Kindergarten Learners

Current Unit: My Community Heroes

Summary of Unit: Over the next module, our class will learn about what makes a community. We will read books about the people and places in a community, and the ways in which we all work together to make a community strong. Children will write letters to teach others about our community, and the whole class will collaborate to build a 3-D map of the places around school that make up our community.

Reading:  We will read a variety of texts including informational, realistic fiction, poetry, and fables. We will use these texts to learn important comprehension skills such as: naming the topic, identifying the theme, examining key details, and giving a summary.  In addition, we will continue to learn and use new academic and text vocabulary to increase students' expressive skills. You can help at home by reading a paper book or online book from one of our class apps everyday for homework.  After reading you can ask your student questions such as: What was this book about?  How can you summarize this book?  Why do you think the author wrote this book? What can you learn from this book? Also, you can be sure to help your child complete the reading response posted for homework every Friday. 

Phonics: Students will finish learning all lowercase letters of the alphabet. Students are expected to memorize the name and sound for each lowercase letter and to properly form the letter when writing. You can help at home by watching the video of FUNdations letters and sounds posted in Google Classroom for homework.  Have your child echo the letter name and sound with the video.  

Also, students will continue to memorize high frequency words every two weeks.  These words are very important for beginning readers. By memorizing, students will recognize these common words that are found in many books and be able to more fluently read and focus their decoding skills on larger, less familiar words.  This helps students with comprehension and fluency, both important skills for good readers.  You can help at home by saying one high frequency word,  then have your child repeat it, next spell the word together, last have them write it by spelling it out loud.  You can also have the words written on index cards and play games with them to match the words, spell the words or say the words.

Writing: We will explore a new genre of writing: informational writing. We will be focusing on coming up with a central idea and details that match throughout the module. Students will be exposed to places in the community and write about them. Students will be challenged to write 5 sentences: a topic sentence, 3 facts, and a concluding sentence about a community place. In addition, students will think of ways to help our community/others by looking at lists, and in their writing. We will also look at parts of grammar such as nouns (as places and things), adjectives in terms of size, shape and number. We will introduce letter writing, parts of an envelope and practice writing letters to each other. Throughout the module we will reinforce how to be brave spellers (using letter sounds we hear to write unknown words), correct letter formation, the U.P.S checklist  (uppercase, period, space) for conventions of writing. Students will give each other peer feedback, as well self-assess using an editing checklist and the Rainbow Rating tool. Students will be assessed on their writing with an informational writing rubric. You can help at home by talking with your child about places in the community,  and how they can be helpful to their community/to others. You can expose them to letters and parts of an envelope. You can also help by encouraging them to label their drawing, motivate them to be brave spellers (use letter sounds to write unknown words), reinforce correct letter formation and using the U.P.S checklist. 

Math: Students have just finished counting and comparing quantities 0-10. Now, kindergarten students are learning to count and classify data. They will practice sorting objects into categories based on similar attributes and explain why they classified objects in a given way. After, students will count the categories and compare to identify which is greater, less than, or equal. 

After learning about classifying data, students will begin to understand addition as putting two groups of objects together and finding how many in all. Students will learn to write addition sentences using the sentence frame: “___ and ____ is ____.” Afterwards, they will write addition equations using the structure: ____+____=_____. To do this, students will gain understanding of the plus sign (+) and equal sign (=). Students will continue to work on verbally explaining how they know their math is correct, and constructing arguments to show their knowledge. 

Home connection: At home you can practice classifying objects into categories and comparing the groups. For example, sorting forks and spoons into different groups and then comparing which is greater than and less than. Additionally, children can represent addition with physical objects. Make two groups of objects and ask you child to identify how many in all. Then write an addition equation to represent the groups and the total amount (sum). Use the addition equation: ____+____=_____ 

Science: In science, we are continuing to learn about weather and sunlight. Students are learning how the sun warms the surface of the Earth. We are also learning how darker surfaces get warmer because they absorb heat, whereas lighter surfaces reflect the sun’s heat. We will finish out our unit on weather learning about extreme weather such as tornadoes and floods.

Be sure to ask your child to describe the weather!

Vocabulary: surface, extreme, tornado

Social Studies: We will finish our unit on Our Self and Others where we have been learning what makes each of us unique. This unit also allowed us to share our culture and the holidays we celebrate with our families. Students also had the chance to share their traditions with the class and they realized that even though their cultures may be different, there can be similarities found. This unit will also include important symbols of the United States and songs that honor our country.

At home you can talk about your culture with your child. What country/countries is your family from? What holidays does your family celebrate? What special traditions do you have for these holidays?Vocabulary: traditions, culture, holiday, symbols, country

Music: Students in Kindergarten music will be singing songs connected to identifying community members and places within our community.

Art: Students will be able to identify at least one community helper and use basic art materials to represent that person using colors, shapes, lines and details.

Parent & Student Voice:

“I love that my child is noticing letters and sounds all around them.” - K013 parent

“My child loves to count and write his numbers!” -104 parent 

“At first my child would cry every morning, now my child is sad when there is no school”.-K011 parent