Responsive Classroom
The Responsive Classroom approach was developed by classroom teachers. It emphasizes teaching children to take care of themselves, each other, and the school environment so that everyone can learn at their best. You’ll notice our class paying attention to how students treat one another throughout the day. You will also see a strong emphasis on students setting goals for their own learning and taking responsibility for reaching those goals.
Guiding Principles
The Responsive Classroom approach is based on theories of how children learn and on the experiences of classroom teachers. There are seven basic principles behind this approach:
* Learning social skills is as important as learning academic skills.
* How children learn is as important as what they learn: Process and content go hand in hand.
* Children gain knowledge most effectively through social interaction.
* To be successful academically and socially, children need to learn a set of social skills that include cooperation, assertiveness, responsibility, empathy, and self-control.
* Knowing the children we teach—individually, culturally, and developmentally—is as important as knowing the content we teach.
* Knowing the families of the children we teach and inviting their participation is essential to children’s education.
* How the adults at school work together is as important as how skillful each individual teacher is: Lasting change begins with the adult community.
Teaching Practices
Some Responsive Classroom practices we will be using in our classrooms this year include:
Morning Meeting: gathering the whole class each morning to greet one another, share news, and warm up for the day ahead.
Rule Creation: helping students create classroom rules to ensure an environment that allows all class members to meet their learning goals.
Interactive Modeling: teaching children expected behaviors through a unique modeling technique.
Positive Teacher Language: using words and tone in ways that promote children’s active learning, sense of community, and self-discipline.
Strategies for Responding to Misbehavior: stopping misbehavior quickly and respectfully so that positive behaviors are restored.
Guided Discovery: introducing classroom materials using a format that encourages independence, creativity, and responsibility.
Academic Choice: increasing students learning by allowing students teacher-structured choices in their work.
Classroom Organization: setting up the physical room in ways that encourage students’ independence, cooperation, and productivity.
Working with Families: creating avenues for hearing parents’ insights and helping them understand the school’s teaching approaches.
Collaborative Problem-Solving: using conferencing, role-playing, and other strategies to resolve problems with students.
Please let us know if you have any questions. You can also learn more about the Responsive Classroom approach at www.responsiveclassroom.org.
Investigations in Number, Data, and Space
Investigations is a complete mathematics program for grades K-5. Students using Investigations in Number, Data, and Space are expected to learn arithmetic, basic facts and much more. The focus of instruction is on mathematical thinking and reasoning. Students using the complete Investigations curriculum develop an understanding of:
"Understanding refers to a student's grasp of fundamental mathematical ideas. Students with understanding know more than isolated facts and procedures. They know why a mathematical idea is important and the contexts in which it is useful. Furthermore, they are aware of many connections between mathematical ideas. In fact, the degree of students' understanding is related to the richness and extent of the connections they have made." (2002, Helping Children Learn Mathematics, p. 10.)
As a natural part of their everyday mathematics work, Investigations students:
Fundations
Fundations® is a multisensory and systematic phonics, spelling, and handwriting program that benefits all K-3 students. Fundations is designed as a whole-class, general education program used for prevention purposes. It also can be taught in a small group or 1:1 setting for intervention.
Informed by an extensive research base and following principles of instruction demonstrating success for a wide variety of learners, key features include:
Heggerty
Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Kindergarten lessons are meant to supplement existing literacy curriculum and are easily integrated into full-day kindergarten programs.When lessons are taught consistently each day with explicit teacher modeling and scaffolded support,, teachers see improvement in students’ reading, spelling, and writing, as the student learn to hear the sounds in words.
The kindergarten curriculum covers all consonants, short vowels, digraphs, blends, and rime patterns, with long vowel words being introduced in the later weeks of this curriculum.
The 10 components included in each Heggerty Kindergarten lesson:
Kindergarten Science
Arlington Public Schools
Social Studies
Unit 1- Kindergarten Communities
The Responsive Classroom approach was developed by classroom teachers. It emphasizes teaching children to take care of themselves, each other, and the school environment so that everyone can learn at their best. You’ll notice our class paying attention to how students treat one another throughout the day. You will also see a strong emphasis on students setting goals for their own learning and taking responsibility for reaching those goals.
Guiding Principles
The Responsive Classroom approach is based on theories of how children learn and on the experiences of classroom teachers. There are seven basic principles behind this approach:
* Learning social skills is as important as learning academic skills.
* How children learn is as important as what they learn: Process and content go hand in hand.
* Children gain knowledge most effectively through social interaction.
* To be successful academically and socially, children need to learn a set of social skills that include cooperation, assertiveness, responsibility, empathy, and self-control.
* Knowing the children we teach—individually, culturally, and developmentally—is as important as knowing the content we teach.
* Knowing the families of the children we teach and inviting their participation is essential to children’s education.
* How the adults at school work together is as important as how skillful each individual teacher is: Lasting change begins with the adult community.
Teaching Practices
Some Responsive Classroom practices we will be using in our classrooms this year include:
Morning Meeting: gathering the whole class each morning to greet one another, share news, and warm up for the day ahead.
Rule Creation: helping students create classroom rules to ensure an environment that allows all class members to meet their learning goals.
Interactive Modeling: teaching children expected behaviors through a unique modeling technique.
Positive Teacher Language: using words and tone in ways that promote children’s active learning, sense of community, and self-discipline.
Strategies for Responding to Misbehavior: stopping misbehavior quickly and respectfully so that positive behaviors are restored.
Guided Discovery: introducing classroom materials using a format that encourages independence, creativity, and responsibility.
Academic Choice: increasing students learning by allowing students teacher-structured choices in their work.
Classroom Organization: setting up the physical room in ways that encourage students’ independence, cooperation, and productivity.
Working with Families: creating avenues for hearing parents’ insights and helping them understand the school’s teaching approaches.
Collaborative Problem-Solving: using conferencing, role-playing, and other strategies to resolve problems with students.
Please let us know if you have any questions. You can also learn more about the Responsive Classroom approach at www.responsiveclassroom.org.
Investigations in Number, Data, and Space
Investigations is a complete mathematics program for grades K-5. Students using Investigations in Number, Data, and Space are expected to learn arithmetic, basic facts and much more. The focus of instruction is on mathematical thinking and reasoning. Students using the complete Investigations curriculum develop an understanding of:
- number, operations, and early algebraic ideas
- geometry and measurement
- data analysis and probability
- patterns, functions, and the math of change, which provide foundations for algebra
"Understanding refers to a student's grasp of fundamental mathematical ideas. Students with understanding know more than isolated facts and procedures. They know why a mathematical idea is important and the contexts in which it is useful. Furthermore, they are aware of many connections between mathematical ideas. In fact, the degree of students' understanding is related to the richness and extent of the connections they have made." (2002, Helping Children Learn Mathematics, p. 10.)
As a natural part of their everyday mathematics work, Investigations students:
- explore problems in depth.
- find more than one way to solve many of the problems they encounter.
- reason mathematically and develop problem-solving strategies.
- examine and explain mathematical thinking and reasoning.
- communicate their ideas orally and on paper, using "clear and concise" notation.
- represent their thinking using models, diagrams, and graphs.
- make connections between mathematical ideas.
- prove their ideas to others.
- develop computational fluency - efficiency, accuracy, and flexibility.
- choose from a variety of tools and appropriate technology.
- work in a variety of groupings - whole class, individually, in pairs, and in small groups.
Fundations
Fundations® is a multisensory and systematic phonics, spelling, and handwriting program that benefits all K-3 students. Fundations is designed as a whole-class, general education program used for prevention purposes. It also can be taught in a small group or 1:1 setting for intervention.
Informed by an extensive research base and following principles of instruction demonstrating success for a wide variety of learners, key features include:
- Thoroughly teaches the foundational skills, and significantly supports the reading, writing, and language standards, found in states’ rigorous college- and career-ready standards.
- Presents the following concepts and skills in a cumulative manner from Unit to Unit and year to year:
- Letter formation
- Phonological and phonemic awareness
- Sound mastery
- Phonics, word study, and advanced word study
- Irregular (trick) word instruction
- Vocabulary
- Fluency
- Comprehension strategies
- Written composition (spelling and handwriting)
- Integrates skill instruction so that a daily lesson teaches and then reinforces corresponding skills.
- Scaffolds learning while teaching all skills explicitly, sequentially, and systematically.
- Actively engages students in learning through the use of multisensory techniques, such as when teaching students sounds, their representative letters, and words with spelling options.
- Provides multiple opportunities for skills practice and application to build mastery.
- Monitors student learning through formative assessment tools built into the program.
Heggerty
Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Kindergarten lessons are meant to supplement existing literacy curriculum and are easily integrated into full-day kindergarten programs.When lessons are taught consistently each day with explicit teacher modeling and scaffolded support,, teachers see improvement in students’ reading, spelling, and writing, as the student learn to hear the sounds in words.
The kindergarten curriculum covers all consonants, short vowels, digraphs, blends, and rime patterns, with long vowel words being introduced in the later weeks of this curriculum.
The 10 components included in each Heggerty Kindergarten lesson:
- 8 phonemic awareness skills
- 1 letter name and letter sound recognition activity
- 1 language awareness activity developing an understanding of words, sentences, and learning nursery rhymes.
- Rhyming and onset fluency
- Isolating final or medial sounds
- Blending and segmenting words, syllables, and phonemes
- Adding and deleting phonemes
- Substituting phonemes
Kindergarten Science
Arlington Public Schools
- In kindergarten, students build on early experiences observing the world around them as they continue to make observations that are more quantitative in nature and help them identify why some changes occur.
- Students begin to learn to use these observations as evidence to support a claim through growing language skills. They learn that all animals and plants need food, water, and air to grow and thrive and that the fundamental difference between plants and animals is a plant’s ability to make its own food.
- Students build their quantitative knowledge of temperature in relation to the weather and its effect on different kinds of materials. They observe that the amount of sunlight shining on a surface causes a temperature change and they design a structure to reduce the warming effects of sunlight.
- They investigate motions of objects by changing the strength and direction of pushes and pulls. They provide examples of plants and animals that can change their environment through their interactions with it. In kindergarten science, students begin to identify reasons for changes in some common phenomena.
Social Studies
Unit 1- Kindergarten Communities
- How do people in a school get along and do their best?
- What is a community?What communities am I a part of?
- What are rules and why do we need them? What classroom rules keep me safe?
- What does it mean to be responsible?
- How can I be responsible in my classroom community?
- How do community members work together to get along?
- How do community members make decisions?
- How do people give directions?
- How can we talk about what’s around us?
- How can we talk about where we are?
- How can we give clear directions?
- What is a globe?
- What is a map?
- What’s on a map?
- How can I make a map?
- What are the names for the places where I learn?
- Where is my school/ learning space?
- Where is my town?
- Where is my state?
- Where is my country?
- What is a need?
- What is a want?
- How do people get what they want and need?
- How do people help others get what they need and want?
- Who helps to feed our community?
- Who helps to keep a community healthy?
- Who helps a community learn?
- Who helps make a community fun?
