Kindergarten Curriculum Overview
 

Language Arts occur across the Kindergarten curriculum in many different areas.  Literacy development encompasses phonemic awareness, letter and sound recognition, sound spelling, word work, writing and handwriting. Students have opportunities to develop their sound-spelling skills during writers' workshop through guided instruction and application.  Students develop their awareness of writing through examining the intentional environmental print around the classroom and they are taught sight words.

Kindergarteners are encouraged to use the resources around them as models for writing. In order to build their awareness of story elements and conventions of print, students practice oral storytelling, and teachers create opportunities for children to create stories with a beginning, middle and end. We encourage a love of literacy so Kindergarteners become lifelong readers and writers who engage with a story in various ways. In handwriting, children practice correct letter formation using Handwriting Without Tears, a multi-sensory handwriting curriculum. 

Focus Areas of Instruction:

• Phonemic Awareness
  • Rhyming
  • Alliteration
  • Syllabication
• Phonics
  • Alphabetic Knowledge
  • Phonograms
  • Sound Spelling
  • Blending Sounds to Decode
• Word Study/Sight Words
• Printed Language Concepts
• Reading Behaviors
• Reading utilizing phonics and sight word vocabulary
• Comprehension
• Letter Formation
• Writing Across Genres
  • Opinion
  • Information
  • Narrative

Kindergarten is the year students first encounter our Singapore Math program, which emphasizes critical-thinking and problem-solving in addition to arithmetic.  It is balanced with hands-on activities, group and individual work, and concept-building activities. Specific concepts include: when and why people count, developing strategies for counting and keeping track of quantities, creating sets of given values, recognizing numerals and number names, pairing number names with numerals, pairing sets of objects with equivalent sets up to 20, representing quantities with pictures, numerals, or words, problem-solving, counting (one-to-one correspondence), patterning, basic geometry, data collection and sequencing.

Kindergarteners act as detectives to observe the world around them, ask questions, collect information, hunt for clues, and practice other science skills, such as making predictions, connections, and recording their findings in pictures, words or graphs. Their science learning is focused on using their five senses to explore concepts like sink and float, states of matter and various habitats. Students also explore these concepts through a culminating habitat project as well as caring for a class pet. 
 

The goal of our multifaceted social studies curriculum is allowing children to build and express their understanding of the world around them. In Kindergarten, that takes the form of learning about interconnectivity and interdependence in our communities. Kindergarteners participate in walking trips to make observations and discover new wonders to explore. While conducting various studies, Kindergarteners practice skills, such as gathering, interpreting and using evidence, comparing and contextualizing, basic geographic reasoning, planning, organizing, developing flexibility, and cooperation. 

Students develop skills in empathy, problem solving, recognizing and managing emotions, developing positive and healthy relationships and responsible decision-making. While there is a series of specific lessons, our curriculum is also nimble so as opportunities present themselves, we are responsive to the needs of our individual students as they continue to learn and grow. Students explore topics including feelings, friendships and citizenship.

In our youngest classrooms, student progress is assessed through close observation and recording, conferencing with children individually, and creating opportunities that allow children to demonstrate and apply knowledge, skills or abilities.