Kindergarten Curriculum

In kindergarten, students begin to establish their identities as readers while they build the foundational skills for reading. In We Are Readers, children develop concepts of print, phonemic awareness, phonics, and the knowledge necessary to use story language to support their approximations of reading. Super Powers: Reading with Print Strategies and Sight Word Power, glories in children’s love of play as they learn “super power” strategies that help them work on fluency. In Bigger Books, Bigger Reading Muscles, children attempt more difficult books with greater independence and use reading strategies to read with more accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. Becoming Avid Readers helps youngsters role-play their way into being the readers you want them to become. They pay close attention to characters, setting, and plot while reading fictional stories, become experts in nonfiction topics as they read together in clubs, and play with rhyme and rhythm while reading poetry.

(Excerpt from Heinemann.com)

Kindergarten Reading Units:

• We are Readers
• Emergent Reading: Looking Closely at Familiar Text
• Super Powers: Reading with Print Strategies and Sight Word Power
• Bigger Books, Bigger Reading Muscles
• Becoming Avid Readers
• Growing Expertise in Little Books: Reading for Information

The kindergarten units begin helping children approximate writing by drawing and labeling first in all-about books and then in stories. The first unit, Launching the Writing Workshop, acknowledges that most children will be labeling their drawings—and the letters in those labels will include squiggles and diamonds. Show and Tell transforms kindergartners into inventive spellers, giving them the tools and strategies, they need to approximate the words that are most meaningful for them in their own writing. Writing for Readers, helps children write true stories—but does so fully aware that the hard part will be writing read-able words. Growth in kindergarten is spectacular, and by the later kindergarten units, children are invited to use their new-found powers to live writerly lives. In How-To Books: Writing to Teach Others, students write informational how-to texts on a procedure familiar to them. In Persuasive Writing of All Kinds: Using Words to Make a Change, students craft petitions, persuasive letters, and signs that rally people to address problems in the classroom, the school, and the world. 

(Excerpt from Heinemann.com)

Kindergarten Writing Units:

• Launching the Writing Workshop
• Show and Tell: From Labels to Pattern Books
• Writing for Readers
• How-To Books: Writing to Teach Others
• Persuasive Writing of All Kinds
• All About Books

The kindergarten units provide an instructional pathway in phonics, introduces high-leverage phonics concepts and strategies in a way that keeps pace with students’ reading and writing and helps them understand when, how, and why they can use phonics to read and write. Making Friends with Letters immerses children in letters and sounds, name study, rhyme and word play. Word Scientists focuses on letter knowledge and letter-sound correspondence, phonological awareness, and high-frequency words. Word-Part Power makes that giant step from writing labels to writing sentences, grasp the power of phonograms, and build high frequency words. Vowel Power distinguishes short-vowel sounds from one another and students study vowels in words that are longer than CVC words. In Playing with Phonics students are introduced to blends, tackle longer words and begin thinking about the sounds that they hear in word parts or phonograms.

(Excerpt from Heinemann.com)

Kindergarten Phonics Units:

• Making Friends with Letters
• Word scientists
• Word Part Power
• Vowel Power
• Playing With Phonics

The Michigan Math Standards call for a balance between procedural knowledge and conceptual understanding. The K-12 Standards for Mathematical Practice, shown below, are types of student expertise developed progressively in each grade-level course.

1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
4. Model with mathematics.
5. Use appropriate tools strategically.
6. Attend to precision.
7. Look for and make use of structure.
8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

• Know number names and the count sequence.

• Count to tell the number of objects.

• Compare numbers.

• Understand addition as putting together and adding to, and understand subtraction as taking apart and taking from

• Work with numbers 11–19 to gain foundations for place value.

• Describe and compare measurable attributes.

• Classify objects and count the number of objects in categories.

• Identify and describe shapes.

• Analyze, compare, create, and compose shapes.

Unit 1: Civics

• Reasons For Rules at Home & School
• American Flag as Symbol of U.S.
• Ensuring Common Good
• Making Fair Group Decisions
• Demonstrate Self-Discipline & Individual Responsibility

Unit 2: History

• Distinguish Between Past, Present & Future
• Create A Timeline of Own Life
• Describe How People Learn About the Past

Unit 3:  Economics & Geography

• Recognize Maps & Globes Represent Places
• Use Directions or Positional Words
• Regions & Common Physical/Human Characteristics
• How Our Environment Provides for Basic Human Needs & Wants