication and recall skills. The preschoolers, in turn, began to develop a relationship with Jennie. Because all of the children worked in small groups, they were able to practice taking turns, listening to multiple perspectives, and exploring different ideas.
Jennie and Leslie introduce cross-classroom activities and challenges throughout the year. One of these is creating a class“ book worm”: Each time a child reads a book or has a book read to them, they write the title on a construction paper circle. These are posted on a wall inside each classroom, becoming the body of a book worm. The challenge is to see whose worm makes its way around their classroom first. As children check each class’ s progress, they get to see and talk about what each class is reading.
Spring 2026 Educating Young Children 37