Reading
Kindergartners spend much of their time building a solid background in the basic skills of reading. This year students will be introduced to systematic, explicit phonics; build a sight word vocabulary; and develop comprehension strategies and skills that will enable them to become strong readers. Kindergartners with support will learn about character, setting, and major events in a story. Kindergartners learn concepts about print. Teacher-guided book activities will expose children to parts of a book, story sequencing and rhyming patterns. They will learn that print is read from top to bottom and left to right. They will also learn one to one correspondence and how words are put together to make sentences. Kindergartners will learn how to retell stories using a beginning, middle, and end. Kindergartners will develop sound discrimination skills. Kindergartners will learn how to distinguish the individual sounds of our language (phonemic awareness). They will also learn how sounds are manipulated to make words. Kindergartners will be able to isolate and pronounce the initial, middle, and final sounds in three letter words. Kindergartners will develop sight word vocabulary. Kindergartners will build a vocabulary of sight words. Some of these words are irregular and cannot be decoded phonetically (sounded out). Students will practice these words daily. This practice will reinforce skills introduced in school.
Kindergartners will develop comprehension strategies and skills. Kindergartners will learn strategies that will help them monitor their understanding while reading. Teachers will model using these strategies with varied selections of literature. Kindergartners will learn how to express thoughts, feelings, and ideas clearly. |
![]() Writing
Writing goes hand in hand with reading. Learning to write manuscript letters from left to right reinforces the skills students are learning in their reading curriculum. Kindergartners practice writing letters. Kindergartners will learn to write each letter of the alphabet, upper and lower case. The neatness of the writing will depend on the development of their fine motor skills (how well he/she controls the pencil). Kindergartners write the sounds they hear. Kindergartners will write their own stories using “temporary” spelling based on the sounds they can hear in the words they are writing. In the beginning, they will probably not hear vowel sounds or blends. They will add to their story with drawings. Kindergartners learn to hear and write consonant sounds
and vowel sounds. Children will first hear and write consonant sounds at the beginning and end of words. Later, students will begin to add vowel sounds when writing words. Kindergartners learn how to write sentences. KIndergartners learn Upper and Lower Case letters and their sounds. Kindergartners learn to put a capital letter at the beginning of each sentence, to leave a space between each word and to show that sentences are finished by putting a period after the last word. |
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Major Concepts • Number sense with numbers through 30 • Counting objects • Days of the week • Months of the year • Basic Shapes • Creating and extending patterns • Sorting and classifying |