Sesame Workshop, the Primary School, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will collaborate to create and share a new curriculum for early childhood educators.
The collaboration is designed to help educators meet the academic, social-emotional, physical, and mental health needs of their students. With this program, Sesame Workshop and the Primary School aim to improve kindergarten readiness outcomes for all children — particularly those in underserved communities — by helping early childhood teachers support children’s comprehensive development.
The organizations have been developing and piloting the curriculum over the past two years at the Primary School’s flagship site in East Palo Alto, California. This year, classrooms at the Primary School, Public Prep Network, and FirstStepNYC in New York City will pilot the curriculum. By the end of next year, the curriculum will be digitized and available online for use in qualifying early learning classrooms across the country.
In the grant’s third and final year, the partners will focus on researching, identifying, and developing additional ways to support early learning.
This curriculum integrates social-emotional learning into early childhood literacy lessons, in accordance with Sesame Workshop’s Framework for School Readiness, with a specific emphasis on language development and comprehension. Based upon 50 years of Sesame Workshop research and development, the venture has two key goals: promoting social-emotional learning with literacy as a foundation for future academic and life success and well-being, and making these resources widely available.
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative also created this video, announcing and describing the curriculum (with help from Elmo, of course).
