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Welcome to Parent Academy!

This course was developed by the Barksdale Reading Institute as a free opportunity for parents, grandparents, caregivers and for anyone who may influence a young 4-year-old on their journey preparing for kindergarten. The course has been transferred to the Center for Excellence in Literacy Instruction (CELI) at the University of Mississippi in fall 2023 upon the closing of Barksdale Reading Institute on June 30, 2023. We have also collaborated with Vroom, a platform that provides families with science-backed early learning for children from birth to age five, to provide Vroom tips for each module. We are grateful to all our partners who have made Parent Academy possible!

About the Course

Course Goals

The goal of this course is to ensure parents and caregivers understand what kindergarten readiness is, why it matters, what it looks like, and how to tell when their child is ready. This course will equip parents and caregivers with tools to help their children build these essential readiness skills.

Target Audience

Our audience is any stakeholder in a 4-year-old’s educational journey. These stakeholders can be parents, grandparents, guardians, as well as individuals from organizations that may influence this journey (such as Head Start, Home-Visiting Programs, public and private Pre-K programs, Social Workers, Librarians). Note that Parent Academy can also be used for stakeholders who interact with children younger than 4-years-old.

Online Course Structure

The course contains an introduction and eight modules. The modules are fairly short and the course is intended to take no more than 15 hours to complete. This can be completed over the span of several months. The course is designed to be flexible with the schedule of the person taking the course; for example, it can be approached one module per day, per week or per month. After each module, there is a brief self-check to check your own understanding of the information covered in the module. Below is the course structure:

Course Introduction
Module 1: Physical Development (Gross and Fine Motor Skills)
Module 2: Personal Life Skills
Module 3: Social and Emotional Skills
Module 4: Oral Language
Module 5: Letters and Sounds
Module 6: Written Communication
Module 7: Reading
Module 8: Math

Instructions

Course Design and Success

• Personal Guide - Sandra Wilborn, your course instructor, will be your course guide and is present throughout the course in animations and through audio recordings.
• Illustrated Family Characters Throughout - Several families are illustrated and are seen throughout the course in various activities and handouts to help explain concepts.
• Audio of Text - All major text includes an audio recording with a button to click and listen to a narration. Choose which way you'd prefer to learn, or it can also be helpful for knowledge retention to both read and listen to text at the same time!
• Important Parenting Reminders - Keep an eye out for special reminders that reoccur thoughout the course to emphasize important concepts. For example:
  • Sticky notes with push pins throughout the course reiterate important phrases we hope you'll remember. Some examples are: Practice! Practice! Practice! and Remember: Take Time. Be Intentional.
  • Repeated important phrases, such as “All children develop at different paces.”
• Browser types - For the best experience, we recommend you take this course using a web browser on a computer. It can be viewed on a phone or a tablet, however the handouts will not be viewable since most phones and tablets do not support viewing a PDF file.
• Approach to completing the course - We recommend you go through one module a month, practice those skills over and over. You and your child don’t have to continue until mastery, but it will give you both time to practice before moving onto new skills in the next module.
• PDF Viewer and Handouts - Many of the handouts in this course are presented as PDFs, making it easier for you to download. The PDF viewer will appear differently depending on which browser you use to take the course.

Course Delivery and Getting Started

This course can be taken as an individual or as a group. Please complete the form on the following page to get started.