Administrative Rules of Montana
Department 10 - EDUCATION
Chapter 10.63 - EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
Subchapter 10.63.1 - Preschool Education Standards
Rule 10.63.102 - DEFINITIONS

(a) "Accreditation" means certification by the Board of Public Education that a school meets the adopted standards of the Board of Public Education for a specified school year.

(b) "Assessment" means the gathering, organizing, and evaluation of information about student learning in order to monitor and measure student learning, the effectiveness of the instructional program, and to inform local policies and decisions.

(c) "Developmental domain" means the broad, interrelated categories or dimensions of early childhood development reflective of early childhood education children's learning and growth. The four core domains include social and emotional, physical, language, and cognitive.

(d) "Early childhood curriculum" means an articulated educational plan for young children, which is grounded in research-based understandings of child development and developmentally appropriate practices. Curriculum guides the teaching process from identifying what to teach, including early content standards in each of the four developmental domains and how to teach, including developing learning experiences based upon individual and group outcomes, and assessing what was learned then using this data to inform future planning and teaching. For early literacy targeted interventions implemented through the classroom-based program for 4-year-olds and summer jumpstart program preceding kindergarten, the curriculum must embrace the four developmental domains while focusing on the subject of literacy with a goal of establishing a trajectory leading to reading proficiency at the end of third grade.

(e) "Learning center" means a self-contained area of the classroom featuring a wide variety of hands-on materials that children can choose and use independently which are organized around a curriculum area (science, math, art, music, dramatic play, literacy) or a specific kind of play material (blocks, sensory, manipulative).

(f) "Paraprofessional" means an adult with the qualifications detailed in ARM 10.63.115 10.63.105 who works under the direct supervision of a teacher and who may work independently in a teacher's absence, but for the majority of the time works directly with the teacher in the same space with the same group of students.

(g) "Teacher" means a licensed individual as defined in ARM 10.55.602, with primary responsibility for a group or class of early childhood education students.