Holmen Public Preschool Program
500 E Wall St
Holmen, WI 54636
608.526.1381
Ms. Sue Eitland, Holmen Public Preschool Administrator
[email protected]
Dear Parents/Guardians,
Holmen Public Preschool and the School District of Holmen are always working to empower life-long
learners and strive for excellence. Part of that means ensuring our students have clear expectations
not only for school readiness skills, but behaviors as well.
As a district, we have developed and will teach specific behavioral expectations to our students as
part of a Positive Behavior Intervention Support (PBIS) system, “Preschool Pride.” As a school,
positive expectations have been set for all areas including hallways, playgrounds, buses, bathrooms,
and table manners.
Preschool Pride is a system that defines, teaches, and supports appropriate student behavior to
create a positive school environment where teachers can teach and students can learn.
An important piece of the system includes three expectations that are well known to everyone
involved with our school community.
Preschool Pride expectations are:
Be Safe
Be Responsible
Be Respectful
Other Preschool Pride components include:
oA matrix of behavioral expectations
oCool Tools – Lesson plans used to teach students the behavioral expectations
oAn acknowledgment/reinforcement system that includes immediate (verbal/visual),
intermittent(Bucket Fillers), and long term acknowledgements(Gumball Machines).
We believe the matrix is clear and easy for children to understand. The matrix defines what each of
the expectations looks like and tells children what to do and how to behave in the various places
around our school and on the grounds. The matrix will be posted in each classroom and in areas
around the school.
Please go over and review the matrix (attached) with your child/ren. A great idea might be to post the
Preschool Pride Matrix in your home. Feel free to even create and use a matrix of expected behaviors
for home.
Cool Tools
One of the most important parts of our Preschool Pride system is directly teaching behavioral skills and
expectations to students. Cool Tool lessons will be used as each area, and its expectations, is
introduced to students.
One tool the Holmen Public Preschool program would like to offer to parents is the opportunity to
utilize our PBIS resource library. In this library are books that might help your family work through
problems your child may be having at home. Examples of stories in this library include things such as
dealing with death, having a new baby at home, helping your child deal with emotions and more. We
also have resource books for parents that may help with specific problems you are facing with your
child. Copies of our book list will be sent home with children. If there is a book that interests you
please contact your child’s teacher. They will take care of checking the book out for you and sending it
home with your child. When you are finished using it you can send it back to school in your child’s
folder. This library will be available for use throughout the whole school year and can be used as much
as you need to!
Another Preschool Pride component will be a monthly social/emotional progress report. At the end of
each month your child’s teacher will send home a report stating what skills your child has done well in
over the month and indicating what skills they will be working on with your child as the school year
continues. We hope this will help communicate your child’s progress with PBIS. When you receive the
progress report at the end of each month, please let your child’s teacher know if you have any
questions.
Acknowledgement/Reinforcement System
A critical component of Preschool Pride is the use of consistent positive reinforcement to celebrate
students’ success with expectations. Staff members who observe children exhibiting positive behaviors
can acknowledge them verbally and/or visually with a “Good Job using walking feet,” a thumbs up,
saying “I really like how you are being responsible in the hallway,” or maybe a handshake with a “Great
Job!”
Intermittently, students demonstrating good behavior or the behavioral expectations being taught may
receive a Bucket Filler. They can earn a Bucket Filler anytime in the school day for being respectful,
responsible, or safe in and out of the classroom. Research shows us that positive reinforcement is one
of the best ways to not only change problematic behavior, but also to encourage and maintain
appropriate behavior.
Bucket Fillers are presented to children at the end of every school day. Children may take these slips
home to show families and keep as a reminder of good choices made.
Not only do we like to recognize individual student behavior, but we also like to recognize positive behavior
within the whole class. To do this, each 4K classroom has a paper gumball machine hanging up in their
room. As a class, students pick an activity to work towards. Examples of these activities might be an extra
recess time, a special treat day, or PJ day. As students display respectful, responsible, and safe behaviors
as a whole class the teacher will acknowledge this by adding a paper gumball to the machine. Once the
class has earned so many gumballs they will be rewarded with the activity they had previously decided on.
Introducing Preschool Pride
To kick off the school year teachers spend the first month of school teaching and reinforcing
behaviors and expectations to promote learning. In doing this we hope to create a positive school
environment where teachers can teach and students can learn throughout the entire school year.
Watch for more information about Preschool Pride coming home in your child’s folder throughout the
school year. If you have specific questions or would like some help with something please contact
your child’s teacher at any time.
We appreciate your support!
PBIS Team Coordinators and
The Holmen Public Preschool Staff
Attached: Preschool Pride Matrix
School District of Holmen ~ Educating all students to achieve global success