Wayland Union Schools utilizes the Reader's and Writer's Workshop model for Language Arts Instruction. Our district utilizes the Lucy Calkins Units of Study for Reading and Writing as the basis of our Language Arts program but supplement based on the needs of students, which vary from year to year. Students in Kindergarten through 3rd grade also complete the Saxon Phonics program in order to establish a firm foundation in phonics skills.

Essential Standards for Kindergarten Language Arts:

• Read texts for beginning readers with purpose and understanding
• Recognize and name all upper and lower case letters of the alphabet
• Know and demonstrate letter sounds
• Know and apply grade-level phonics and word decoding skills
• Can draw, talk about, and write about an event.

In accordance with Michigan's new Third Grade Reading Law, all students must be within one grade level of reading proficiency at the end of their Third Grade year. To read about how you can help your child reach reading proficiency, please check out our Read At Home Plan.

Wayland Union Schools utilizes Everyday Mathematics as the core resource for addressing our math curriculum.

Essential Standards for Kindergarten Math are:

• Recognize numbers to 20 and name them
• 1:1 Correspondence of up to 20 objects
• Count by ones and tens to 100
• Identify the number of objects in a group as <, >, or = to another group
• Add and subtract numbers within 5
• Work with numbers (0-20) to gain a foundation of place value
• Understand and use targeted math vocabulary words

Parents looking to help their child with math at home might find the following resources useful.

Everyday Math At Home - Kindergarten

Wayland Union Schools utilizes Mystery Science as the core resource for addressing the Michigan Science standards. Currently, students in Kindergarten will study plant and animal needs, weather and seasons, and forces, machines and engineering during the school year.

Mystery Science

The kindergarten social studies curriculum is designed to help students gain an increased awareness of themselves and the world around them. Using the framework of “Myself and Others,” students learn about the social studies disciplines of history, geography, civics and government, and economics. Using events from their own lives, they begin to explore and learn the basic historical concept of time and to distinguish past, present, and future. They develop the geographic concept of space by learning positional words and recognizing that maps and globes represent places in the world. To lay the foundation for the study of civics and government, students identify the flag as an important symbol of the United States. They also act as classroom citizens by following appropriate rules for individual and group activities and decision making. An awareness of economics is developed as students connect familiar economic wants to how those wants are met. Throughout the year students are introduced to simple core values of democracy as they learn to respond appropriately to classroom issues and individual responses.

Source: MAISA Social Studies Kindergarten Course Description

Elementary students at Wayland Union Schools attend classes in Music, Physical Education, Media, and Art on a weekly basis.