The Hamilton School District kindergarten program emphasizes developmentally appropriate activities which address the individual needs and differences of each student. Children will be engaged in meaningful experiences through an interactive learning environment that promotes a love of learning.
Assessment of student learning is based on evaluations of student work products, classroom and district assessments and teacher observations. The assessments provide parents and teachers with measures of the child’s progress in reading, writing, mathematics, speaking and listening, art and music, large and fine motor development, social-emotional development, and development of work habits.
Parent-teacher conferences provide an opportunity for you to review assessments and discuss your child’s progress with his or her teacher. You will also receive a written progress report in January and June that will summarize your child’s learning. Discussing your child’s work products with him or her is another excellent opportunity to stay in touch with what your child is learning in school.
Reading
With prompting and support, your child will:
- Develop and answer questions about a text
- Retell stories and share key details from a text
- Identify characters, settings, and important events in a story or pieces of information in a text
- Identify specific words and phrases that express feeling, appeal to the senses, or content-specific words within a text
- Identify a variety of genres and explain major differences between fiction and non-fiction texts
- Describe how illustrations and details support the point of view or purpose of a text
- Use illustrations and details in fiction and non-fiction to discuss story elements and/or topics
- Identify specific information an author or illustrator gives that supports ideas in a text
- Compare and contrast two texts; recognize that texts reflect one’s own and others’ culture
Writing
Kindergarten writing experiences begin with teacher modeling and move toward students writing independently.
With guidance and support, your child will:
- Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose:
- Opinion text:
- Tell the topic or the name of the book
- Tell an opinion about the topic or book
- Informative text:
- Tell the topic
- Tell some information about the topic
- Narrative (events real or imagined):
- Tell events in order
- Provide a reaction to what happened
- Opinion text:
Foundational Skills
Your child will:
- Demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print
- Follow words from left to right, top to bottom, and page by page
- Recognize spoken words are represented in written language by specific sequences of letters
- Understand words are separated by spaces in print
- Recognize and name all upper and lowercase letters of the alphabet
- Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes)
- Recognize and produce rhyming words
- Count, pronounce, blend, and segment syllables in spoken words
- Blend and segment onsets and rhymes of single-syllable spoken words
- Isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds (phonemes) in three-phoneme (consonant-vowel-consonant, or CVC) words
- This does not include CVCs ending with /l/, /r/, or /x/
- Add, delete, or substitute individual sounds (phonemes) in simple, one-syllable words to make new words
- Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words
- Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary or many of the most frequent sounds for each consonant
- Associate the long and short sounds with common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels
- Read common high-frequency words by sight (e.g., the, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do, does)
- Distinguish between similarly spelled words by identifying the sounds of the letters that differ
- Read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding
Speaking and listening
With guidance and support, your child will:
- Participate in collaborative conversations with peers and adults in small and large groups
- Actively listen, take turns, stay on topic
- Participate in conversations through multiple exchanges
- Ask questions about a topic or text
- Consider Individual differences when communicating with others
- Understand and follow directions
Mathematics
Your child will:
- Demonstrate one-to-one correspondence by counting objects to 20
- Count up to 100
- Count by 10s
- Count by 1s beginning at a number other than 1
- Recognize numerals 0-20
- Write numerals 0-20
- Mentally add numbers up to 5
- Mentally subtract numbers up to 5
- Add numbers through 10 with manipulatives
- Subtract numbers through 10 with manipulatives
- Compare numbers using objects to 10
- Make and break numbers from 11 to 19 using tens and ones
- Quickly recognize structured and unstructured numbers to 5 (subitize)
- Identify basic shapes
- Orally explain how to solve problems using math vocabulary
Social studies
Your child will explore:
- self, family, school
Science
Your child will engage in science and engineering practices to explore:
- plants and animals
- pushes and pulls
- weather
Art
Your child will explore:
- drawing
- painting
- sculpture
- printmaking
Music
Your child will:
- Sing, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music
- Play, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music
- Read and notate music
- Listen, analyze, describe and evaluate music
Fitness education
Your child will:
- Understand and apply the components of health-related fitness to achieve and maintain a healthy lifestyle
- Develop and maintain appropriate levels of skill -elated fitness
- Develop understandings so that they can adopt healthy and physically active lifestyles
- Develop positive attitudes about physical activity so that they engage in healthy and physically active lifestyles
Social and emotional skills
- Work habits – play cooperatively, follow rules and routines, make appropriate choices, stay on task and complete activities, work independently, use appropriate words to express feelings
- Growth mindset & goal-setting – students learn how to develop a growth mindset and apply research-based goal-setting strategies to their social and academic lives
- This unit’s content helps create classrooms that are connected and encouraging by helping students set and achieve collective and personal goals and learn from challenges and mistakes
- Emotion management – students learn how to build their emotion vocabularies, practice identifying their own and others’ emotions, and recognize the importance of labeling and processing their emotions
- This unit’s content helps students understand and explore how past experiences as well as unique perspectives influence how they feel and respond to situations
- Empathy & kindness – students learn how to recognize kindness and act kindly toward others, and how to develop empathy by learning strategies to take others’ perspectives
- This unit’s content helps students understand others’ points of view
- Problem-solving – students learn how to process strong emotions, describe a problem, identify the wants and needs of others, think of and explore the outcomes of potential solutions, and pick the best solution
- This unit’s content helps students ask, listen, and empathize with all parties involved during problem-solving
Classroom guidance
Students participate in classroom guidance activities facilitated by a school counselor. Each school provides a developmental guidance curriculum that encompasses managing feelings, protective behaviors and career awareness. Skills taught will assist children in their academic, emotional and social development. This in turn, will help ensure success in school, at home and in the community.