Kindergarten

These translated guides support caregivers in understanding what students are expected to know and be able to do by the end of each grade. 

Kindergarten Curriculum Overview

In September 2024, early childhood classrooms throughout CPS will fully implement the Focus on 4s (CPP) and Focus on K (Kindergarten) curriculum. Focus curricula incorporate educational principles that enhance the overall growth and autonomy of young learners, integrating research-backed instructional methodologies while aligning to the Massachusetts and Common Core Curriculum Frameworks. 


Focus activities are designed to nurture students' emerging independence as both learners and responsible members of society, fostering connection, communication and collaboration skills. The framework was crafted to ensure synergy among its components, promoting students' proficiency in literacy and language, science and engineering, social studies, the arts, and social-emotional development. Literary and informational texts take center stage in each unit, serving as catalysts for conceptual learning, vocabulary enrichment, and the cultivation of critical thinking skills. Each unit incorporates dedicated Writing, in addition to integrating Social Studies and Science standards that are complemented by the CPS Science and S.S. units. 


In addition, all early childhood classrooms participate in explicit, daily, research-based phonemic awareness and phonics instruction using the Heggerty (Phonemic Awareness) and Fundations or TLA Phonics curricula. ensuring their proficiency of foundational literacy skills.


Assessments: 


All students complete the mCLASS (K-2) or i-Ready (3-5) literacy screener/diagnostic 3x annually. These screeners provide educators and caregivers with important information about each students’ strengths and areas for continued support. Students in grades 3-5 also take the MA State ELA MCAS each spring. 


In addition to district and state-mandated assessments, each curricular unit ends with an assessment of students’ domain knowledge and literacy skills. These assessments allow teachers, students and caregivers to know how students are performing independently. 


Homework: 


Homework is not assigned in Kindergarten classrooms, however, activities may be sent home by classroom teachers based on the needs of specific students. These may include additional readings from the curriculum, opportunities to continue working on a written response, or extended practice with specific skills. 


 In addition, students can access Boost Reading (K-2) in school and outside of school (at home, after school programs, vacations). This adaptive online program creates a unique sequence of lessons for each student based on their diagnostic data. 


Intervention & Acceleration Opportunities:


Using multiple forms of student data, educators design learning experiences that provide each student with appropriately challenging learning opportunities. This includes opportunities for acceleration/advancement and intervention/remediation from classroom teachers and/or interventionists. Educators routinely reflect on student learning and assessment data to differentiate instruction for their students. 


In addition, students can access Boost Reading (K-2) or i-Ready Personalized Instruction (grades 3-5) in and outside of school (at home, during after school programs, when absent or on vacation). Both of these online programs provide a unique sequence of lessons for each student based on their diagnostic data. Learn about personalized instruction here.


Focus on K: Units of Instruction

Unit 1 - Our Community

For many children, the kindergarten year is their first experience of being in a group beyond their family. If that group becomes a community that cares about each other and supports each other emotionally as well as intellectually, the school experience is a more positive one for children. A supportive learning community creates things together, gives each other feedback on their work, and raises and solves problems as a group. In this first unit of study, Our Community, the goal is for children and teachers to build relationships and form the foundation for a strong, interdependent community of learners, developing shared dispositions, language, and habits that will grow throughout the year. When children are part of a strong community, they are better poised to confront challenges that they will encounter in school and beyond.

Unit 2 - Animals & Habitats

Kindergarteners are naturally drawn to learning about animals. They tell and enjoy stories filled with animal characters and are curious to learn information about animals as well. They might have pets at home or see animals in their communities – a dog out for a walk, a squirrel in a tree, or ants on the sidewalk. In Animals and Habitats, this natural curiosity opens a door to deep learning about animals both familiar and unfamiliar to kindergarteners. Building off the previous unit, Our Community, children continue to explore concepts of living in a community, working with Beautiful Stuff, and Storytelling/Story Acting. Looking ahead, the concepts that children develop about animals and their habitats during this unit will come into play again in Our Earth, when the scope widens to consider people as stewards of the earth.  

Unit 3 - Construction

People construct; one of the defining characteristics of humanity is that we make. We make structures, institutions, rules, ideas, and works of art. Kindergartners are also makers. A defining characteristic of kindergarten-aged children is their initiative. Children may be particularly intrigued with structures and places they make for themselves: forts, homes, secret hideouts, and the like. They also have unique and valuable perspectives about what makes structures attractive, useful, and fair. The threads of community and citizenship continue from previous units. Themes of collaboration and group work reemerge from Unit 1 (Community), as you now guide children to consider how people collaborate in constructing. And from Unit 2 (Animals & Habitats), the focus on protecting and caring for animals is now extended to consider issues of fairness, equity, and access that arise when something is constructed.  

Unit 4 - Our Earth

Our kindergartners will inherit a complex world where scientific, environmental, social, and moral issues intertwine. In order to meet the opportunities and challenges of the 21st century, our children need an equally complex set of skills and abilities. During the Our Earth unit, children explore the natural world by investigating and researching the earth’s properties, focusing on its surface and plant life. Responsibility, sustainability, and stewardship for the environment, as individuals and as members of a community, are explored in literature, discussions, activities, and a Capstone Project.

The unit begins by fostering children’s intellectual and emotional connections with nature, as explored in Animals and Habitats. The second phase focuses on sustainable systems that reduce human impacts on the earth, such as recycle/reuse and food production/urban agriculture. The final phase engages the children as citizens, first introduced in Our Community, who can contribute to our earth. Drawing on the design process of Construction, children generate ideas for sustainable choices in their classrooms and school communities.

TLA

To support partner districts, TLA developed a four-year phonics program (K – 3) with a systematic scope and sequence, daily written lesson plans and our own special blend of training, support and encouragement for teachers, coaches and administrators. In addition to phonics instruction, TLA’s program includes explicit phonological awareness instruction (especially in Kindergarten) where children play with, segment, blend and otherwise manipulate the sounds of oral language using voice and pictures. TLA’s program also includes direct instruction in high-frequency words that include words that are difficult to decode (ie., said) and in the early grades, words that may be phonetic in 2nd or 3rd grade, but are high-frequency words needed by kindergarten and first graders to read (such as “look.”) TLA believes that phonics, phonological and high-frequency word instruction should consist of daily, whole-class lessons that follow an established scope and sequence and has created a joyful, program that promotes true word curiosity among children with daily 20-30 minute lessons written out for grades K – 3. 


Although lessons are “scripted,” the values that drove them include: