Primary Grades: PK-2

Example: Kindgergarten Unit 1  (see full above)

Kindergarteners learn through the Focus on K curriculum. This curriculum is designed to promote creativity, collaboration, communication and critical thinking. It develops students’ literacy and numeracy skills with explicit, systematic phonics, standards-aligned activities, exposure to diverse texts with rich vocabulary, and opportunities for creative, thematic play.

Unit 1 - Our Community: For many children, kindergarten is their first experience of being in a group beyond their family. This unit is designed to establish a supportive, connective community of learners through routines that allow students to create things together, give each other feedback on their work, and raise and solve problems as a group.

Unit 2 - Animals & Habitats: Kindergarteners are naturally drawn to learning about animals. In this unit, they share and enjoy stories filled with animal characters and learn scientific information about animals. Students continue to explore concepts of living in a community as they investigate animals and their habitats.

Unit 3 - Construction: One of the defining characteristics of humanity is that we make structures, institutions, rules, ideas, and works of art. Kindergartners are also makers. In this unit, students learn about and create structures and develop 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 students 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: In this final unit, students 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 final project. The unit fosters students’ intellectual and emotional connections with nature, including the ways humans can reduce their impact on the earth, such as recycling/reusing food and production/urban agriculture. Drawing on the design process of Construction, children generate ideas for sustainable choices in their classrooms and school communities.

• Notice when a story has a message or lesson for its readers. For example, understand when an author uses a character’s actions to show why being kind is important. 

• Respond directly to what other people say in a conversation. For example, when a classmate says “I like this book,” ask “Why do you like it?” 

• Choose and use words in speech and writing to show whether something happened in the past (like I ate), is happening now (like I am eating), or will happen in the future (like I will eat). 

• Have a clear ending when writing about something. For example, end a story with “It was a fun day” or end an explanation with “That is how to brush your teeth.” 

• Explain the differences between common types of stories (like folk tales and fairy tales). 

• Understand who is telling a story: for example, an author or a character in the story. 

• Stop and read a sentence again if it does not make sense the first time. 

• Use clues like headings and a table of contents to find information in a text. 

• Break words into syllables. For example, helping has two syllables: help and ing. 

• Understand that the same word can take different forms: for example, look, looks, looking. 

• Understand that numbers (like 2) can also be written with words (like two). 

• End written sentences with a period (.), question mark (?), or exclamation point (!). 

• Capitalize the names of months (like January) and people (like Martin Luther King, Jr.). 

• Describe people, places, things, and events clearly in both speech and writing.

• Notice and talk about the structure of a text. For example, describe how the beginning of a story introduces the characters, or explain what the last paragraph of an article says. 

• Explain the overall purpose of a text: for example, the idea the author is trying to explain or the lesson the author is trying to teach. 

• Use knowledge of word parts to figure out meanings. For example, if you know that un means not, then you can figure out that unhappy means not happy. 

• Compare formal and informal English. For example, notice how classmates speak differently when playing with friends and when giving a class presentation.

• Read aloud in a way that shows they understand what they are reading. 

• Stop and reread a sentence to figure out the meaning of an unknown word. 

• Describe what characters do in response to events or problems in a story. 

• Explain how a picture or diagram helps show what a text is saying. 

• Gather information from different texts to answer a question. 

• When presenting, speak loudly and clearly enough to be heard and understood. 

• Print all letters quickly enough to write sentences without losing track of ideas. 

• Use apostrophes (’) in words like can’t, don’t, cat’s, and dog’s. 

• Capitalize proper nouns like Thanksgiving, Boston, and Cape Cod. 

• Write poems with patterns of sounds (like rhythm and rhyme).