Kindergarten Curriculum

My goal is to reach your child where they are academically when they enter my classroom. Every student is different, and I will do my best to differentiate instruction to meet your child's needs. It is my goal that all students are proficient in the Nebraska State Education Standards.

Reading & Writing

Our reading curriculum is Houghton Mifflin's Journeys. Daily, we have a whole group instruction block, writing block, and Guided Reading/Literacy Centers block.

There are 30 lessons in Kindergarten Journeys. Each lesson is 5 days, and typically will take 5 school days to teach. Each lesson contains a read aloud book, a big book, stories in the student book, sight words, a phonics focus (Alphafriend), and vocabulary.

Students will read leveled readers in their small groups and work on targeted skills for their level.

In writing, we will use a Writer's Workshop model. Each day, we will have a mini lesson and will use a lot of picture books as mentor texts. Then, your child will be writing for 15-20 minutes daily about a topic of their choice. You will be amazed how much their writing will progress throughout the school year! You may not see a lot of writing coming home, that is because we keep our pieces of writing in writing folders to always go back and revise/edit. W will learn narrative writing, how-to writing, descriptive writing, opinion writing, and non-fiction "all about" writing.

Find a list of sight words here.

Find a helpful Alphafriend chart here.

Math

To guide our Math instruction, we use the KinderMath program. Daily, we will have a mini-lesson followed by small math groups. Your student will receive math instruction at their assessed level. When your child is not working with me in a small group, they will be practicing skills in hands-on math stations. A few of the things we will focus on in math are:

• Identifying and writing numbers 0-30
• Counting a set of objects with 1-1 correspondence
• Patterns
• 2D and 3D shapes
• Addition and subtraction within 10
• Skip counting by 10's, 5's and 2's
• Identifying pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters
• Calendar skills

Science and Social Studies

In order to prepare your student for their future, our Science and Social Studies time will look different than it has in the past. Students will have hands-on experiences with various topics. We will discover, explore, and draw conclusions based upon what we observe.