Primary and Kindergarten Curriculum Overview (3 - 6 Years of Age)
Language Goals
- Students will construct, examine and extend the meaning of various kinds of text.
- Students will organize and evaluate information to share with others.
- Students will use literary knowledge to connect self to society and culture.
- Students will use written and oral communication appropriate for various purposes and audiences.
Children in Kindergarten will work on the following according to developmental stages:
Use appropriate decoding and word recognition strategies; develop an increasingly extensive vocabulary:
- Identify upper and lower case letters
- Understand concepts of print (letter, word, sentence, left to right directionality, top to bottom, return sweep of print)
- Understand concept of rhyme
- Understand concept of beginning sounds
- Sound/letter symbol associations for consonants and some vowels
- Identify 5-10 familiar words, including their name, numbers and direction words
Assimilate information from prior knowledge and experiences to understand text:
- Use picture clues to determine meaning of unknown words
- Recognize environmental print
- Ask and/or answer questions related to a story
- Make and revise predictions related to a story with teacher assistance
- Begin to differentiate between real and make-believe
- ID fiction/nonfiction
Develop an understanding of the literary elements used in creating stories:
- Identify title, author and illustrator with teacher assistance
- Identify character and setting with teacher assistance
- Retell familiar stories using beginning, middle and end
Respond to text in a variety of ways (speaking, writing, art):
- Begin to express opinions
- Respond to literary texts from various cultures
- Begin to relate ideas from literature to situations involving self and society
- Discuss stories and ideas from fiction and non-fiction sources
Use a variety of resources (print, audio-visual, technology) to gather and evaluate information to share with others:
- Identify different resources available to gather information
- Identify different ways to organize and share information
Written and Oral Communication Goals
Children in Kindergarten will work on the following according to developmental stages:
- Use left-to-right, top to bottom progression
- Write own first and last name
- Write using invented spelling, demonstrating some letter/sound associations
- Use conventional spelling for familiar words
- Use drawings with labels to share experiences
- Use oral language to tell the story depicted in drawings
- Use details in their drawings to develop the text
- Copy environmental print and other messages
- Experiment with different forms of writing (labels, signs, lists, messages)
- Use oral language for different purposes (inform, persuade, express self)
- Begin to follow rules for conversation (taking turns, staying on topic)
- Share and discuss work using complete sentences
- Share an idea on a topic
- Speak in front of a group (i.e. share)
Mathematics Goals
Students will develop number sense, use operations for computation with understanding, explain relationships between numbers and develop beginning concepts of place value using concrete materials.
- Identify like/ unlike objects to form sets up to twenty
- Identify equal/ unequal set amounts (conservation)
- Rote counting to twenty
- Skip counting by fives and tens
- Associate numeral symbol and quantity to twenty
- Sequencing to one hundred (what comes before or after)
- Use of ordinal numbers
- Identify operations symbols "+", "-", and "="
- Simple addition
- Simple subtraction
- Solve oral word problems
- Introduction to place values up to one thousand
Students will develop an understanding of estimation and measurement:
- Linear comparison (long/short, thick/thin, tall/short)
- Volume/ mass comparison (more/less, full/empty)
- Temperature comparison (hot/warm/ cool/cold)
- Time comparison (minutes/ hour/ days/ week/ months/ year)
- Identify time to the hour
- Name and order days of the week, months of the year
- Use of the calendar
- Recognize penny, nickel, dime and quarter
Students will develop spatial sense and understanding of geometry:
- Identify two dimensional and three dimensional shapes using materials
- Demonstrate the relative position of objects (over, under, beside...)
Students will develop an understanding of patterns:
- Recognize and repeat simple visual, oral and rhythmic patterns
- Sort and classify objects by a single attribute
Culutural Studies Goals
- Students will develop an understanding of the diversity of human culture and the unique nature of places.
- Students will develop an understanding of chronological concepts in analyzing historical events.
- Students will use the process of scientific inquiry to develop their understanding of the natural world.
Typically, children in Kindergarten will work on the following:
- Identify the year and its parts (seasons)
- Identify the parts of a calendar
- Identify the needs of humans through time
- With assistance, develop a personal time line
- Use the clock as a measurement of passing time
- Identify basic land and water forms
- Identify continents, bodies of water, political boundaries
- Compare and contrast cultures and cultural traditions around the world
- Discuss the plants and animals of countries studied
- Use the Scientific Method (observe, predict, draw conclusions)
- Identify living/nonliving things
- Identify plants/animals, adults/offspring
- Identify parts of plants, leaves, flower
- Identify external parts of fish, amphibian, reptile, bird, mammal, insect
- Identify various animal habitats of vertebrates
- Participate in experiments with water, air, magnets, sound, electricity, heat
