Kindergarten Curriculum Night

1. Kindergarten Curriculum Night 2018 -2019

2. Welcome! • Thank you so much for coming tonight. We feel so fortunate to be your child’s teacher this year! • The purpose of Curriculum Night is to provide parents with a general overview of the kindergarten curriculum.

3. Year Round School • Keep in mind that we are a year round school. This means that different classrooms are at different places in the curriculum. • We function on a 180 day schedule. But each track is on a different day within that schedule. • This could mean that a track 1 student might be on day 80 while a track 4 student is only on day 65, but we all catch up by the end of the year.

4. Daily 5 • Daily 5 is a system used to provide meaningful, independent and curriculum related work that will help your child become a better reader and writer. • While the Daily 5 is happening, the teacher is working with small groups or one-to-one with children. This is when guided reading is happening.

5. Read to Self • Students are spending independent time engaged in books that are self-selected. • Students are taught to read the words and/or the pictures in the book. • Students are taught how to select “good fit books.” • This is a skill that they will need for life.

6. Read to a Partner • Students are practicing fluency by reading aloud to a partner. • Students are again encouraged to read the words and/or the pictures. • Students take turns reading to each other

7. Word Work • Students will work in small groups or independently on phonological skills. • Some of these skills include: letter identification/sounds, rhyming word identification and production, short and long vowels, word families and sight words.

8. Work on Writing • Students will work on their writing skills. • This can be done independently or with the teacher/teaching assistant in a small group. • At the beginning of the year, this may be just practicing handwriting until students become fluent in making each letter, therefore causing less frustration when the time comes to begin to write sentences.

9. Listen to Reading • Students will listen to a variety of stories being read. • This can be done by listening to a book on tape or by listening to stories on the computers. • Many times this will be done using starfall.com, Living Letterland software, or Big Universe. • The purpose of this is so students hear what fluent reading sounds like.

10. Meet With the Teacher • Students will work in small guided reading groups. • Students will work on the skills needed to learn to read. • These groups can be either leveled groups (where everyone in the group is working on/reading on the same level) or strategy groups (everyone in the group is working on the same concept such as comprehension or accuracy, but may not be on the same level)

11. Letterland • Letterland is a researched based reading and phonics program that is done in kindergarten, first and second grade. • The purpose of Letterland in kindergarten is to introduce students to the different letters of the alphabet by using characters and stories. • This program then extends letter introduction to blending sounds to make words and then to introducing word families, short vowels and long vowels.

12. Writing • First, students learn to draw pictures and dictate captions to an adult. (Example: “This is a picture of my pet cat, Rocky. I love Rocky so much. We have a lot of fun together.”) • They then learn to label things in their drawings by writing the sounds they hear in the word. (Student writes the word cat by stretching out the sounds, k-a-t)

13. Last they take these labels and create a sentence with them. (Mi kat Roke) • In kindergarten we focus on spelling basic sight words correctly (the, and, me, like, I) and spelling other words the way they sound. (I like to pla on the plagrwnd wit my fredz)

14. Math • Math is no longer just learning numbers, how to count and memorization. • Students will be expected to recognize numbers 1-20 and count to 100 • Students in first grade are expected to recognize numbers 1-120. • Students are expected to understand basic addition and subtraction word problems. • Students will be expected to know the addition partners of numbers 1-10 (2 and 8 are partners of 10)

15. Students will be expected to find a missing number (Example: 4+___=10) • Students will be expected to know basic shapes such as square, rectangle, triangle, circle, hexagon and also explain how they know they are what they are (Example: a triangle has 3 sides and 3 vertices) • Students will also need to know this for 3 dimensional shapes as well. • Students will need to know that numbers are made up of tens and ones (14 has 1 ten and 4 ones)

16. Science • Students will be taught 4 different units in science: Animals, Properties, Force and Motion, and Weather. • One unit for each of the remaining quarters

17. Social Studies • Students will be taught things such as different cultures from around the world, how things have changed over time, celebrations from around the world, what a community is and how to be part of one and what it means to be a good citizen. • This is often done by integrating concepts into other subjects such as literacy.

18. Assessments • mClass: this includes the TRC (student’s reading level), first sound fluency, phoneme segmentation, nonsense word fluency, letter naming fluency and sight words. • Please note that though the TRC is very important, it is not the “end all be all” when it comes to your child’s reading performance

19. Wake County has other assessments that are used which are not linked to mClass such as math assessments that are paper/pencil, letter ID/sounds checklist, and the phonological assessment skills test (PAST) • Many kindergarten assessments are not paper/pencil. They are hands on demonstrations that the teacher observes.

20. Attendance • Please make sure your child comes to school each day and is on time. • A note should be sent in when your child is absent. • We cannot excuse family trips to Disney, the mountains, the beach, the moon etc. • If you are going on an educational trip, you may apply for an educational leave form. • We begin the day right away at 9:1 5. It is important for your child to be in the classroom and ready to start the day.

21. Homework • Suggested homework has begun and more formal homework will be coming. • Homework timeline for our class. • It is suggested that reading and sight word practice should be done nightly in addition to any additional work sent home as homework.

22. It will primarily be checked for completion. • Please be sure to only spend about 15 minutes a night on homework. • No homework/track out work will be given over track out. Even by parent request. This is a Wake County Policy. • Remember that homework at the kindergarten level is optional, but highly recommended.

23. Volunteers • We LOVE volunteers! • We have volunteers start when we have established all of our classroom rules, procedures, and routines. • Please let us know what you feel comfortable doing or not doing.

24. Communication • Communication is key to a great year so thank you so much for communicating any questions or concerns you have with me. • Please continue let us know of any concerns as soon as possible.

25. Questions?