Textbook: We Believe
Publisher: William H. Sadlier, Inc.
Copyright: 2011
Website: www.WeBelieveweb.com
Significant Curriculum Guidelines
Students will form concrete life experiences, learn the meaning of love and being loved in a family setting. Students realize that they are special not only in their own family, but in God’s family through Baptism.
These guidelines are utilized to develop the religious education program throughout the kindergarten year:
To realize that God calls us to celebrate ourselves, our world and His love.
To experience a deeper understanding of faith concretely by exploring a variety of ways that God is present in Creation.
To engage in teaching behaviors that have a profound, positive effect on daily experiences in the classroom and compliment religious efforts in the home.
To explore the range and intensity of human emotions by encouraging self esteem, self acceptance and self expression.
To create an atmosphere for treating others with care, and learning to believe in a caring and loving God by identifying with Jesus who came to serve, and by affirming loving acts, e.g. sharing, waiting, listening and helping.
To create an atmosphere for understanding the goodness of God and the meaning of deeper realities of life found in Tradition and Scripture by presenting the Bible as a special and holy book of faith.
To build upon the sense of wonder in recognizing the presence of God in our lives, and responding to Christ’s call to lead others to prayer establishing that prayer is a way to share thoughts and feelings with God.
To create a readiness for growth in God’s family through relationships and simple rituals, by introducing feasts of Mary, Joseph and the other saints and by presenting special opportunities for joy in living the spirit of the Liturgical Year.
Teaching Strategies Used
Students will participate in lessons that are presented in a large group format. However, through questioning, each student is given an opportunity to respond. Full class participation in the discussions is the goal. Formal prayers are taught using the “echo” technique.
Special Features
Students will participate in the following activities:
The “prayer table” changes monthly and introduces the children to the sacramentals of our Faith. . . (holy water, statues of Jesus, the Blessed Mother, St. Joseph, the Crucifix, medals, rosaries etc.). The Bible is also prominently displayed on the table.
A “church tour” provides the students an up close and personal view of things they see from the pew. It affords them the opportunity to ask questions about what interests them in the church setting.
The season of Advent has many hands-on types of activities as the students learn the story of Jesus’ birth. The “advent wreath” and the “strawless manger” activities encourage daily acts of kindness and are sent home to share with family members. The “nativity scene” is built in stages as the story of the birth of Jesus unfolds.
Attend Mass with an 8th grader on a weekly basis,, and for any holy day celebrations.
A separate “church visit” during Lent focuses on the “Stations of the Cross” as depicted in the windows. The students use stations books as they learn the story of the Passion. During Lent they pray the Stations as a part of their daily prayer.
In the “We Believe” text the students make little “take home booklets” centered on the weekly lesson. Again, this is a way of sharing faith with their families.
The students have the opportunity to attend Mass on the holy days: All Saints’ Day, the Feasts of the Immaculate Conception and the Ascension. They attend prayer services on Ash Wednesday and in May for May Crowning.
As the students learn to pray the rosary, they visit the various statues of Mary on the grounds of the school and say a decade of the rosary. In the classroom we make a May altar and the students are encouraged to bring a flower to decorate the table.
There are numerous other methods used throughout the year that strengthen and support the faith formation of these young children.
Evaluations
Children are evaluated on their class participation, their ability to express their knowledge of God, and the reverence they demonstrate when praying and attending liturgy. Evaluations are recorded on their report card and will be reviewed at conferences, which occur three times during the school year.
Homework
Homework assignments in religion can be accessed on the website www.saintteresas.org. The assignments are given a point value and this can be accessed on the website www.rvsgradebook.com using your child’s student ID# and password. These will be given to you at the beginning of the school year.
Course Title: Mathematics
Faculty Name: Phyllis Cain, Kathy Roos
Textbook: Progress in Mathematics
Publisher: Sadlier-Oxford, Inc.
Copyright: 2011
Website: www.progressinmathematics.com
Significant Curriculum Guidelines
Students will acquire mathematical readiness through informal group activities and planned experiences while working with manipulative materials. The emphasis is on the use of concrete materials and appropriate technology so that students explore and develop ideas that are fundamental to the study of mathematics.
These are some of the guidelines that are utilized to develop the mathematical program at the kindergarten level:
To have the students develop an understanding of the value of mathematics.
To have the classroom atmosphere foster the development of logical thinking and problem solving.
To have students use concrete materials regularly on varied activities.
To provide many opportunities to explore, investigate and discover.
To encourage students to interact with each other to enhance understanding through verbalizing and visualizing.
To have students understand numbers, ways of representing numbers, relationships among numbers and number systems.
To have students understand the meaning of operations, how they relate to one another and compute fluently.
To have students understand the measurable attributes of objects and the uni systems and processes of measurement.
To have students formulate questions that can be addressed with data and collect, organize and display relevant data to answer them.
Teaching Strategies Used
Students will be involved in many hands-on types of activities. The children may work in small groups or individually and use manipulatives which aid in the understanding of the concept being presented. A “big book” is used as an aid as it is the replication of the student’s workbook page. Through a variety of strategies the children will be exposed to both structured and informal group activities.
Special Features
Students will expand their mathematical awareness through the following activities:
Number Family Booklets . . . addition and subtraction
Unifix Cubes
Evaluations
Homework involves practice in number writing, number recognition and practice counting by 1’s, 2’s, 5’s and 10’s to 100. A dictation of numbers out of sequence is given periodically. Post tests are given after each chapter.
The Metropolitan Readiness Test, administered in the Spring of the Kindergarten year, has a section dealing with mathematical reasoning and concepts. This is a standardized test. The results of this testing will be shared with parents. Mathematical skills and concepts are marked on the report card.
Homework is given to build the child’s sense of responsibility and growing self confidence. Parental involvement is sometimes necessary . . . reminding, assisting, encouraging.
Assignments are given a point value and this can be accessed at www.rvsgradebook.com. You will need to use your child’s student ID# and password. These will be given to you at the beginning of the school year.
Reading readiness/language arts begins at birth and continues throughout a lifetime. It develops through many informal and planned activities within the family and school environment during field trips, show and tell and the use of audiovisual materials. Some of these activities are: distinguishing between left and right, top bottom progression, eye-hand coordination, recalling stories and happenings in sequence, following directions, perceiving rhyming words, developing phonemic awareness, recognizing the alphabet in mixed order along with the sounds associated with each letter, learning to appreciate books in a literature-rich environment by listening to stories read aloud and taking part in picture reading.
The students will develop skills in phonics, fluency, comprehension, listening, speaking, and literature appreciation. They are offered opportunities for reading to their own readiness level. Handwriting skills are also developed. They are shown the correct letter formation and instructed to write on the baseline. Students are encouraged to use their natural hand preference for all handwriting work.
Communication skills are fostered when students have the spontaneity and encouragement to express their ideas verbally through written and picture form. With all this is mind the students will:
Be provided with a literature- rich classroom in which they are immersed in communication skills that develop their abilities to listen, read, think, write, and speak.
Be provided with an opportunity to build on language development, and to emphasize reading as a form of communication.
Be provided with an opportunity to stimulate creative expression through a rich language experience by reading various literacy forms.
Encouraged to develop their language skills in relation to individual ability and learning styles.
Develop the ability to use language with ease, clarity, and purpose in both oral and written communication.
Respond to literature in creative and enjoyable ways through writing, speaking, drama and the visual arts.
Be provided with the opportunity to develop library skills so as to use the library as a source of information on a wide variety of subjects.
Be provided with the opportunity to develop the student’s auditory and visual discrimination.
Be provided with the opportunity to develop phonics, word recognition, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension skills.
Teaching Strategies Used
Students will:
Develop phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension through the use of the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Kindergarten “Journeys” reading program.
Develop phonemmic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension through the use of the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Kindergergarten "Journeys" reading program
Participate in large group instruction to develop phonemic awarenss tasks. They will follow a systematic, developmental sequence and will be able to isolate, match, blend, segment, delete, and phonemes to build an awareness of words through a variety of phonemic awareness activities.
Take part in small and large group explicit systematic phonics instruction. Students will learn letter/ sound correspondence and how to decode, build , and blend words on a daily basis.
Be introduced to a variety of literature selections that help students build vocabulary through the use of big books, read-aloud anthologies, library book collections, and individual decodable books.
Listen to stories being read aloud. They will also choral read, echo read, and read independently to develop reading fluency.
Develop comprehension strategies as the teacher guides students before, during and after reading. The students will explore many story elements such as characters, setting, and important events to monitor comprehension.
Participate in educational games to reinforce Reading Readiness concepts.
Use multi media such as shaving cream, water, play dough to enhance the curriculum.
Listen to music to develop listening skills.
Role-play stories to develop reading comprehension.
Write in a journal to develop at early age the connections between reading and writing.
“Show and Tell”, and “Make and Tell” to build verbal skills.
Participate in movement activities to develop Reading Readiness skills.
Special Features
Students will:
Participate in a “Kindergarten News” activity to develop phonics instruction so children understand the relationship between the letters and sounds of spoken language and to use this relationship to read and write words.
Participate in introductory phonics lessons on each letter of the alphabet and their corresponding sound. This will be presented in a large group format using reprintables from the Journeys instruction manual. Instruction is used to teach children to notice, think about, and work with sounds in the spoken language.
Participate in word wall and sight word activities. Reproducible books will be used for phonics instruction to help children recognize familiar words accurately and automatically decode new words.
Sequence story cards to develop comprehension.
Refer to classroom word wall s in activities designed to develop vocabulary.
Evaluations
Hand writing samples to evaluate writing skills
Periodic quizzes are given to evaluate sound /letter correspondence
Individual screening of letter and sound recognition.
Diocesan writing assessments are administered in the Spring.
Portfolio writing samples are collected and evaluated through out the kindergarten year.
Testing is administered: MRT (Metropolitan Readiness Test) Writing Assessment
Homework will be assigned and will focus on the skills being taught that week.
Textbook: We Believe Publisher: William H. Sadlier, Inc.
Copyright: 2011
Website: www.WeBelieveweb.com
Significant Curriculum Guidelines
Students will form concrete life experience learn the meaning of love and being loved in a family setting. Students realize that they are special not only in their own family, but in God’s family through Baptism.
These guidelines are utilized to develop the religious education program throughout the kindergarten year:
To realize that God calls us to celebrate ourselves, our world and His love.
To experience a deeper understanding of faith concretely by exploring a variety of ways that God is present in Creation.
To engage in teaching behaviors that have a profound, positive effect on daily experiences in the classroom and by complimenting religious efforts in the home.
To explore the range and intensity of human emotions by encouraging self esteem, self acceptance and self expression.
To create an atmosphere for treating others with care and learning to believe in a caring and loving God by identifying with Jesus who came to serve, and by affirming loving acts, e.g. sharing, waiting, listening and helping.
To create an atmosphere for understanding the goodness of God and the meaning of deeper realities of life found in Tradition and Scripture by presenting the Bible as a special and holy book of faith.
To build upon the sense of wonder in recognizing the presence of God in our lives, and responding to Christ’s call to lead others to prayer establishing that prayer is a way to share thoughts and feelings with God.
To create a readiness for growth in God’s family through relationships and simple rituals, by introducing feasts of Mary, Joseph and the other saints and by presenting special opportunities for joy in living the spirit of the Liturgical Year.
Teaching Strategies Used
Students will participate in lessons that are presented in a large group format. However, through questioning, each student is given an opportunity to respond. Full class participation in the discussions is the goal. Formal prayers are taught using the “echo” technique.
Special Features
Students will participate in the following activities:
The “prayertable” changes monthly and introduces the children to the sacramentals of our Faith. . . (holy water, statues of Jesus and the Children, the Blessed Mother Mary, St. Joseph and the Crucifix, medals, rosaries etc.). The Bible is also prominently displayed on the table.
A “church tour” provides the students an up close and personal view of things they see from the pew. It affords them the opportunity to ask questions about what interests them in the church setting.
The season of Advent has many hands-on types of activities as the students learn the story of Jesus’ birth. The “advent wreath” and the “strawless manger” activities encourage daily acts of kindness and are sent home to share with family members. The “nativity scene” is built in stages as the story of the birth of Jesus unfolds.
Attend Mass with an 8th grader on a weekly bases, and for any holy day celebrations.
A separate “church visit” during Lent focuses on the “Stations of the Cross” as depicted in the windows. The students use stations books as they learn the story of the Passion. During Lent they pray the Stations as a part of their daily prayer.
In the “We Believe” text the students make little “take home booklets” centered on the weekly lesson. Again, this is a way of sharing faith with their families.
The students have the opportunity to attend Mass on the holy days, All Saints’ Day, the feasts of the Immaculate Conception and the Ascension. They attend prayer services on Ash Wednesday and in May for May Crowning.
As the students learn to pray the rosary, they visit the various statues of Mary on the grounds of the school and say a decade of the rosary. In the classroom we make a May altar and the students are encouraged to bring a flower to decorate the table.
There are numerous other methods used throughout the year that strengthen and support the faith formation of these young children.
Evaluations
Children are evaluated on their class participation, their ability to express their knowledge of God, and the reverence they demonstrate when praying and attending liturgy. Evaluations are recorded on their report card and will be reviewed at conferences, which occur three times during the school year.
Homework
Homework assignments in religion can be accessed on the website www.saintteresas.org. The assignments are given a point value and this can be accessed on the website www.rvsgradebook.com using your child’s student ID# and password. These will be given to you at the beginning of the school year.
Course Title: Mathematics
Faculty Name: Phyllis Cain, Kathy Roos
Textbook: Progress in Mathematics
Publisher: Sadlier-Oxford, Inc.
Copyright: 2011
Website: www.progressinmathematics.com
Significant Curriculum Guidelines
Students will acquire mathematical readiness through informal group activities and planned experiences while working with manipulative materials. The emphasis is on the use of concrete materials and appropriate technology so that students explore and develop ideas that are fundamental to the study of mathematics.
These are some of the guidelines that are utilized to develop the mathematical program at the kindergarten level:
To have the students develop an understanding of the value of mathematics.
To have the classroom atmosphere foster the development of logical thinking and problem solving.
To have students use concrete materials regularly on varied activities.
To provide many opportunities to explore, investigate and discover.
To encourage students to interact with each other to enhance understanding through verbalizing and visualizing.
To have students understand numbers, ways of representing numbers, relationships among numbers and number systems.
To have students understand the meaning of operations, how they relate to one another and to compute fluently.
To have students understand the measurable attributes of objects and the units systems and processes of measurement.
To have students formulate questions that can be addressed with data and collect, organize and display relevant data to answer them.
Teaching Strategies Used
Students will be involved in many hands-on types of activities. The children may work in small groups or individually and use manipulatives which aid in the understanding of the concept being presented. A “big book” is used as an aid as it is the replication of the student’s workbook page. Through a variety of strategies the children will be exposed to both structured and informal group activities.
Special Features
Students will through the following activities expand their mathematical awareness:
Number Family Booklets . . . addition and subtraction
Unifix Cubes
Evaluations
Homework involves practice in number writing, number recognition and practice counting by 1’s, 2’s, 5’s and 10’s to 100. A dictation of numbers out of sequence is given periodically. Post tests are given after each chapter.
The Metropolitan Readiness Test, administered in the Spring of the Kindergarten year, has a section dealing with mathematical reasoning and concepts. This is a standardized test. The results of this testing will be reviewed at the final conference. Mathematical skills and concepts are marked on the report card.
Homework is given to build the child’s sense of responsibility and growing self confidence. Parental involvement is sometimes necessary . . . reminding, assisting, encouraging.
Assignments are given a point value and this can be accessed at www.rvsgradebook.com. You will need to use your child’s student ID# and password. These will be given to you at the beginning of the school year.
Reading readiness/language arts begins at birth and continues throughout a lifetime. It develops through many informal and planned activities of within the family and school environment during felid trips, show and tell and the use of audiovisual materials. Some of these activities are: distinguishing between left and right, top bottom progression, eye-hand coordination, recalling stories and happenings in sequence, following directions, perceiving rhyming words, developing phonemic awareness, recognizing the alphabet in mixed order along with the sounds associated with each letter, learning to appreciate books in a literature rich environment by listening to stories read aloud and taking part in picture reading.
The students will develop skills in phonics, fluency, comprehension, listening, speaking, and literature appreciation. They are offered opportunities for reading to their own readiness level. Handwriting skills are also developed. They are shown the correct letter formation and instructed to write on the baseline. Students are encouraged to use their natural hand preference for all handwriting work.
Communication skills are fostered when students have the spontaneity and encouragement to express their ideas verbally through written and picture form. With all thin is mind the students will:
Be provided with a literature rich classroom in which they are immersed in communication skills that develop their abilities to listen, read, think, write, and speak.
Be provided with an opportunity to build on language development, and to emphasize reading as a form of communication.
Be provided with an opportunity to stimulate creative expression through a rich language experience by reading various literacy forms.
Encouraged to develop their language skills in relation to individual ability and learning styles.
Develop the ability to use language with ease, clarity, and purpose in both oral and written communication.
Respond to literature in creative and enjoyable ways through writing, speaking, drama and the visual arts.
Be provided with the opportunity to develop library skills so as to use the library as a source of information on a wide variety of subjects.
Be provided with the opportunity to develop the student’s auditory and visual discrimination.
Be provided with the opportunity to develop phonics, word recognition, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension skills.
Teaching Strategies Used
Students will:
Develop phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension through the use of the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Kindergarten “Journeys” reading program.
Participate in large group instruction to develop phonemic awareness tasks. They will follow a systematic, developmental sequence and will be able to isolate, match, blend, segment, delete, and add phonemes to build an awareness of words through a variety of phonemic awareness activities.
Take part in small and large group explicit systematic phonics instruction. Students will learn the letter sound correspondence and how to decode and build and blend words on a daily bases.
Be introduced to a variety of literature selections that help students build vocabulary with the use of big books, read-aloud anthologies, library book collections, and individual decodable books.
Listen to stories being read aloud, and on tape, they will also choral read, echo read, and read independently to develop reading fluency.
Develop comprehension strategies as the teacher guides students before, during and after reading. The students will explore many story elements such as characters, setting, and important events to monitor comprehension.
Participate in educational games to reinforce Reading Readiness concepts.
Use multi media such as shaving cream, water, play dough to enhance the curriculum.
Listen to music to develop listening skills.
Role-play stories to develop reading comprehension.
Write in a journal to develop at early age the connections between reading and writing.
“Show and Tell”, and “Make and Tell” to build verbal skills.
Participate in movement activities to develop Reading Readiness skills.
Special Features
Students will:
Participate in a “Kindergarten News” activity to develop phonics instruction so children understand the relationship between the letters and sounds of spoken language and to use this relationship to read and write words.
Participate in introductory phonics lessons on each letter of the alphabet and their corresponding sound. This will be presented in a large group format using reprintables from the Trophies instruction manual. Instruction is used to teach children to notice, think about, and work with sounds in the spoken language.
Participate in word wall and sight word activities. Reproducible books will be used for phonics instruction to help children recognize familiar words accurately and automatically decode new words.
Sequence story cards to develop comprehension.
Refer to classroom words walls in activities designed to develop vocabulary.
Evaluations
Hand writing samples to evaluate writing skills
Periodic quizzes are given to evaluate sound letter correspondence
Individual screening of letter and sound recognition.
Diocesan writing assessments are administered at the end of the academic year.
Portfolio writing samples are collected and evaluated through out the kindergarten year.
Testing is administered: MRT (Metropolitan Readiness Test) Writing Assessment
Homework will be assigned and will focus on the skills being taught that week.
St. Teresa of Avila School
800 Avila Court
Pittsburgh, PA 15237
Phone: 412-367-9001
Fax: 412-364-1172
For additional information, please e-mail us at info@saintteresas.org
