Northwood Elementary School

Classrooms

Kindergarten

English-Language Arts

READING
Word Analysis, Fluency, and Systematic Vocabulary Development
• Students know about letters, words, and sounds. They apply this knowledge to read simple sentences.

WRITTEN AND ORAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE CONVENTIONS
• Students write and speak with a command of Standard English conventions.

LISTENING AND SPEAKING
• Students listen and respond to oral communication. They speak in clear and coherent sentences.

Reading Comprehension
• Students identify the basic facts and ideas in what they have read, heard, or viewed. They use comprehension strategies (e.g., generating and responding to questions, comparing new information to what is already known). The selections in Recommended Readings in Literature, Kindergarten through Grade Eight (California Department of Education, 1996) illustrate the quality and complexity of the materials to be read.

Literary Response and Analysis
• Students listen and respond to stories based on well-known characters, themes, plots, and settings. The selections in Recommended Readings in Literature, Kindergarten
Through Grade Eight illustrate the quality and complexity of the materials to be read by students.

WRITING
• Students write words and brief sentences that are legible.

History-Social Science

Students in kindergarten are introduced to basic spatial, temporal, and causal relationships, emphasizing the geographic and historical connections between the world today and the world long ago. The stories of ordinary and extraordinary people help describe the range and continuity of human experience and introduce the concepts of courage, self-control, justice, heroism, leadership, deliberation, and individual responsibility. Historical empathy for how people lived and worked long ago reinforces the concept of civic behavior: how we interact respectfully with each other, following rules, and respecting the rights of others.
Students:
• Understand that being a good citizen involves acting in certain ways.
• Recognize national and state symbols and icons such as the national and state flags, the bald eagle, and the Statue of Liberty.
• Match simple descriptions of work that people do and the names of related jobs at the school, in the local community, and from historical accounts.
• Compare and contrast the locations of people, places, and environments and describe their characteristics.
• Put events in temporal order using a calendar, placing days, weeks, and months in proper order.
• Understand that history relates to events, people, and places of other times.

Mathematics

By the end of kindergarten, students understand small numbers, quantities, and simple shapes in their everyday environment. They count, compare, describe and sort objects, and develop a sense of properties and patterns.

Number Sense
Students:
• Understand the relationship between numbers and quantities (i.e., that a set of objects has the same number of objects in different situations regardless of its position or arrangement).
• Understand and describe simple additions and subtractions.
• Use estimation strategies in computation and problem solving that involve numbers that use the ones and tens places.

Algebra and Functions
• Students sort and classify objects.

Measurement and Geometry
Students:
• Understand the concept of time and units to measure it; they understand that objects have properties, such as length, weight, and capacity, and that comparisons may be made by referring to those properties.
• Identify common objects in their environment and describe the geometric features.

Statistics, Data Analysis, and Probability
• Students collect information about objects and events in their environment.

Mathematical Reasoning
Students:
• Make decisions about how to set up a problem.
• Solve problems in reasonable ways and justify their reasoning.

Science

Physical Sciences
• Properties of materials can be observed, measured, and predicted.

Life Sciences
• Different types of plants and animals inhabit the earth.

Earth Sciences
• Earth is composed of land, air, and water.

Investigation and Experimentation
• Scientific progress is made by asking meaningful questions and conducting careful investigations. To understand this concept and to address the content in the other three strands, students should develop their own questions and perform investigations.