Curriculum

Bible

Our kindergarten Bible curriculum focuses on the life of Jesus. We start the year by reviewing well-known Old Testament stories that show the need for a savior. After setting the tone for our need due to our sinful nature, we will explore the birth of Christ and His life/ministry. Finally, we will take a look at His death on the cross and what that means to us as believers in the present. The Bible curriculum is written by the Calvary Chapel Philadelphia staff pastors.

In addition to studying the Bible three days a week as a class, we also memorize a Bible verse as a school each month and participate in Elementary chapels in the main sanctuary.

Math

This year, we will be using McGraw-Hill's My Math program at CCA. This math program is engaging and fun for students to begin exploring foundational math concepts needed in future grades. In addition to learning all about numbers and number sense, we will learn the basics of addition, subtraction, patterns, data/graphing, predicting, time, and money.

To visit our Math online activities, please go to:

Please use your child's individual log in information and password as given on the card at back to school night. If you need your information again, please contact me!

Phonics

We use Wilson Fundations for our phonics program. This system is highly systematic and explicit in its instruction. The kindergarten program includes :

  • Phonemic awareness
  • Phonics/ word study
  • High frequency word study (click here for a list of our K sight words)
  • Reading fluency
  • Vocabulary
  • Comprehension strategies
  • Handwriting
  • Spelling

We break up into leveled groups at the beginning of the year to provide small group instruction based on the student's overall ability levels. After Christmas break, we return to full group activities that focus more on decoding and basic phonemic awareness skills needed for beginning reading and writing.

Reading

There are two components to our reading program at CCA. The first is Center for the Collaborative Classroom's Making Meaning program (3rd Edition). This is a reading comprehension program that focuses on research-based best practices to foster student's growth. We will read one book aloud each week over the course of two school days and discuss the book in partners. The discussions will revolve around one of the following comprehension skills:

  • Making Connections to Real-Life
  • Retelling
  • Visualizing
  • Wondering/Questioning
  • Using Text Features
  • Making Inferences

The second component of our reading program is called Guided Reading. At the beginning of the year, I will assess each child's basic decoding skills and beginning reading ability (if any). Then, students will be grouped into small groups (2-5 students) for weekly on-level practice on sight word, decoding, and comprehension skills. As student's abilities change throughout the year, groups may also change so they are always being challenged on their skills.

Writing

We use Center for Collaborative Classroom's Being a Writer Program at CCA. This is a yearlong writing program that uses guided instruction/modeling to teach the writing process to beginning writers. Three days each week, we will spend time as a "writing community" looking at popular books and analyzing the way author's express their ideas. Then, I model answering prompts or writing on certain topics based on the selected book for the week. Finally, students independently work on their own writing pieces for the week and share with their partners/the class. The following skills are focused on in our kindergarten program:

  • Write for various purposes and audiences
  • Generate ideas for writing
  • Choose writing topics
  • Extend writing to tell more
  • Confer with teacher on writing piece
  • Reread writing for sense
  • Learn about conventions from published works
  • Publish pieces of writing
  • Read and share published pieces with the class
  • Write for sustained periods of time
  • Learn about elements of craft and/or genre

Social Studies/Science

We use Scholastic's Let's Find Out to explore different science and social studies themes. Your child will be bringing home a weekly magazine that we talked about in school, and there are online activities that you will have access to in order to explore the themes further.

To find out how to access our Let's Find Out resources at home, please follow these directions. (password is ccak2)