Kindergarten
Is my child progressing?
September 2019
We are working hard to establish the routines and procedures needed to ensure an optimal learning environment in our classrooms. We are in the process of assessing each child’s abilities in the content areas of language arts, math, science, and social studies. Social and emotional behaviors are also being developed daily.
We will be using Standards Based Report Cards at the end of each grading period. Kindergarten children will use verbal explanation, visual demonstration, academic discourse and practice to achieve mastery. Kindergarten students do not receive Progress Reports.
Below is an overview of the skills and expectations that we are working on during the first grading period. The curriculum used with the students spirals to allow mastery of the skills to develop over time.
Reading & Writing
Children in Kindergarten will learn how to read and write using developmentally appropriate multi-sensory instruction, including listening, speaking, discussing, and thinking components. Reading, writing, and foundational skills (such as phonological awareness) will be taught in unison so students understand the connection between them and can transfer these skills to all subjects.
Reading:
- Hold a book and follow print
- Identify parts of a book
- Distinguish between fiction and nonfiction
- Use the title and illustrations to predict about the text
- Retell the important facts learned in nonfiction text
- Retell a fiction story in sequential order with adult assistance
- Ask questions during reading
- Describe characters and why they act a certain way
Writing:
- Participate in whole class composition of different types of text
- Contribute ideas and communicate them effectively
- Use appropriate conventions of writing to contribute to the text
- Write my own name
- Add details to my pictures and label them
- Identify a story to write about from a familiar object, place, or event
- Use high frequency words to write sentences
- Foundational Skills:
- Recognize that letters have sounds
- Recognize the difference between a letter and a printed word
- Match sounds to letters
- Use inventive spelling
- Count words in a sentence, both orally and in print
- Identify and produce words that rhyme
Math
Children will learn math through a hands-on approach using student and teacher collaboration to demonstrate the conceptual understanding of the math content. They will use the process standards to achieve higher level thinking through problem solving and questioning.
- Classifying and sorting objects
- Creating patterns with objects and naming the pattern (red, blue, red, blue or ABAB)
- Counting to 100 by ones and tens
- Recognizing instantly a quantity of a small group of objects
- One-to-one counting and holding on the quantity counted
- Reading and writing whole numbers
- Generating and comparing a set of objects as more, less, or equal
- Composing and decomposing numbers up to 10
Developmental Learning Skills
Students will be able to:
- Interact positively with peers in play and work situations with little or no adult assistance.
- Listen to teacher and peer directions and respond appropriately.
- Share materials, take turns, respect others’ ideas and collaborate comfortably with a group of their peers.
- Wait patiently for needed help, if the teacher is working with another child and maintain emotional control while waiting
- Attempt to solve personal problems (from locating a missing jacket at recess time to resolving minor conflicts with friends) independently before asking a teacher for help.
- Sit appropriately (hands in lap, on bottoms) and quietly for short amounts of time (i.e. 5 to 10 minutes) without becoming restless.
- Line up appropriately with awareness of their body as well as their peers bodies (hands to side not touching others).
- Walk in a line through the halls, controlling their bodies and keeping an equal amount of distance between themselves and the child in front of them.
- Consistently and accurately understand one-step verbal directions moving toward multi-step verbal directions.
- Respond appropriately to verbal questions.
- Use crayons with control, staying close to the lines, working toward precise movements rather than with large scribbles.
- Comfortably handle small objects and easily manipulate buttons, snaps, and zippers on clothing.
- Work toward and master cutting along a printed line to cut out pictures or shapes by using their dominant hand to open and close the scissors and then using their non-dominant hand to turn the paper.
- Begin tying their own shoes. This is a complicated skill for young children that takes practice at home and school to master.