Course Title: Religion

Grade               Kindergarten
Faculty Name  Mrs. Phyllis Cain, Mrs. Tracy Coll
Text                  We Believe
Publisher         William H. Sadlier, Inc.
Copyright        2011
Website            http://WeBelieveWeb.com

Significant Curriculum Guidelines

Students will:

• Realize that God calls us to celebrate ourselves, our world and His love.
• Experience a deeper understanding of faith concretely by exploring a variety of ways that God is present in Creation.
• Learn behaviors that have a profound, positive effect on daily experiences in the classroom and compliment religious efforts in the home.
• Explore the range and intensity of human emotions by encouraging self-esteem, self-acceptance and self-expression.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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

• The student will participate in a “church tour” which 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 student will participate in Advent hands-on activities as they 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.
• The student will attend Mass with an eighth grader on a weekly basis and for any holy day celebrations.
• The student will be guided through a separate “church visit” during Lent which 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.
• The student will participate 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 student will 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.
• The student will participate in visiting 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.

Evaluation

• Children are evaluated on their class participation.
• Children will express their knowledge of God.
• Children will demonstrate reverence 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.

Course Title: Language Arts

Grade               Kindergarten
Faculty Name  Mrs. Phyllis Cain, Mrs. Tracy Coll
Text                  Journeys
Publisher         Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Copyright        2011       
Workbook       Journeys
Publisher         Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Copyright        2011
Website            http://www.K6thinkcentral.com

Significant Curriculum Guidelines

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.
• Be 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. 

Special Features

• The student will develop phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension through the use of the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt  Kindergarten "Journeys" reading program
• The student will 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 phonemes to build an awareness of words through a variety of phonemic awareness activities.
• The student will 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.
• The student will 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.
• The student will listen to stories being read aloud. They will also choral read, echo read, and read independently to develop reading fluency.
• The student will 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.
• The student will participate in educational games to reinforce Reading Readiness concepts.
• The student will use multimedia such as shaving cream, water, play dough to enhance the curriculum.
• The student will listen to music to develop listening skills.
• The student will role-play stories to develop reading comprehension.
• The student will write in a journal to develop at early age the connections between reading and writing.
• The student will “Show and Tell” and “Make and Tell” to build verbal skills.
• The student will participate in movement activities to develop Reading Readiness skills.

Evaluation

• 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 throughout the kindergarten year
• Testing is administered: Terra Nova
• Homework will be assigned and will focus on the skills being taught that week

Course Title: Mathematics

Grade               Kindergarten
Faculty Name  Mrs. Phyllis Cain, Mrs. Tracy Coll
Text                  Progress in Mathematics
Publisher         Sadlier-Oxford, Inc.
Copyright        2011
Workbook       Progress in Mathematics
Publisher         Sadlier-Oxford, Inc.
Copyright        2011
Website            http://progressinmathematics.com

Significant Curriculum Guidelines

Students will:

• Develop an understanding of the value of mathematics.
• Learn in a classroom atmosphere which will foster the development of logical thinking and problem solving.
• Use concrete materials regularly on varied activities.
• Have many opportunities to explore, investigate and discover.
• Interact with each other to enhance understanding through verbalizing and visualizing.
• Understand numbers, ways of representing numbers, relationships among numbers and number systems.
• Understand the meaning of operations, how they relate to one another and compute fluently.
• Understand the measurable attributes of objects and the uni systems and processes of measurement.
• Formulate questions that can be addressed with data and collect, organize and display relevant data to answer them.

Special Features

• The student will use calendar/Math Wall activities such as graphing, patterning, equations, place value, time, money, days, dates, months, year, temperature
• The student will expand their mathematical awareness through the following activities:
  • Guessing Jar . . . estimation
  • Bridges Program
  • Counting Books
  • Patterning Cards
  • Parquetry Designs
  • Peg Boards
  • Geoboards
  • Unifix Cubes

Evaluation

• 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 Terra Nova 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.