Ledyard — On a recent Friday in the lower level of the Gallup Hill School, three classrooms were bustling with activity.

Students in Mary Gionet’s class were learning how to spell new words like “giraffe” using an iPad educational game, while Marissa Eva, 4, and Gillan Jilel, 4, played bakery in a little shed in the corner of the room and wrote out words like “pancake turner."

Students in Dawn Yonush’s class arranged their chairs and dolls into the shape of a train, and shared sleigh bells.

But in the background, Gionet and Yonush were meticulously keeping checklists in their head: who might be developing leadership skills, for example, or who needs some help writing, and who learned a new word like “bugle."

These are students in the early childhood education initiative in Ledyard. It is made up of a combination of programs to help students over the age of 3 with special educational needs, as well as a preschool-age class for kids who are going into kindergarten.

Programs like these, Ledyard administrators and teachers say, have multiple effects on a child’s education: allowing them to make the transition to school more easily and build better social connections with their peers, and preparing them for the academic language of the school system.

Ledyard's school readiness program, known as “STARS" for Students That Are Ready for School, selects a total of 36 students in town by a lottery to enroll in one of two classrooms in Gallup Hill Elementary School and Gales Ferry Elementary School.

The full-day, weeklong class is taught by Gionet and funded through a state early childhood education program, a competitive grant program that any day care can apply for. Families pay tuition on a sliding scale for the class, and all the tuition money goes back to serve the educational needs of the students.

Phil Genova, the director of special services and a 16-year veteran of the school system, has managed the early childhood program for the past 10 years, and said that one of the most important things that education early on can give to a student is simply familiarizing them with the academic schedule.

He said he’s a great example of this — having never attended preschool, Genova said he resisted getting on the bus on his first day of kindergarten, going as far as to put his feet up against the doors of the school bus as his mother tried to force him in.

“The need for preschool is to avoid what I personally went through,” he said.

Next to the STARS classroom is the Reverse Mainstreaming class, taught by Mary-Beth Blacker and the Highly Individualized classes, taught by Yonush. Reverse Mainstreaming is split between students with special educational needs and their peers, who attend for a half-day, while students in Yonush's Highly Individualized class have more specific educational needs, such as individualized plans to help them with development.

All students over the age of 3 with special educational needs are eligible for public education. Genova works with area day care providers, such as Ivy Cottage and the United Methodist Church, to identify these students if parents have questions.

Blacker headed up the early childhood program when it began at the school decades ago, and said it has transformed as thinking changed on early childhood education. When she began, every student had to have an individualized education plan, and the program ran a half-day. Since then they’ve broadened into other special education, and moved away from a language-based program to a developmental and cognitive one, focused on “whole kids.”

People forget, she said, kids at this age learn best through play and working with physical objects.

In Yonush’s class, during writing lessons she starts the week with wooden rectangles that can form a letter of the alphabet. Students will work through the week at assembling each part of the letter until they learn it, or color in the outlines of pictures and then work their way up to the shape of a letter.

“Our strength is being developmentally appropriate ... we don’t want to be 'little kindergarten,' we want to be appropriate education for your youngest learners,” Blacker said.

Students in her Reverse Mainstreaming class also are given extra assistance with the addition of their peers — who model social language for the students all the time rather than only when a teacher is working directly with them.

Establishing transitions, Genova said, can be especially difficult for special education students. Yonush has a dry-erase board marked with a schedule behind a bookcase in the room, which tells the student everything they’re going to be working on from Monday through Thursday.

These little things can mean tremendous growth, the teachers said — students who begin the year confused and acting out then develop strong social relationships and become more attentive.

Teachers also then have a much better sense of their educational needs going into kindergarten.

“It allows those students who may not have the same opportunity at home ... a chance if they’re in a particularly chaotic environment,” Superintendent of Schools Jay Hartling said.

n.lynch@theday.com