Curriculum

Children will describe the connection between two individuals, events, ideas, or pieces of information in a text. For example, after reading a story about a boy who helps a lost puppy find its way home, the teacher might ask, "How are the boy and the puppy connected in the story?" The children could respond, "The boy helps the puppy because it is lost." The teacher may then prompt them to think about an event, asking, "What happened when the boy met the puppy?" The children might say, "The boy felt happy when he found the puppy and decided to take care of it."

Children will explore using different digital tools to create and share their writing with the help of adults. For instance, a 5-year-old might use a simple storytelling app or a kid-friendly word processor to write about a picnic. An adult can guide them in typing out their story, adding digital pictures, or even recording their voice to narrate the story. They can then share these digital stories with classmates or collaborate by combining their stories into a class eBook, helping them understand the basics of digital publishing and collaboration.

With prompting and support, children will ask and answer questions about unknown words in a text. For example, while reading a story like "The Little Engine That Could," if they come across a word like "massive," a teacher might notice the confusion and ask, "Do you know what 'massive' means?" If the child is unsure, the teacher can help by saying, "Massive means very big or huge." Then, the teacher might ask, "Can you think of something massive?" encouraging the child to use the new word in context.

Explain major differences between books that tell stories and books that give information, drawing on a wide reading of a range of text types.

Children will ask and answer questions to help determine or clarify the meaning of words and phrases in a text. For example, if they read a sentence like "The brown bear hibernates in winter," they might ask, "What does 'hibernate' mean?" and find out that it means to sleep for a long time during winter. Similarly, if they come across a sentence like "Bees collect nectar from flowers," they might ask, "What is 'nectar'?" and learn that it is a sweet liquid that flowers make.

With prompting and support, children will recognize common types of texts such as storybooks and poems. For example, a teacher might show a group of kindergarteners different books and ask them to identify which ones are storybooks and which are poems. The teacher could point out features like, "Storybooks often tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end, and they sometimes have lots of pictures." For poems, the teacher might say, "Poems are made up of lines that sometimes rhyme and are often shorter than stories."

Children will learn to identify who is telling the story at various points in a text by using familiar books. For example, using "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak, a teacher can ask the children, "Who is telling the story here?" The children will notice that the story is told by a narrator who describes Max's adventures in a third-person perspective.

Children will know and use various text features to locate key facts or information in a text. This means they will learn to look at headings to see what a section is about, use the table of contents to find the right page for a topic, check the glossary to understand the meaning of new words, and click on icons in digital texts to get more information.

With prompting and support, children will learn to name the author and illustrator of a story and understand the roles each plays in telling the story. For example, a teacher might read a book like "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak to the class and then discuss it. The teacher could start by asking, "Who wrote the words in this book?" and "Who made the pictures?" As the children respond, the teacher will explain, "The person who wrote the words is called the author, and that's Maurice Sendak for this book. He thought of the story and told it with words. The person who made the pictures is called the illustrator, and in this book, it's also Maurice Sendak. He helped tell the story by creating pictures, so we can see what the characters and places look like."

Children will use illustrations and details in the story "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak to describe its characters, setting, or events. For instance, a teacher can ask, "Can you describe where Max sails to using the pictures?" Children might talk about the wide ocean and the forest of the Wild Things seen in the illustrations. They could also describe Max and the Wild Things from the way they are drawn, noting emotions and actions like Max's king costume and the Wild Things' wild dances.