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What you need to know
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Curriculum
Shared Reading: A collaborative learning activity which involves the teacher and the students reading and rereading a text. Skills and strategies are modeled and taught during shared reading.
Guided Reading: The teacher works with a small group of students who are at a similar developmental stage of reading. The goal is for the children to learn to use the reading strategies independently.
Phonemic Awareness and Phonics: Fundations provides a systematic program in the foundational skills, emphasizing phonemic awareness, phonics-word study, high frequency word study, fluency, vocabulary, handwriting, and spelling. The teacher works on phonemic awareness skills such as practice blending, segmenting, isolating and manipulating words, syllables, onset-rime and/or phonemes.
Writing: The Kid Writing program provides an integrated approach in which phonics instruction is an integral part of the instruction. The children learn the conventions of language through their daily writing.
Read Aloud: The teacher reads aloud to the children to develop a sense of story, rich vocabulary, reading strategies, listening skills, and most importantly a love of reading.
Mathematics: Children discover how to use numbers to represent quantities and learn problem solving strategies. Describing their physical world using geometric ideas and vocabulary is also a focus of instruction.
Social Studies: Children learn the basic concepts about communities and seasons.
Science: Children investigate life sciences through the study of nature.
Computer Literacy: To become familiar with the computer and technology children use the computers in the classroom or lab regularly working on readiness skills -
The Kindergarten Reporting System
Parents/Guardians are kept informed of their child’s progress during the year through the report card and parent conferences. The reporting system operates on three trimesters: December, March, and June.
The report card provides information to you in the academic areas as well as progress in social development and work habits. The reporting system is designed to keep you informed of your child’s progress in the following areas: literacy skills, mathematics, motor skills, social development and work habits. The teacher evaluates the child’s competence in each area in terms of the skill to be mastered, not in comparison to other students.
Parent conferences are held in November and March. During the meeting, the teacher informs you of your child’s progress to date. She will also share assessments in the academic areas and talk with you about how you can help at home.
If at any other time you have questions about your child’s progress during the year, please call the teacher or set up an appointment to discuss your concerns. It is important to keep the lines of communication open.
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Kindergarten Readiness
Although children develop at different rates, there are certain expectations for a child entering Kindergarten. This list outlines some readiness skills that are important to help prepare your child for the coming year:
Language Skills- develop language through daily conversation
- speak in complete thoughts or sentences
- listen to a story for 5-10 minutes
- follow a set of 2 directions
- recite simple nursery rhymes
- identify and produce spoken words that rhyme (e.g., c-at, s-at, b-at)
- recognize first name in print
- recognize letters of the alphabet in print out of order
- follow left-to-right and top-to-bottom direction when reading English
Mathematics- count from 1 – 10
- identify numbers from 1 – 10 in print out of order
- identify the number of objects in a set from 1 – 5
- identifies 4 shapes: circle, square, rectangle, triangle
- understands spatial relationships (top/bottom, near/far, ahead/behind)
- shows understanding of and uses comparative words (big/little, large/small)
Motor Skills- print first name
- have experience with pencil, crayons, and scissors
- be able to button and/or zip outer wear
What can you do for a GREAT beginning
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As a parent or guardian you make an enormous difference in how much and how well your child learns. You are your child’s most important teacher and valuable partner of your child’s teachers in school. When working with your child, remember not to push too hard. It takes time and maturity to master pre-reading skills and easier activities have to be mastered first. Let our child help you set the pace.
The following section presents areas of readiness which need careful development in order that your child be ready to take on the complex task of learning to read. Most of these will be practiced in kindergarten, but you may want to help your child with some additional practice.
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Cultivate your child’s power of close observation – Visual Discrimination
- Discover likenesses and differences in objects, pictures, letters, words
- Make comparisons and match objects by: sizes (big, middle-sized, little; large, medium, small), shapes (round, square, flat), colors, numbers (many, few, and actual count)
- Notice details, study pictures and objects carefully
- Identify particular objects or figures from the background in a picture (point out the horse in a farm picture)
- Work with beads, blocks, or pegs and reproduce a pattern by color, shape, size, and sequence
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Cultivate your child’s power to listen carefully – Auditory Discrimination
- Note likenesses and differences in sounds (loud, soft, high, low)
- Listen to common sounds and identify the source (a passing car, bird singing, siren)
- Listen to nursery rhymes, having the child first identify and then supply the rhyming words
- Note likenesses and differences in sounds of words (words that begin or end with the same sound)
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Cultivate your child’s ability to recall what he/she has seen – Visual Memory
- Reproduce a simple pattern from memory using beads or blocks
- Recall details from a picture
- Describe an object just seen (What did it look like?)
- Recall details from an outing (What was in the store window we just passed? What did you see on the way to the store?)
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Cultivate your child’s ability to remember what he/she has heard – Auditory Memory
- Have the child repeat a direction after hearing it once
- Repeat songs and poems hear
- Follow directions in order given (Run to the door, shut it quietly, hop back to me)
- Recall and repeat information given orally (series of numbers, words, or a sentence)
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Build up your child’s resources of information – Background of Experience
- Encourage the child to ask worthwhile questions about things all around him/her
- Help the child to find answers to his/her questions him/herself whenever possible
- Take the child to see and do things within the range of his/her understanding and enjoyment (to museum, to the zoo, on walks in the park)
- As far as he/she is able to understand, encourage him/her to discover the “how” and “what” and “why” of the things he/she sees and uses daily
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Develop your child’s ability to express him/herself through Language
- Have him/her retell stories you have read or told to him/her
- Have him/her make up stories about pictures he/she looks at
- Encourage him/her to recount experiences he/she has had
- Avoid use of “baby talk” when you speak to your child and encourage him/her not to use it
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Encourage your child to develop his Motor Skills
- Encourage running, skipping, hopping, jumping, skating, bouncing, and catching balls, etc. to develop large muscular coordination
- Encourage careful coloring of large outline pictures, cutting, pasting, working with tools, etc. to develop fine muscle control and coordination
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Develop your child’s Sense of Responsibility
- Have him/her learn to finish a task before leaving it
- Have him/her learn to work steadily
- Have him/her learn to clean up when task is completed
- Have simple tasks which he/she does daily as a part of his/her regular contribution to the family living - for which he/she is responsible
- As soon as the child learns to do something, let him/her do it (Don’t do for the child what he/she can do for him/herself)
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It is important that your child get satisfaction from working with you. Praise his/her efforts. Show him/her that you are pleased when he/she is successful. Encourage him/her when he/she is unsuccessful and make suggestions for improvement. Remember to be patient. Each child matures at his/her own rate.
