Reading and Oral Comprehension  

The reading curriculum is centered on the acquisition of solid reading skills, and includes work in the following areas: Phonics, Phonemic awareness, Reading Mechanics and Vocabulary.  

 The curriculum is centered on phonics and phonemic awareness with the use of workbooks, manipulatives, and new supporting materials such as class sets of readers, big books, and other large scale texts. Every lesson enables the children to work on reading, writing, phonemic awareness and vocabulary development.  The kindergarten teacher employs read-aloud, guided reading, shared reading, interactive writing and journal writing in the daily lessons.  Furthermore, students work as a whole class, in small groups and individually to develop their literacy skills.  In addition, centers are used for small-group work. This approach complements whole-group work with individualized attention, and balances the large text of big books with phonics-based readers.  Moreover, the acquisition of literacy skills is seen in the wider context of reading and writing as a whole.

Phonics

The phonics program includes work on the following subjects:

• the sounds of the consonants
• the sounds of the short vowels
• introductory work on the long vowels
• sound to letter correspondence
• matching upper and lower case letters

In addition, students work on recognizing initial sight words.

Phonemic awareness

Recent research indicates that a strong phonics base alone is not enough to provide the tools for reading, and that in addition phonemic awareness skills should be taught explicitly to beginning readers.  Accordingly, the new reading program incorporates the teaching of these skills which include:

• recognizing initial, final and medial sounds
• identifying rhymes
• substituting phonemes
•  blending sounds
• demonstrating syllabic segmentation.

Reading mechanics

Students work on applying their phonics and phonemic awareness knowledge and focus on the following concepts:

• tracking from left to right
• recognizing that letters make sounds and that sounds create words
• decoding according to phonics principles
• recognizing parts of a book

Vocabulary
The vocabulary program begins with an exploration of the world around us, and continues in earnest in January with work using a published vocabulary program.
The program includes direct instruction using child-centered stories, poems, picture cards and a workbook.  Students work on the following concepts:

• recognizing the word as represented by a picture
• recognizing the word auditorily
• differentiating between concrete and abstract nouns
• understanding that a word may have more than one meaning
• recognizing a word in different contexts

Forms of Writing

Writing in Kindergarten progresses from personal writing to writing that’s more inventive and reflective.

• Letters, Words, Sentences
• Writers explore letters, sounds and words.
  Writers use letters to make words.
  Writers put words together in sentences.
• Personal Writing
• Recording
  Recalling and Remembering
• Subject Writing
• Describing
  Reporting
  Corresponding
  Informing
  Searching and Researching
  Persuading
• Creative Writing
• Imagining
  Inventing
• Report Writing
• Analyzing

Social Studies

Content in this area is integrated thematically through literature and corresponding activities, and is aimed at meeting the major program goals through:

• Gaining cultural knowledge and perspective towards tolerance and world peace.
• Democratic understanding and sense of its values, rights and responsibilities towards fostering and appreciation of freedom for all people.
• Social participation to develop the critical thinking skills necessary for group problem solving on the local, national and global level.
• Equip students with the historical basis necessary for the understanding of the social and political problems and concerns of their own time.

Consistent with the literature based emphasis of the American program, historically accurate literature is integrated at each grade level along with other lively and appropriate sources and methods.

In kindergarten, thematic learning and multi-cultural holiday celebrations remain the best way to present social science content within the FASSV curriculum. The main topics included throughout the year can be approached in great depth sand breadth at this level than in pre-k. Topics include:

• Columbus and the Native Americans in the New World.
• Halloween
• Thanksgiving
• Hanukkah, Christmas, Ramadan, Kwaanza, Chinese New Year
• Valentine’s Day
• Martin Luther King and African Americans
• Washington and Lincoln, Presidents day
• Cinco de Mayo, Passover, ester, may day, Mother’s day
• Japanese Girls’ day, Japanese Boys’ Day
• Memorial Day
• Flag Day
• Earth Day

Mathematics

The following content strands are emphasized:

Science

Science is an integral part of the FASSV curriculum, and is taught in both programs simultaneously. Kindergarten features:

• Environmental Education; Water
  What is water?
  The Water Cycle
  Why is water essential for life?
  How do we use water?
  Water conservation
• The Living World
  Food webs
  Observation and comparison of animals.
  Classification of animals.
  Animal movements
  Animals and their habitats.
  Humans and their environment.
  Recycling.
• The Human Body
  The 5 senses
  Body movement
  Teeth
  Nutrition
  Hygiene
• Matter
  Air
  Electricity
  Gas
  Solids and liquids