The Kindergarten Team

Grade Leader – Deydania DeDonato dedonatod@weston.org

Tel: 781-786-5400

Teachers – Tom Flaherty-Dawson, Christie Wyman, Lizzie Donlon, Deydania Dedonato, Kaila Chanthaboun

Kindergarten Curriculum

Reading :During the reader’s workshop, students begin to establish their identities as readers while they build the foundational skills for reading. Throughout the reader’s workshop, students will develop concepts of print, phonemic awareness, phonics, and the knowledge necessary to use story language to support their approximations of reading. They pay close attention to characters, setting, and plot while reading fictional stories, become experts in nonfiction topics as they read together in clubs, and play with rhyme and rhythm while reading poetry.

Writing: Throughout the writer’s workshop, kindergarten students approximate writing by drawing and labeling their pictures in narrative, informative and opinion texts. As the year progresses, children become more independent as writers, adding more words and details to their writing. They grow their writing by learning to use temporary spelling and words found in print in the environment. By the end of the year, kindergarteners are invited to apply their new-found writing skills to make signs and letters to solve problems in the classroom, school and the world.

Phonics , Phonemic Awareness & Handwriting: Early phonics instruction focuses on the relationship between letters, letter sounds and letter formation. Throughout the year, students will learn to isolate sounds, blend and segment and manipulate large units of language as well as individual sounds in spoken words. Students apply their knowledge of phonemic awareness and phonics to decode and encode words in print. Kindergarteners will also learn quick and automatic recognition of high frequency words (trick words). These skills are closely connected to the learning in both reading and writing workshops.

Math: Kindergarten students explore big ideas that include: representing and comparing whole numbers, initially with sets of objects; understanding and applying addition and subtraction; and describing shapes and space. More time in kindergarten is devoted to numbers than to other topics.

Motor: Children participate in activities that develop ability to maintain stable posture; sense of personal space; mature grip of writing implements; efficient movement through school/classroom environment; and ability to cut on lines and curves.

Science: Students engage in a year long study of Case Campus. Through hands-on experiences students observe, record, compare, classify, and predict about the world around them. The main focus in Kindergarten includes seasonal changes at the vernal pool, and at Land’s Sake Farm. Students also participate in a unit about the 3Rs to reduce the human impact and a unit about forces.  Students are introduced to the tools of a scientist, including science notebooks.

Social Studies: Students  participate in lessons about community by studying what it means to be a member of a classroom community.  They are introduced to the tools of historians and geographers by exploring  the concepts of then and now and how to use maps and globes.  Students also learn about how communities share both traditions and symbols.  Finally, students discover different types of jobs – in the classroom, school, and our local community..