Pre-Kindergarten - Gateway 1
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Gateway Ratings Summary
Is the curriculum designed to meet the needs of all students?
Gateway 1 - Partially Meets Expectations | 0% |
|---|---|
Criterion 1.1: Responsive Practices | 0 / 8 |
Criterion 1.2: Diverse Learners | 0 / 6 |
Criterion 1.1: Responsive Practices
Curriculum materials are designed to facilitate positive relationships by being responsive to diverse identities and backgrounds.
Indicator 1.1a
Curriculum materials are designed to support positive relationships and interactions with adults.
Frog Street Pre-K materials meet expectations for supporting positive relationships and interactions (1.1a).
The materials intentionally embeds adult–child interaction supports throughout daily routines, instructional activities, and play-based experiences. These supports are grounded in research on relationship-based learning and are reinforced across all nine Teaching Guides.
Consistent relationship-building routines are embedded across all themes, with the Connect component integrated throughout all nine Teaching Guides to provide repeated, intentional opportunities for adult–child interaction across the year. The daily Greeting Circle routine (Unite, Connect, Calm, Commit) establishes predictable structures that support trust, emotional safety, and relationship development.
This approach is grounded in research-based guidance, as the Welcome Guide explicitly cites research on how responsive, nurturing adult interactions support children’s social-emotional development and learning. Conscious Discipline® principles are integrated throughout the curriculum to guide adult modeling of empathy, respect, and emotional regulation.
Opportunities for reciprocal interaction are embedded across settings, with adult–child interactions reinforced during Practice Centers, STEAM lessons, small-group instruction, and vocabulary development activities (e.g., Vocabulary Cards, pp. 56–57). Teachers are prompted to ask open-ended questions, scaffold play, and engage in shared problem-solving during cooperative activities.
Modeling and guided practice support positive interactions, as teachers model social behaviors such as eye contact, respectful communication, and emotional regulation during Brain Smart Start and Greeting Circle activities. Children practice interaction skills through structured routines and cooperative play, with adult support and feedback. Some modeled scenarios and guided practice occur through role-play and scenario-based opportunities during Greeting Circle and select lessons.
Overall, Frog Street Pre-K provides robust, research-aligned supports to foster positive adult–child relationships through consistent routines, adult modeling, cooperative play, and embedded interaction opportunities throughout the instructional day. Relationship-building practices are reinforced throughout all Teaching Guides and across multiple learning contexts, demonstrating intentional design and sustained implementation.
Indicator 1.1b
Curriculum materials support collaborative partnerships with families by fostering communication and coordinating home-school learning.
Frog Street Pre-K materials meet expectations for supporting collaborative partnerships with families (1.1b).
The materials include tools for sharing information with families, such as newsletters, assessment checklists, and suggested home connections. Every week, each theme offers a family newsletter in English and Spanish, with additional languages available (15 in Family Connections). The newsletter tells families which theme and week they are on in the curriculum, the title, a word of the week, calming strategies they are working on and how they work, what children are working on and learning, and what’s coming up next week. Some include an additional page for the family to complete and return to school, which supports shared decision-making. Theme 1, Week 1 (p. 3) includes a Getting To Know Your Child survey in which the family provides more information about the child, their favorite things, and their family. Each theme includes a weekly family email, available in both English and Spanish. The email explains what children are learning, encourages families to discuss related topics at home (such as daily routines), and provides suggested questions to support those conversations. There is a link in the email to family connection activities, which takes families to the newsletter. It also includes a weekly storybook with a link so families can read it at home, is used in class, and offers audio and non-audio options. Teacher Guides prompt teachers to invite families to contribute photographs, home language vocabulary, family stories, food traditions, and name origins in connection with classroom learning.
The Welcome Guide provides some guidance on the importance of two-way communication and on strategies for creating a learning team (Welcome Guide, pp. 110-111). Weekly Family Connections establishes a clear and recurring cadence for ongoing communication with families (Welcome Guide, p. 16). In addition, the Welcome Guide identifies portfolios and the Pre-Kindergarten Skills Assessment Summary as tools for communicating children’s development with families during conferences and directs teachers to organize documentation into structured intervals to show growth over time (Welcome Guide, pp. 90-91). Materials do not indicate that information about student progress is shared in families' preferred language.
The materials offer suggestions on family communication and engagement through a variety of information-sharing tools. Weekly family newsletters provide an overview of instructional focus and suggested home activities (e.g., Theme 2, Teacher Guide, pp. 34–35). Observation Checklists and Assessment Data Collection Checklists support documentation of children’s progress and may inform family conversations (Theme 1, Teacher Guide, p. 28).
Family engagement is further supported through Family Connections and at-home activities. Weekly Family Connections suggest ways families can extend learning at home (e.g., planting seeds, identifying community helpers during car rides, baking for community workers).
The materials address and acknowledge cultural differences and family traditions. For example, respecting varied participation in the Pledge of Allegiance (Theme 1, Teacher Guide, p. 13), highlighting differences in Western and Indigenous perspectives (Theme 4, Teacher Guide, p. 18), encouraging children to share foods their families enjoy (Theme 8, Teacher Guide, p. 44), and noting varied ways families celebrate birthdays (Theme 9, Teacher Guide, p. 95). Additional supports include meeting the needs of diverse classrooms (Welcome Guide, pp. 94-95), meeting the needs of dual English language learners (Welcome Guide, pp. 96-98), and supporting students with special needs (Welcome Guide, pp. 99-109). Language access and opportunities for family input are also included. The Welcome Guide (pg. 59, 94-98) highlights translanguaging and multilingual supports that reinforce home language connection within instruction and family communication.
Overall, Frog Street Pre-K materials provide consistent and structured opportunities to support collaborative partnerships with families by fostering communication and coordinating home–school learning. The curriculum includes multiple tools for sharing information, such as weekly family newsletters, emails, assessment checklists, and suggested home connection activities. These resources establish a regular cadence for communication and provide families with information on instructional focus, classroom strategies, and ways to extend learning at home. The materials also include guidance for building relationships with families and encouraging family contributions, such as sharing cultural traditions, home language vocabulary, and family experiences.
Indicator 1.1c
Curriculum materials are culturally and linguistically responsive, reflecting and valuing learners’ diverse backgrounds and languages.
Frog Street Pre-K materials partially meet expectations for cultural and linguistic responsiveness (1.1c).
The Welcome Guide provides some cultural responsiveness guidance grounded in the "windows and mirrors" framework, which exposes children to people and experiences outside their familiarity and allows them to see themselves and their families reflected in the classroom.
The materials include some culturally relevant texts that help children explore identity, family, and difference. For example, A Chair for My Mother explores different jobs and family roles (Theme 2, Teacher Guide, p. 19), Quinito’s Neighborhood highlights similarities and differences in families and neighborhoods (Theme 3, Teacher Guide, pp. 18–19), The Waiting Game encourages discussion about how children received their names (Theme 9, Teacher Guide, p. 19), and Your Fabulous Skin supports discussion of physical differences such as skin and eye color (Theme 1, Teacher Guide, p. 44).
The materials also include some supports for multilingualism and cultural awareness. Teachers are prompted to translate weekly vocabulary into children’s home languages (Theme 2, Teacher Guide, p. 90), and guidance is provided to offer flexibility during the Pledge of Allegiance, including moments of silence or opting out (Theme 1, Teacher Guide, p. 13).
There are also opportunities for children to share cultural practices with peers and make connections between home and school. Teachers are prompted to invite families to share food or family photos (Theme 2, Teacher Guide, p. 17), children discuss name origins with family input (Theme 4, Teacher Guide, p. 17), and children share how birthdays and celebrations are observed at home (Theme 9, Teacher Guide, p. 95).
Representation is also visible across curriculum materials. Vocabulary cards include racially diverse children (Theme 3, Curriculum Resources), and several read-alouds depict children from different cultural backgrounds, such as Here Are My Hands (Theme 1, Teacher Guide, p. 42).
The materials also provide some guidance for culturally responsive teaching. Cultural awareness callouts appear 2–4 times per theme in the Teacher Guides, the Welcome Guide discusses anti-bias education and “windows and mirrors” (pp. 94–95), and teachers are encouraged to display culturally diverse materials and images in the classroom (Welcome Guide; Implementation Support: Eight Classroom Strategies to Optimize Pre-K Learning, p. 7).
Overall, Frog Street Pre-K provides a moderate range of culturally relevant examples and instructional supports, offering opportunities for children to see themselves represented and to learn about others. The materials include some culturally responsive texts across themes, activities, and teacher prompts embedded throughout, along with opportunities for children to share their own cultural practices and references that support awareness of diverse abilities. Supports for culturally responsive teaching are presented through callouts and embedded prompts that guide implementation within instruction. The materials can be strengthened by providing this guidance with greater detail and consistency throughout.
Indicator 1.1d
Curriculum materials are respectful of differences and designed to challenge prejudice, promote fairness, and foster compassion.
Frog Street Pre-K materials partially meet expectations for being respectful of differences, challenging prejudice, promoting fairness, and fostering compassion (1.1d).
The materials include some developmentally appropriate activities, routines, and teacher guidance that foster empathy, respect, and cultural awareness throughout the school day. The Welcome Guide provides some guidance for diverse classrooms, including anti-bias and cultural responsiveness sections that support honoring differences, fostering inclusive practices, and adapting instruction for multilingual learners and children with special needs (Welcome Guide, pp. 94-110).
Fairness, empathy, and compassion are reinforced through classroom structures such as the Absent Child Ritual, the We Care Basket, the Ways to Be Helpful poster, and the Kindness Tree. The Absent Child Ritual (Welcome Guide, p. 42, and Teacher Guides, pp. 13, 39, 65, 91) provides a daily routine in which children pause to wish absent classmates well, fostering empathy and a sense of community. The Kindness Tree (Welcome Guide, p. 46) provides a structure for recognizing acts of kindness observed in the classroom. The We Care Basket and Ways to Be Helpful poster (Welcome Guide, pg. 48 support compassion, helping behavior, and classroom responsibility. The curriculum models inclusive and respectful language, including the use of the term “multilingual learners” rather than outdated terminology (Theme 2, Teacher Guide, p. 34). Read-alouds and discussions invite children to explore similarities and differences in names, traditions, and customs (Themes 2 and 3, pp. 16–17 and 4–5). Additional examples of fairness, empathy, inclusion, and respect appear across Themes 1, 2, 3, 6, and 9.
The materials provide teacher guidance and cultural awareness supports intended to help address diverse learner needs. For example, the Welcome Guide section, “ Meeting the Needs of Diverse Classrooms” (pp. 95–99), offers general guidance and suggestions for supporting a range of learners. In addition, Teacher Guides include color-coded call-outs embedded throughout lessons, including blue call-outs for Cultural Awareness reminders, pink call-outs for strategies for Dual Language Learners (DLLs) and English Language Learners (ELLs), and purple call-outs for adaptations for children with special needs (for example, Theme 2, Teacher Guide, p. 17). Cultural awareness call-outs appear 2–4 times per unit and are connected to specific lessons or moments in the instructional day.
The materials also include guidance for creating a learning environment that reflects and celebrates diversity. For instance, the Welcome Guide provides suggestions for setting up classrooms with culturally responsive materials such as posters, pictures, and books (Welcome Guide, p. 85). In addition, Eight Classroom Strategies to Optimize Pre-K Learning encourages celebrating children’s cultures and backgrounds through daily experiences (p. 7)
Overall, Frog Street Pre-K includes some frameworks that encourage adaptation to student needs, a moderate range of activities that promote empathy, respect, and appreciation for cultural differences, and guidance for setting up the classroom to reflect and celebrate diversity. The materials also includes opportunities to address fairness, prejudice, discrimination, and stereotypes; however, these strategies are not yet robust, and supports for addressing the full range of cultural and linguistic needs varies in depth. The program could be strengthened by providing more explicit, systematic guidance to help teachers reflect on, evaluate, and adjust instruction to align with the cultural and linguistic diversity in the classroom, while also supporting children in recognizing unfairness and engaging in clear, consistent conversations and activities that promote fairness.
Criterion 1.2: Diverse Learners
Curriculum materials include adaptations, modifications, scaffolds, and individual student supports.
Indicator 1.2a
Curriculum materials support teachers with adapting the curriculum to support students’ needs, interests, and developmental stages.
Frog Street Pre-K materials meet expectations for supporting teachers in adapting the curriculum (1.2a).
The materials provide tools and strategies that enable teachers to tailor instruction to children’s developmental stages, interests, and learning needs, and that support diverse learners. Weekly lessons include a range of modifications and accommodations to ensure participation for all learners. Differentiation for varying skill levels is embedded within lessons, along with targeted adaptations for children with special needs (purple call-outs) and Dual/English Language Learners (pink call-outs). Language Support Strategy Cards guide intentional instruction that supports DLLs, ELLs, and children with special needs. Differentiation is operationalized within daily lesson structures. Literacy and Math Small Group lessons include recurring Support and Challenge boxes that allow teachers to adjust task demands, pacing, scaffolding, and complexity based on children’s needs and readiness (Welcome Guide, pp. 27-28). Additional resources to support differentiation, including the Differentiated Instruction Book and AIM Observational Assessment Books, are available for purchase.
Materials include tools and strategies to support differentiated instruction in the following areas:
Strategy Cards that often outline progressions of skills (e.g., patterns), which can support formative assessment and help teachers identify next instructional steps for individual learners.
The Welcome Guide (pp. 94–109) outlines cultural responsiveness, language supports, strategies for children with special needs, and the assessments included weekly in each domain.
Visual call-outs embedded within lessons, such as purple call-outs for special needs adaptations (e.g., “Choose just three cards from the sequence to help children understand what comes first, next, and last”) and pink call-outs for dual-language learners (e.g., using sign language on Photo Cards to connect actions with vocabulary like push and dump; Theme 5, p. 17).
Small-group scaffolding strategies, including guided support during literacy instruction (Theme 4, pp. 20–21), along with the use of digital stories, songs, and strategy cards to address common errors. While these supports are actionable, extensions are often surface-level rather than designed to promote deeper or sustained learning (Theme 9, pp. 20–21).
Differentiation boxes that offer support and challenge suggestions (for every literacy and math lesson), such as in Theme 6 (Teacher Guide, p. 16, 20-21, where teachers are encouraged to work individually with a child to model onset and rime, while the challenge option suggests practicing the same skill with a peer.
Overall, Frog Street Pre-K demonstrates effective support for teachers in adapting instruction to meet children’s diverse needs, interests, and developmental stages. The materials include a variety of embedded supports, such as differentiation within daily lessons, targeted adaptations for children with special needs and dual language learners, and strategy cards that guide instructional decision-making. Small-group structures, visual call-outs, and support-and-challenge suggestions provide teachers with practical ways to adjust instruction and scaffold learning.
Indicator 1.2b
Curriculum materials provide adaptations and supports for children with disabilities.
Frog Street Pre-K materials partially meet expectations for providing adaptations and supports for children with disabilities (1.2b).
The Welcome Guide (pp. 99-110) provides guidance on supporting children with diverse needs in “Meeting the Needs of Diverse Classrooms”, including targeted strategies for hearing impairments, visual impairments, cognitive challenges, communication disorders, autism, emotional disorders, and sensory needs. Some of these strategies include adaptations to materials to provide greater access. These supports are reinforced through purple call-outs embedded in the Teacher Guides at the point of instruction.
Photo Cards include sign language and multimodal supports. Frog Street card components include photographs across Vocabulary Cards, Photo Cards, compound-word cards, sound cards, sequencing cards, letter wall cards, and cut-apart puzzles (Welcome Guide, page 14).
Practice Centers, communication supports, and Support and Challenge structures provide recurring opportunities for individualized scaffolding (Welcome Guide, pp. 18, 25, 27-28).
Practice Centers are identified as contexts for observation, support, and adaptation during child-initiated exploration (Welcome Guide, pp. 83-86).
Delayed motor development adaptation where teachers can add a clothespin to each book page, which gives the child a handle to hold when turning pages (Welcome Guide p. 104).
Environmental design guidance supports accessibility through words and pictures, organization for independent access, and semi-private areas for regulation and participation (Welcome Guide, p. 85).
Purple call-outs appear throughout each theme and lesson, primarily in small-group settings, offering supports for children with special needs (e.g., Theme 1, p. 40).
Differentiated instruction “blue boxes” provide scaffolds to support or challenge learners. Supports are more frequently referenced in small-group contexts.
·Digital resources such as videos, listening libraries, music videos, and digital stories are provided.
Some lesson-specific adaptations are provided. In Theme 1, Teacher Guide (pp. 75), green buttons are removed from an activity to accommodate children who may have difficulty distinguishing between green and blue. One example in Theme 2, Teacher Guide (p. 74), the special needs adaptation says to provide a 5-section egg carton for one-to-one counting, and that children with visual challenges will require larger counters.
Overall, Frog Street Pre-K materials include a moderate range of resources and supports to address the needs of children with disabilities. The Welcome Guide provides some strategies for supporting a variety of needs, reinforced through embedded structures such as purple call-outs, differentiated instruction prompts, and Practice Centers. Multimodal resources, including photo cards, sign language supports, and digital materials, further support access and engagement, and environmental design guidance promotes accessibility and participation. The materials include some adaptations and supports across the curriculum; however, their integration and level of detail vary, and implementation guidance is not always clearly specified. Adaptations are often presented as general supports. Some actionable adaptations are provided in the welcome guide, but are less prominent in the teaching guides. The materials include some supports for students with disabilities, but vary in how they are described and applied across instruction, and could be strengthened by including references to alternative formats or accessibility features.
Indicator 1.2c
Curriculum materials provide support for multilingual learners to facilitate language acquisition and content comprehension.
Frog Street Pre-K materials partially meet expectations for supporting multilingual learners (1.2c).
The Welcome Guide provides some guidance on supporting multilingual learners, including translanguaging practices, comprehension checks, visual cues, and structured language development strategies embedded in daily instruction (Welcome Guide, pp. 58-59; pp. 96-98). Pink call-outs for multilingual learners appear directly within lessons to indicate instructional adjustments. (e.g., Teacher Guide 4, pp. 23, 36, 77). The materials also include letter cards, compound-word cards, strategy cards, vocabulary cards, posters, and English & Spanish music (Welcome Guide, pp. 12-14).
Families are encouraged to support language and cultural connections through activities such as translating the weekly vocabulary word (Welcome Guide, pp. 94–95), contributing cultural artifacts (Theme 2, Teacher Guide, p. 17), sharing name origins connected to The Name Jar (Theme 4, p. 17), and discussing how celebrations differ among families (Theme 9, p.95).
The Welcome Guide provides information about language supports and early proficiency stages (pre-production, early production, speech emergence (p.96).
Some bilingual resources are present, including English/Spanish Photo Cards (e.g., iguana card with English and Spanish labels, Theme 1, pp. 11, 18) and select books available in both languages. Weekly newsletters can be translated into multiple languages. Cultural awareness call-outs (blue) appear two to four times per unit (e.g., Theme 5, p. 38),
Some instructional scaffolds, such as pink call-outs, Total Physical Response (TPR) strategies (Theme 4, pp. 23, 36, 77), think-alouds (Theme 9, Teacher Guide, p. 16), and visual cues (Theme 4, Teacher Guide, pp. 16, 34, 64, 75, 86, 95) are present.
Vocabulary supports include sentence stems and Photo Card prompts (Theme 3, Teacher Guide, p. 21; Theme 4, Teacher Guide, pp. 43, 88; Theme 7, Teacher Guide, p. 16).
Occasional opportunities exist to leverage home languages, such as counting in other languages (Theme 3, Teacher Guide, p. 22) or saying “thank you” in children’s home languages (Theme 3, Teacher Guide, p. 21), but these practices are isolated and not reinforced across lessons or routines.
Overall, Frog Street Pre-K sometimes supports multilingual learners in strengthening language development and enhancing content understanding through strategies, cultural connections, and bilingual resources. The materials include embedded scaffolds, opportunities for family connection, and guidance in the Welcome Guide that provide a foundation for supporting multilingual learners. Additionally, language development goals are not clearly defined in the materials, and the materials would be strengthened by more consistent and clearly defined supports for multilingual learners across the curriculum.