Daily Schedule

8:25 Line up @ Kindergarten playground

8:25- 8:50 Morning Meeting/ SEL Lesson

8:50- 9:20 CKLA Reading Knowledge

9:20-​ 9:50 CKLA Reading Skills

9:50- 10:50 Supplemental Responsive Instruction & Skills

10:55- 11:17 Lunch

11:17-​ 11:40 Recess

11:40- 12:35 Math

12:35- 1:10 Writing

1:10- 1:40 Science/ Social Studies

1:40-​ 1:55 Snack/ Recess

1:55-​ 2:40 Specials (Gym, Music, Tech, Art)

2:40- 3:20 Supplemental Responsive Instruction

3:20-​ 3:​25 Clean Up & Closing Circle

3:25 Dismissal on the Kindergarten playground

Reading

First grade students receive literacy instruction using the Amplify/CKLA curriculum. CKLA Reading Knowledge is taught as ​whole group lessons. Students develop decoding, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension skills and engage with a text as collaborative learners.

Units of Study:

  • Unit 1: Nursery Rhymes and Fables - Students are introduced to classic nursery rhymes like “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and characters such as Humpty Dumpty and Little Miss Muffet. These rhymes build vocabulary and phonemic awareness, helping students become better readers and writers through listening and memorization. Their familiar, everyday themes make them especially engaging for young learners.

  • Unit 2: The Five Senses - This unit teaches how humans gather information through the senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Each sense uses a specific body part to respond to stimuli, helping students begin to explore the human body. Making and describing observations also supports early scientific thinking and language development.

  • Unit 3: Stories - Students explore classic tales like “The Three Little Pigs” and “Chicken Little,” meeting characters such as Goldilocks and the Three Billy Goats Gruff. They also learn about trickster tales and enjoy stories from other cultures like “Momotaro, Peach Boy” and “The Story of Jumping Mouse,” developing an appreciation for global storytelling traditions.

  • Unit 4: Plants - Students learn about the plant kingdom, gaining foundational knowledge of plant parts, growth, life cycles, pollination, and photosynthesis. This unit supports later lessons on ecology and interdependence, linking to domains like Farms and Taking Care of the Earth.

  • Unit 5: Farms - This unit introduces farm animals and crops, showing how farmers care for animals and grow food. Building on knowledge from the Plants unit, students understand that animals need food, water, and space. The story “The Little Red Hen” illustrates seasonal farming cycles and themes of cooperation and responsibility.

  • Unit 6: Native Americans - Students learn about the diverse cultures and lifestyles of Native American tribes before European colonization. Focusing on the Lakota Sioux, Wampanoag, and Lenape, they explore how geography shaped ways of life and recognize the uniqueness of each tribe. The unit concludes with a look at Native Americans today.

  • Unit 7: Kings and Queens -Through fiction and nonfiction, students learn about royalty—its roles, customs, and history. Classic tales like “Cinderella” and “King Midas and the Golden Touch” help students understand the responsibilities and lifestyles of kings and queens, while also connecting to later lessons on government.

  • Unit 8: Seasons and Weather - Students explore weather patterns across different regions and seasons—winter, spring, summer, and fall. They learn how weather affects daily life and the importance of understanding it for planning activities and staying safe.

  • Unit 11: Taking Care of the Earth - This unit emphasizes environmental responsibility through the three Rs—reduce, reuse, and recycle. Students learn about natural resources, pollution, the water cycle, and waste management, gaining practical ideas for protecting the planet in their daily lives.

  • Unit 12: Presidents and American Symbols - Students learn about five notable U.S. presidents and symbols like the flag, the Statue of Liberty, and Mount Rushmore. Building on prior knowledge of monarchies, they compare kings to presidents and learn about government structure and the president’s role.

CKLA Reading Skills

The CKLA (Core Knowledge Language Arts) kindergarten skills curriculum focuses on building foundational decoding skills for reading and writing. It's divided into units that progress from basic concepts like environmental sounds and letters to more complex skills like blending sounds and reading short words. The curriculum emphasizes phonological awareness, phonics, grammar, writing, comprehension, and fluency.

  • Skills 1- Unit 1 lays the groundwork for reading and writing. Students build awareness of environmental noises, of words within sentences, and of sounds within words. They also learn several writing strokes used to create letters.

  • Skills 2- In Unit 2, students learn how to blend syllables together to form multisyllabic words. They also learn how to orally produce two- and three-sound words by blending sounds.

  • Skills 3- In Unit 3, students are introduced to eight sounds, and they practice blending these sounds into words. They also learn how to form the letters that make these sounds.

  • Skills 4- Unit 4 introduces students to eight new sounds. Through oral language games, chaining exercises, and story demonstrations with the decodable Big Book (Pet Fun), students practice blending these sounds into words. Students also practice previously learned letter-sound correspondences.

  • Skills 5- Unit 5 introduces students to eight new sounds, including a spelling alternative for /k/. Through oral language games, chaining exercises, and story demonstrations with the decodable Big Book (Ox and Man), students practice blending these sounds into words. Students also practice previously learned letter-sound correspondences.

  • Skills 6- In Unit 6, students are encouraged to automatize the letter-sound correspondences and blending procedures they have learned so far. They are introduced to consonant clusters, letter names, rhyming words, and reading text independently. The decodable Student Reader (with Big Book) for Unit 6 is Kit.

  • Skills 7- Unit 7 introduces students to digraphs. Students develop automaticity in blending and segmenting these sounds through phonemic awareness activities, chaining exercises, practice worksheets, and reading of their decodable Student Reader, Seth.

  • Skills 8- Unit 8 introduces students to double-letter spellings for consonant sounds, as well as seven high-frequency Tricky Words. Results from this unit’s student performance task assessment inform which students are ready for the next unit and those who need targeted support with previously taught skills. The decodable Student Reader (with Big Book) for Unit 8 is Sam.

  • Skills 9- In Unit 9, students practice writing uppercase letters and learn seventeen new Tricky Words. This unit also introduces worksheets with story questions. These are comprehension questions related to the decodable Student Reader, Zack and Ann.

  • Skills 10- Unit 10 introduces students to five new long vowel sounds with quiet e and eleven additional Tricky Words. The decodable Student Reader for Unit 10 is Scott.

Supplemental Responsive Instruction & Skills

Daily, students have an opportunity to learn in a small group setting. Students are given individualized small group instruction that is rooted in the Science of Reading. This time allows teachers to meet the students where they are at, and provide science of reading based instruction to build the skills needed to decode words, read fluently and comprehend text.

Writing

Writing instruction is taught using CKLA and the Writing Alive curriculum. This comprehensive curriculum integrates six components of writing into weekly writing lessons, ensuring there are no gaps in skill instruction. Writing Alive allows students to receive instruction on both fiction and non-fiction writing skills.  Students also have the chance to practice their grammar, spelling, and conventions while working through the writing process of brainstorming, planning, drafting, revising, editing, publishing and sharing. Some of the types of writing we complete in kindergarten include:

  • Story Retelling and summaries

  • Creative Stories

  • Personal Narratives

  • Opinion

  • Informative Writing

  • Poetry

Math

We use Eureka2 for our math instruction. The curriculum emphasizes building a deep understanding of math concepts rather than just memorizing procedures. Students solve problems that occur in everyday life, connecting math to their experiences. Lessons are organized into modules, providing a clear progression of learning. The program uses a variety of instructional methods, including explicit instruction, problem-based learning, and adaptive tools. Eureka Math 2 (Eureka Math Squared) for Kindergarten has 6 modules:

  • Counting and Cardinality

  • 2D and 3D Shapes

  • Comparison

  • Composition and Decomposition

  • Addition and Subtraction

  • Place Value

Social Studies

The Inquire Ed curriculum, along with inquiry and project based learning opportunities, is used to teach social studies. Students engage in the following units of study:

  • Navigating School: In order for students to feel a sense of agency in their school environments, they must first consider the different physical locations and people they interact with throughout the school day. In this Inquiry, students develop a strong foundation from which to understand their own role, setting the stage for them to make choices that will foster a great school community for everyone.

  • My Team and Self: Successful teams can do just about anything. But to understand what you can accomplish as a team, you need to understand who makes up the team, how those individuals can work together, and how diversity makes a team more powerful. In this Inquiry, students explore essential elements of personal identity in order to help them recognize how they can contribute to a team. Then, they identify opportunities for teamwork in their own class community.

  • Past, Present, and Future: Our past experiences and the wisdom gained from those experiences are integral to planning for our future. In this Inquiry, students explore the essential elements of time and how tracking and sharing our journey through time is a way of sharing the unique stories that make us who we are. They build an understanding of how time’s patterns and cycles structure our past and present lives to better prepare for what’s to come.

Science

Science curriculum is taught using the Amplify curriculum, as well as, project based learning opportunities. Students engage in the following units:

  • Pushes and Pulls: In this unit, students explore how pinball machines control the direction and strength of forces on a ball. Acting as engineers, they design and test their own pinball prototypes, called Box Models, to investigate force and motion. Through experiments and discussions, students learn to describe pushes and pulls and apply engineering practices to solve problems. By the end, students can identify examples of pushes and pulls in everyday life.

  • Needs of Plants and Animals: In this unit, students act as scientists to help children in the fictional Mariposa Grove understand why monarch caterpillars have disappeared from a garden. They learn that monarchs need milkweed to survive and investigate what plants need to grow by experimenting with water and light. Students explore how humans impact the environment and how we can share space with other living things. The unit ends with students designing a plan to redesign the garden to support both people and monarchs

  • Sunlight and Weather: In this unit, students act as weather scientists to solve why one school is too cold during morning recess and another too hot in the afternoon. They explore how sunlight warms Earth’s surface, learning that darker surfaces heat up more than lighter ones. Through investigations and models, students discover how the sun drives weather. They also explore severe weather by examining why only one school’s playground floods during heavy rain and propose solutions.