Kindergarten is a Hoot!: 2015

Thursday, September 10, 2015

Friday, September 4, 2015

Look who's hanging out in kindergarten this year!

Our Wonders reading and writing curriculum incorporates many science and social studies concepts. I have aligned the content from our science and social studies grade-level content expectations with our Wonders units and also have added some other concepts that I think are fun and important. However, this year we will be working on transitioning over to using the Next Generation Science Standards so we will also be using the Studies Weekly Science and Social Studies magazines. The topics covered are also listed below.

Wonders Reading

Start Smart

All About Me

Family

What We Can Do

Unit 1

Making Friends

How Do Baby Animals Move

5 Senses

Unit 2

Tools We Use

Shapes

Bugs

Unit 3

Rules

Sounds Around Us

Places We Go

Unit 4

Jobs

Neighbors

Helping our Community

Unit 5

Living Things - What They Need

Living Things Grow

Farm

Unit 6

Seasons

Weather

Stormy Weather

Unit 7

Baby Animals (How They Are Alike & Different)

Taking Care of Pets

Animal Habitats

Unit 8

Ways to Move (How Things Move & Work, Force of Motion)

U.S.A.

What's in the Sky?

Unit 9

Helping Out at Home

Good Citizens

Natural Resources

Unit 10

Problem Solving

Sorting

Protecting Earth

Additional Concepts

Our Body

Heat & Light

Matter

Handwriting

For handwriting, I use a mixture of resources from our Wonders reading and writing curriculum and EBLI (Evidenced-Based Literacy Instruction). Wonders has online, interactive activities, as well as printable practice pages. EBLI uses resources from Peterson Handwriting. I have been using the Peterson Handwriting verbal letter formation cues with some changes to the wording.

Evidence-Based Literacy Instruction (EBLI)

The founder of EBLI, Nora Chahbazi, put together this informative letter to parents that explains the system and also provides a link to their website in which you can find further information if desired.

EBLI Parent Letter

English Language Arts

McGraw-Hill Reading Wonders is an integrated curriculum that uses thematic units incorporating science and social studies concepts to build strong readers and writers. The Wonders curriculum includes:

Reading/Writing Workshop
- Students are immersed in literature that engages in collaborative conversations to support and develop comprehension and use of reading strategies.
- The weekly thematic concepts are used to develop writing skills for different types of writing (ex. personal narrative, informational writing, etc.)

Literature
- Quality fiction and informational text
- Rich, vocabulary development

Leveled Readers
- Use of leveled readers to meet individual/small group needs in guided reading work

Foundational Skill Building
- Building skills in phonemic and phonological awareness, phonics, and developing knowledge and use of high-frequency words
- Knowledge development in basic grammar concepts

Assessments