Eagle Springs Elementary Kindergarten Curriculum Overview

Reader’s Workshop My two goals when teaching reading: 1)to give your child the skills necessary to be able to ready 2)to instill in your child a love for reading! In order to achieve these goals, we will use creative writing, phonemic awareness, phonics, sight words, and reading, reading, reading!! I will need your help at home, as well. The more your child reads and is read to, the better s/he will become. Please keep in mind that reading is FUN! If we have that attitude, the children will "catch" that attitude.

Reader's Workshop is divided into 3 areas: 1.Shared Reading: This is usually a big book that is read and reread all week. Each day we concentrate on a specific area such as punctuation, sight words and story elements. 2.Read-A-Loud: Usually a different small book is read every day. After discussion, we focus on a comprehension strategy. 3.Guided Reading: Once your child's reading level is determined, I will form small groups of 4-6 children that will meet with me. During these small groups, targeted lessons are introduced such as rhyming, word families or sight words. Also, during guided reading the students will be reading to me and each other from appropriate level books. Groups are changing constantly, your child may be in one group one week, but in another group the following week. Reader’s Workshop

Assessment: Humble ISD uses a reading assessment called Istation that is done on the computer. The assessment will be given monthly and will cover Listening Comprehension, Phonemic Awareness, Letter Identification and Vocabulary. The children will have access to play Istation at home. If you would like more information about Istation you can visit the website Reader’s Workshop

Phonics and Spelling Our program is a developmentally appropriate way of introducing children to phonics and spelling. We will have lessons that will enable our students to attend to, learn about, and efficiently use information about sounds, letter, and words. Our school wide spelling program is Words Their Way. It is a comprehensive program in which the children use sorting techniques to manipulate and analyze words and letter.

Writer’s Workshop Studies have proven there is a strong link between writing and learning to read. Therefore, ESE has incorporated Writer's Workshop into our daily routine. I teach my students, "If I can say it, I can write it. If I can write it, I can read it." We are authors in kindergarten! I will praise every attempt your child gives during Writer's Workshop, even scribble like letters, and I would ask that you do the same at home. We do not worry so much about how to spell the word as much as we want them to get their ideas on paper. They will be writing personal narratives, all about books, how-to books, research books and poems.

Math Our math program incorporates hands-on exploration to 'discover' math. Your child will use manipulatives in our classroom along with some paper and pencil to learn about math concepts such as patterns, more/less than, longer/shorter than, heavier/lighter than, adding to, taking away, etc. We will be working on various math strategies to help solve problems. Our morning calendar also covers a large portion of our math curriculum. We study counting (forwards and backwards), place value, more than / less than, order, sequence, patterning, coins and 2D and 3D shapes!

Handwriting Our handwriting program is Handwriting Without Tears. It is a comprehensive handwriting program that goes through the 5 th grade. It is proven to help children develop their fine motor skills while teaching them to form letters correctly. We will be teaching your child to begin his/her name with an uppercase letter and then continues the rest of the name with lowercase letters.