Information for Prospective Program Partners

The Get Ready for School™ program was designed as an intervention program to reduce the gap in literacy and school readiness skills that often exist at the time of school entry for children from low-income families, and those learning English as a second language. As an intervention program, the curriculum was designed with an intensive focus on emergent literacy skills, including letter-sound knowledge, and vocabulary development, and involves highly predictable classroom routines and repetitive activities and games.  Parents of children in the program also learn how to support their child’s learning at home.

The program runs each year from January or February to June on either on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule or a Tuesday, Thursday schedule. Children attend two or three classes per week that are 2 hours in length, for a total of 44 classes (88 hours of instruction). The program is delivered by a combination of trained paid staff and volunteers, with a minimum 1 to 5 adult to child ratio. Class sizes are limited to 20 children, aged 3 to 4. The program is actively expanding to serve more families in Waterloo Region.

Our program partners provide classroom space free-of charge, as well as allow use of their toys for the free-play portion of the program. Space is also provided to store the program kits (9 large Rubbermaid bins) during the course of the program.  Potential program partners should know that parents are asked to remain on-site during the 2-hour classes, using the facilities and space.

Strong Start® provides all program materials in kits, trained staff and volunteers at no cost to our program partners. Strong Start also conducts all assessments with the children, compiling the results into an Executive Summary Report. Visit the Program Results page to see last year’s results.

If you are interested in offering the Get Ready for School program at your location please contact our Director of Program, Lisa Williams grfs@strongstart.ca for more information and to arrange a site visit. Please see Our People page for individual team member contact information.