Breakfast in the Classroom Program This program is for morning Kindergarten only. The program is offered at no cost to parents. Every morning Kindergarten student is offered the opportunity to eat breakfast at the beginning of our school day (in our classroom as soon as the bell rings). You are welcome, of course, to continue serving breakfast at home; but I am required to offer the breakfast food items to each child. Each student is presented with 2 options: (1) take all of the required breakfast items (entree and fruit) or (2) take none of the breakfast items (for instance, if you served breakfast at home and the child is not hungry). Note that children will not be forced to eat unwanted foods.
For example, one day, the offered food might consist of: a tortilla/egg wrap (entree), sliced apples (fruit), and a milk choice (optional). A child would be required to decline all of the food, OR to take both of the first 2 items (milk is the optional choice). A child could NOT take just the wrap or just the apples; if they want any of the things, they must take all of the required foods. The child could then place the unwanted foods on our "sharing table". Other students may choose to have additional portions from the table if they are still hungry after eating their own breakfast food. These policies are placed by Granite School District, and I am required to enforce them as described.
I see the following entrees most frequently: cereal bars, breakfast pizzas, french toast sticks, cinnamon rolls, donuts, tortilla egg wraps, egg/cheese on English muffin sandwich, fruit strudel, pancakes or waffles (maple flavored, but not served with syrup). The fruit choice is generally a banana, apple slices, or a juicebox.
Kindergarten Lunch Pleasant Green is a pilot school for a half-day Kindergarten lunch program. Lunch is only served to students whose parents have opted for their child to participate. If you opt in, you will be responsible to pay $1.50 for each lunch unless your family qualifies for the free/reduced lunch program. Half-day Kindergarten students will eat the lunch in our classroom at the beginning of the day. Note that your student will not have meal choices like older grade students. They will be given a lunch basket consisting of an entree, a fruit, vegetable, and milk. I believe they are typically served things like sandwiches, hamburgers, chicken nuggets, hot dogs, etc.
Reading Curriculum Our Granite School District-adopted Reading Curriculum is WONDERS, published by McGraw-Hill. It starts with 3 weeks of a Smart Start introductory unit. This unit briefly teaches each alphabet letter (usually 2 per day), as well as 2 high frequency words. Following this unit, there are 10 additional units. The first 5 units pace about 1 letter and high frequency word per week, and the following 5 teach 2 letters/words per week. This excludes review weeks, during which we review the recently taught sounds/sight words (reviews typically occur every 6th week). Aside from phonics and high-frequency word lessons, each day also includes a story and/or decodable book, a phonemic awareness lesson, and a lesson in oral vocabulary, writing, or grammar.
One strength of the WONDERS program is its online component, which means that you and your student can access many of our curriculum materials at home. Your student's dashboard, games, stories, and other online content will automatically update each week to align with the stories and concepts we are learning in class for the week. You may access this program by logging in your student here (I can provide you with the login number and password). You can find more information about WONDERS online on my "Homework" page.
Another wonderful thing about this program is that the Kindergarten Science and Social Studies CORE standards are built into the program. The literature and essential questions teach these concepts so that I can continue to focus on Reading and Math concepts while teaching Social Studies and Science (with my half-day schedule, this is very important to me).
Math Curriculum Granite School District uses the Go Math program published by Houghton Mifflin. This program consists of 12 units of study. Concepts are organized into these chapters:
Unit 1 - Numbers 0-5 Unit 2 - Compare Numbers 0-5
Unit 3 - Numbers 6-9 Unit 4 - Compare Numbers to 10
Unit 5 - Addition Unit 6 - Subtraction
Unit 7 - Numbers 11-19 Unit 8 - Numbers 20 and Beyond
Unit 9 - 2 dimensional shapes Unit 10 - 3 dimensional shapes
Unit 11 - Measurement Unit 12 - Classify and Sort Data
Testing Your child will be assessed throughout the school year, with the following mandated testing:
Kindergarten Entry/Exit Profile - These assessments are mandated and designed by the Utah State Office of Education. The pre-test is administered at the beginning of school to assess your child's Kindergarten readiness. The post-test is administered near the end of the year to assess your child's growth throughout the school year. One week of school will be cancelled for each testing window.
Report Card Assessments - your child's report card scores will be based upon assessments designed by Granite School District. Assessments are scored on a scale of 1-4 based on your child's confidence and proficiency with the concept in question.
DIBELS - this test is administered 3 times per year by our reading specialist Mrs. Robertson. In Kindergarten, it tests phonemic awareness and phonics skills. It helps teachers identify how intensive a child's reading instruction should be in order for the child to develop into a successful reader. I will explain in more detail at SEP conferences.
Behavior Panther Pride tickets are distributed for completed homework, or when I see students behaving well, being a good helper/citizen, etc. Mrs. Austin (our school social worker) draws 2 or 3 tickets (randomly selected) every Thursday; the students whose tickets are drawn get a prize.