Our Curriculum
My Little Team Texas Daycare is proudly certified by the Texas School Ready program.
Texas School Ready is a comprehensive, research-based professional development program for early education teachers that ensures at-risk children receive targeted instruction in critical school readiness skills. Thousands of early childhood programs in Texas have implemented the program since 2003. As TSR has grown, researchers at the Children’s Learning Institute at UTHealth Houston have been collecting incredible amounts of data to track changes in teachers’ instructional practices and advancements in their students’ school readiness skills. The results of this research speak to the innovation and effectiveness of TSR.
Important facts about the TSR program:
TSR is the product of ongoing, high-quality research that directly impacts the program’s implementation.
CLI has conducted extensive research that definitively demonstrates the need for each component of TSR, including high-quality curriculum, optimal levels of professional development, and the efficacy of child progress monitoring. This research is continually applied to strengthen on-the-ground components of the TSR program.
Research on TSR meets the highest standards.
Research on TSR is performed by a large team of experts within the Children’s Learning Institute. Their work uses randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and is published in peer-reviewed academic journals after undergoing rigorous evaluation by independent experts in the field.
TSR matches what a child should master at a certain age with how a child best learns and assimilates information.
TSR strikes a balance between implementing teaching strategies based on research about cognitive readiness (the “what”) and what developmental research indicates about how young children learn most effectively (the “how”).
TSR cultivates both academic and socio-emotional skills.
In addition to academic gains, 85% of teachers report increases in a variety of their students’ social-emotional domains, such as the development of behavioral control and caring for the feelings of others.
TSR’s real-time data collection makes student assessment painless.
TSR’s CIRCLE Progress Monitoring System is a user-friendly, technology-driven tool that allows the teacher to assess a child’s progress in a particular skill area almost instantly. This reliable yet simplistic data collection prompts teachers to focus on lessons that target their students’ least developed skill areas.
TSR’s individualized coaching takes professional development to a new level.
Simply providing teachers with informal feedback of their performance won’t change their behavior. TSR coaches use the Classroom Observational Tool (COT) to track the use of 231 specific teacher behaviors that are known to advance children’s school readiness. Coaches then set highly targeted goals for improvement with the teacher and use techniques such as modeling to align instruction with evidence-based practice. It works—COT scores have been shown to be predictive of students’ skill development.
TSR’s coaches participate in ongoing peer-learning to support their own skill development.
Each year, TSR coaches participate in ongoing collaborate professional learning communities (PLC) to support a continuous quality improvement cycle focused on reflection and goal-setting. These PLCs support coaches in building their high-quality coaching skills through a demonstration-based micro-credentialing program.