Common Core and Read to Achieve: Kindergarten Information

1. KindergartenSeptember 15th, 2015*North Buncombe Elementary School*

2. Welcome! Agenda: • What is this thing called “Common Core”?! • Kindergarten to 3rd grade: “Read to Achieve” legislation ~It all begins in kindergarten!~ • Grade level expectations • How to help at home • Questions?

3. The Common Core State Standards:*provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn so teachers and parents know what to do to help them*are designed to provide relevant connections to the real world *reflect the knowledge and skills that our children need to be successful in life

4. Read to AchieveNorth Carolina Legislation G.S. 115c-83.1A At the end of 3rd grade the “Read to Achieve” legislation requires that 3rd graders read at a proficient level on the end-of-grade test. Here is what will happen for those students who are not proficient: First, your child will be retested to make sure that s/he did not have a bad day on the day of the test administration. Second, if your child is not proficient on the retest, s/he will attend a summer reading camp to help improve his/her reading skills. This camp is at no charge to you. Your local school district will organize the camp and give you more information about when and where it will be held. If you do not agree to send your child to summer reading camp, your child will repeat third grade the next school year to give him/her more time to build strong reading skills. At the end of summer reading camp, your child’s reading will be retested. If s/he tests proficient, your child will be eligible to be promoted to fourth grade. If your child does not score proficient, s/he will be placed in a fourth-grade class but will have a third grade retention label. Ninety minutes of uninterrupted reading instruction will be provided daily in these fourth grade classes. Your child will be eligible to retake the reading test in late October to achieve a mid-year promotion and have the third-grade retention label removed. Your child will remain in the same fourth-grade class for the entire school year and will continue to receive the uninterrupted reading instruction throughout fourth grade to support ongoing improvement in reading skills.

5. Grade Level Expectations for Kindergarten Reading: According to the laws set by our NC State Legislators, all kindergarten students must be reading at a Reading Behaviors Level (RB) and identify first sounds in words by the end of October. They must read on a level C in January and a level D in May, as well as a proficiency in phonological awareness throughout the year, on the mCLASSReading 3D Assessment. Students reading below level will be identified as “at-risk”. See handout for descriptions of literacy levels. Assessing began in September and will continue throughout the year. You will receive the results from your child’s teacher at the end of the assessment window. Students are assessed on literacy skills throughout the year, and instructional interventions will be provided as necessary. Kindergarten progress reports and mCLASS results will be shared with you during our first parent/teacher conference. These will be scheduled after the first nine weeks ends in October.

6. Level A Example: We like to slide. Readers at this level are: •beginning to understand how print works and know that there is a difference between words and pictures •starting to understand the connection between sounds and letters •learning to look across the page, point to words, one by one, across one line of print •learning to use information from pictures to decode words •beginning to notice differences in letters and learn the names of them •learning how to match one spoken word with one word in print

7. Level B Example:My little dog likes to read with me. Readers at this level are: •continuing to learn how print works •further developing the concepts of left-to-right directionality across the page •further developing their ability to voice-print match with texts containing more than one line of print •starting to recognize repeating language patterns in simple texts that have simple stories, focusing on a single idea •making more connections between letters and sounds •begging to self-correct based on words and sounds and checking words against the picture

8. Level C Example (In January):Socks was sleepingon my chair.I said,“Wake up, Socks!” Readers at this level are: •using texts containing two to six lines of print on each page •sweeping back to the left margin for each new line and reading print on both left and right pages •relying less on the need to point to the words as they read •reading more smoothly and starting to read some phrases •starting to notice quotation marks and may reflect dialogue with their voice •developing a larger base of sight words •monitoring more and cross-checking pictures against the words for meaning and sense

9. Level D Example (in May):The duck wentin the little house.She said,“What a nice little house!” Readers at this level are: •following simple fiction stories and easy informational texts •tracking print with their eyes rather than their finger •noticing and using punctuation as they read

10. Reading & Writing • Students must learn the alphabet and all letter sounds and be able to break down words into syllables and letters, helping them to become better readers and writers. • Students will use these basic reading skills to read, write, and comprehend simple books and stories.

11. Phonemic Awareness InstructionPhonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds-phonemes--in spoken words. Before children learn to read print, they need to become more aware of how the sounds in words work. Rhyming: Children recognize and create rhyming words. Alliteration: Children recognize words that start with the same sound. Sentence Segmenting: Children differentiate individual words within sentences. Syllables: Children blend syllables. “Say fa-ther fast. Father” Children segment syllables. “How many syllables does dinosaur have?” Onset-rime: Children blend onsets and rimes. “Say /t/ /ame/ tame.” “How can we turn hat onto cat?” First Sound Fluency & Phoneme Segmentation: “What is the first sound you hear in the word cat? /c/ “What are the sounds you hear in the word cat? /c/ /a/ /t/”

12. Writing! In kindergarten, students are assessed four times throughout the year. *personal narrative (October) *opinion (January) *informational (February & April) Students are expected to use the following conventions: 1. Spacing between words 2. Proper upper and lower case letter usage 3. Punctuation at the end of sentences 4. Content according to the type of writing

13. Math!By the end of kindergarten, students are expected to: • Count to 100 by ones and by tens • Count on from a given number (ex: Start at 22 and count on, 23, 24, 25. Start at 17 and count on, 18, 19, 20, 21…) • Recognize and write numerals 0 – 20 and create matching sets. • Understand numbers 11 – 19 contain a 10 and some more. • Compare sets of objects to determine if the sets are greater than, less than, or equal to each other. • Solve word problems by adding and subtracting numbers up to10 with objects and drawings. • Identify 2D and 3D shapes as well as construct each shape (square, circle, triangle, rectangle, hexagon, cube, sphere, cone, cylinder) with given materials

14. Here’s what you can do to help your child succeed in math: • Count aloud daily! See how far your child can count without missing a number and help him/her correct missing numbers. • Count from different starting points. For ex: start at 10…10, 11, 12, 13…. Start at 23…23, 24, 25, 26… • Count objects daily! Give your child different sets of objects to count (ex: spoons, forks, pennies, socks, beans, etc). Count fingers and toes! • Shapes: Point out shapes in the environment and name/identify them. (Ex: “The door is a rectangle. The clock is a circle.”)

15. Science and Social Studies! In kindergarten, science and social studies: • are integrated into reading and math curriculums • are incorporated throughout the day in a variety of learning experiences • include: changes (seasons, weather, families, etc.), five senses, motion, functions of living things

16. Questions?