Grade K

2024-2025 Kindergarten Supply List

    

English Language Arts Curriculum

To build a foundation for college and career readiness, students must read widely and deeply from among a broad range of high-quality, increasingly challenging literary and informational texts. Through extensive reading of stories, dramas, poems, and myths from diverse cultures and different time periods, students gain literary and cultural knowledge as well as familiarity with various text structures and elements. By reading texts in history/social studies, science, and other disciplines, students build a foundation of knowledge in these fields that will also give them the background to be better readers in all content areas.

FUNdations:

Kindergarten students will learn to identify the letters of the alphabet and the corresponding sound(s), letter formation, phonemic awareness, phonics, and beginner reading skills (blending, segmenting, sight words, etc.), using various FUNdations lessons and activities in whole group and small group instruction.

Guided Reading and Writing:

A small group of 4-6 Kindergarten students meet with the teacher to practice reading, writing, and speaking. Students read an instructional level book in a group, focusing on one-to-one correspondence, decoding, and reading with fluency. Students participate in an academic discussion to show reading comprehension.

Into Reading:

Kindergarteners will learn reading. writing, and language skills through the Into Reading Program. They will be exposed to close readings of fiction and nonfiction, authentic texts with modeling, and teacher-directed activities. Students will practice skills related to theme, main idea, character development, sequence of events, and point of view.

Fountas & Pinnell:

The Fountas & Pinnell Benchmark Assessment Systems are accurate and reliable tools PS 86 teachers use to identify the instructional and independent reading levels of students. This assessment tool is also used to document student progress through one-on-one formative and summative assessments

Writing:

Students will learn about the writing process as they publish writing pieces throughout the year to prepare them for Performance-Based Assessments (PBAs). Kindergarten students will be exposed to various writing genres, narrative fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and opinion writing.

Math Curriculum

Eureka:

Students will learn counting, identifying, and writing the numbers 0-20; comparing numbers within 20; skip counting by tens; addition and subtraction within 20; identifying and describing 2D and 3D shapes; and measurement, via the Go Math Program.  This program is designed to promote higher order thinking.  Students will not only be expected to solve and compute various problems but explain WHY.

In Kindergarten, instructional time should focus on two areas: (1) developing a sound sense of numbers by representing and comparing numbers, initially using sets of objects; (2) recognizing and describing shapes and using spatial relations. More learning time in Kindergarten should be devoted to number than to any other topic. Please note that while every standard/topic in the grade level has not been included in this overview, all standards should be included in instruction.

  • Through their learning in the Counting and Cardinality and Operations and Algebraic Thinking domains, students:

    • develop a more formal sense of numbers;

    • use numbers, including written numerals, to represent quantities and to solve quantitative problems, such as counting objects in a set; counting out a given number of objects; comparing sets or numerals; and modeling simple joining and separating situations with sets of objects, or eventually with equations such as 5 + 2 = 7 and 7 – 2 = 5. Note: Kindergarten students should see addition and subtraction equations, and student writing of equations in kindergarten is encouraged, but it is not required; and

    • choose, combine, and apply effective strategies for answering quantitative questions, including quickly recognizing the cardinalities of small sets of objects, counting and producing sets of given sizes, counting the number of objects in combined sets, or counting the number of objects that remain in a set after some are taken away.

  • Through their learning in the Geometry and Measurement and Data domains, students: 

    • describe their physical world using geometric ideas (e.g., shape, orientation, spatial relations) and appropriate vocabulary;

    • identify, name, and describe basic two-dimensional shapes, such as squares, triangles, circles, rectangles, and hexagons, presented in a variety of ways (e.g., with different sizes and orientations), as well as three-dimensional shapes such as cubes, cones, cylinders, and spheres;

    • use basic shapes and spatial reasoning to model objects in their everyday environment to create and compose more complex shapes; and

    • explore* coins and begin identifying of pennies and dimes.

*Note: Explore indicates that the topic is an important concept that builds the foundation for progression toward mastery in later grades. Repeated experiences with these concepts, with immersion in the concrete, are vital.

Cooperative Problem Solving:

Twice a month, students will work in groups to solve challenging math problems. Students will work on collaboration, questioning, and presentation skills, in addition to developing critical thinking skills. Students assess their work using a math rubric and computational thinking rubric.

Problem of the Day:

Students are given a daily word problem that is repeated practice of previously learned material. Problem of the day helps students build automaticity in math, through continuous practice. Students use a math rubric to self-assess their work and the work of their peers.

Fact Fluency:

Your child will practice and memorize grade appropriate math facts in addition and subtraction to help build automaticity. 

Kindergarten Amplify Science

The Amplify Science Kindergarten Course includes three units that support students in meeting the NGSS. The following unit summaries demonstrate how students engage in three-dimensional learning to solve real-world questions and problems.

 

Unit 1: Needs of Plants and Animals: Milkweed and Monarchs. Students help a group of children figure out why there are no more monarch caterpillars in a community garden and how to bring them back. Students conduct hands-on investigations to figure out what plants need in order to live and thrive. They ask questions and learn about the system of plants and animals that live together in a habitat. They figure out patterns in the life cycles of living things by reading and analyzing photographs.

 

Unit 2: Pushes and Pulls: Designing a Pinball Machine. Students take on the role of pinball machine engineers as they explore the effects of forces on the motion of an object. They consider cause and effect and structure and function as they design and build their own pinball machines. They analyze data from their tests using mathematical thinking. Students also gather evidence of forces at work in their school.

 

Unit 3: Sunlight and Weather: Solving Playground Problems. Students work to solve the problem of why students at one fictional school are too cold during morning recess while students at another school are too hot during afternoon recess. They develop and use models to gather evidence about the effect of sunlight (energy) on Earth’s surface (matter) and how flooding during wet weather can be avoided. They gather local weather data and use concepts of scale, proportion, and quantity to make sense of it.