Elementary Integrated Language Arts - Kindergarten

The Kindergarten Integrated Language Arts Program immerses the child in a language-rich environment. Kindergarten provides meaningful listening, speaking, writing, and reading experiences through the use of songs, poems, books, finger plays, and writing activities designed to develop early reading and writing behaviors.

Each child grows and develops at different rates. Kindergarten assessments are designed to provide teachers and parents with specific information to meet the individual needs of each learner in targeted areas (i.e. letter identification, letter sounds, concepts about print, etc...). The kindergarten child learns to value language and to develop confidence in his/her abilities to utilize its different forms.

INDICATORS FROM THE MARYLAND VOLUNTARY STATE CURRICULUM:
The kindergarten child will:

• Discriminate sounds and words
• Discriminate and produce rhyming words and alliteration
• Blend sounds and syllables to form words
• Segment and manipulate sounds in spoken words and sentence
• Identify letter and corresponding sounds
• Decode words in grade level texts
• Engage in imitative reading at an appropriate rate
• Read orally from familiar texts at an appropriate rate
• Develop a conceptual understanding of new words
• Understand, acquire, and use new vocabulary
• Demonstrate an understanding of concepts of print to determine how print is organized and read
• Use strategies to prepare for reading (before reading)
• Use strategies to make meaning from text (during reading)
• Demonstrate understanding of text (after reading)
• Compose texts using the prewriting and drafting strategies of effective writers and speakers
• Compose oral, written, and visual presentations that express personal ideas
• Compose texts using the revising and editing strategies of effective writers and speakers
• Identify how language choices in writing and speaking affect thoughts and feelings
• Use effective details, words, and figurative language in the student’s own composing
• Use word lists as a source of information in writing

HELPFUL PARENT TIPS:

• Show your child that reading and writing are important in real life and are lots of fun.  Read to your child each day and discuss what is read. Compare the story to things you have experienced and other books you’ve read.
• Visit the public library to let your child choose books.
• Encourage your child to think, discuss ideas, and plan activities out loud.
• Draw and tell stories about family experiences. Remember that it’s appropriate for young children to write slash marks or other marks for letters.
• Find letters and words in the environment. While driving, point out letters and shapes of signs along the road and read them with your child.
• Write shopping lists together. Remember that beginning writers usually record only beginning and endings sounds (mk=milk) and eventually move to middle sounds.
• Provide many types of paper and writing tools to encourage writing for fun.