Program Description: Instruction in kindergarten serves a wide range of needs and abilities. Students are actively involved in concrete learning experiences which form the foundation for learning. Listening, speaking, reading readiness, and writing readiness skills emerge as children listen to stories, retell, discuss, sequence, dramatize, and compose. Teachers help students transfer their own skills into more formal reading, writing, and math activities when they are ready. Social studies focuses on family, school, and community relationships; science focuses on experiences in life, earth, and physical science as children observe and communicate discovered information; physical education centers around gross motor skills that result in coordination, a positive body image, and confidence; and fine arts includes expressing thoughts and feelings through drawing, painting, singing, moving to music, and dramatizing stories and poems. Thematic curriculum units, written by local teachers, help insure a developmentally appropriate presentation of the essential elements.

Program Goals: The kindergarten program seeks to help each child grow socially, emotionally, physically, and academically. All areas of the core curriculum are addressed at an appropriate developmental level.

Time and Staffing: Twelve schools offer half-day, three-hour programs. Full-day kindergarten is offered in any school where the number of free lunch children equals or exceeds the district average. There are twenty-eight schools that offer full day kindergarten. Each class has a certified teacher. A teaching assistant is provided for each two teachers.

Curriculum Support:
Math Their Way - Addison-Wesley
Your Kindergarten Year - A Thematic Approach (1986)
Great Beginnings - Scott Foresman Math
New Horizons - Science - Silver Burdett
Local Scope and Sequence (1992)
WRIGHT Group Curriculum
High Scope Curriculum

Return to the Lubbock, Texas homepage