Competent Kids, Caring Communities

CKCC is a Competent Kids, Caring Communities (CKCC), originally created by Marcia Stern, PsyD, is a school-wide curriculum for early childhood and elementary schools whose mission is to develop Competent Kids within the context of Caring Communities through building social-emotional competencies and strengthening home-school partnerships. CKCC is highly rated as a “SELect” program by Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL). It provides educators with two essential ingredients for academic success: (1) tools to teach social emotional competencies and (2) strategies to involve parents directly in their children’s learning. Visit: www.competentkids.org to find out more about the CKCC Program.

CKCC for Early Childhood

CKCC for Early Childhood is a literacy-based curriculum centering on the “Adventures of the Garden Friends” (metaphorical characters enrolled in the “Garden School”). It is organized into five units that correspond to the SEL Common Core Standards for Pre-Kindergarten. At the heart of the curriculum are thirty beautifully illustrated picture books and puppets that are used to act out and creatively extend the stories. Training, a teacher’s guide, and “feelings cards” are included as well. Send-home password protected audio books are also a part of the package, enabling families to practice the skills taught in their homes. Because CKCC for Early Childhood uses the same “Garden Friends” characters as Grades K and 1, it aims to facilitate a seamless transition to kindergarten.

CKCC for K-5

CKCC is based upon the notion that, for student success, the traditional “3 R’s”—‘Reading, ‘Riting, and ‘Rithmetic, need to be extended to include 5 additional “R’s.”

CKCC’s newly updated curriculum integrates time-honored teaching strategies with current best-practice instructional techniques. The developmentally-organized curriculum includes creative tools for engaging students as well as extension activities to help reinforce and generalize learning across multiple contexts.

PRINT PDF (CKCC for K-5 Chart)

Family-School Collaboration

Family involvement is inextricably tied to student success and has a proven track record of increasing motivation and improving achievement. The goal of family-school school collaboration is to connect all families, whether they can physically come to school or not, to their children’s learning in educationally meaningful ways. This means including families not only as volunteers, audiences or PTA members, but also as resources for solving problems and promoting learning and as sources of information that can enrich classroom life.