Integrated literacy: revolving small groups (3-4 students each) participate in daily reading, writing and language arts experiences through cooperative efforts of the Reading Specialist, her assistant, ESL and classroom teacher.

Every day we listen to stories, sing songs, read big books and poems as we learn about letters, sounds and words.

Kindergarten students write every day in a variety of ways:

Interactive Writing - teacher and students "share the pen". Students write letters and words they know and the teacher writes the rest. We often do this with daily news, response to a story and for special projects.

Journal Writing - The boys and girls draw a picture, then add writing. They learn how to say words slowly and write the sounds they hear.

Word Work - Kindergarten students learn 26 sight words (e.g., the, and, I, me) that go on our word wall. We do fast writing, work with magnetic letters and practice reading and writing these word wall words often.

We have new Social Studies materials this year to help us meet our state and district required standards. We study families, community workers, rules, holidays, national symbols, maps, globes and other topics.