Kindergarten

Essential Content

Kindergarten student building with marshmallows and straws

Guiding Question: Are All Students Working With Content Aligned to the Appropriate Standards for Their Subject and Grade?

Ensure that all students are working with content aligned to the appropriate standards for their subject area and grade. Each content area listed includes a summary of the priority standards that students should be able to demonstrate proficiency in by the end of kindergarten. These prioritized items are considered foundational understandings that students will build upon in first grade and beyond.

Kindergarten student building with marshmallows and straws

These items are derived from the kindergarten standards found within the - Common Core State Standards, Next Generation Science Standards, California History and Social Studies Framework, and ELD Framework.

Priority Standards

What students will know, what students will do, and what thinking skills students will develop to apply and transfer understandings that endure within the discipline, leverage deeper understandings, and/or support readiness for success at the next grade level. These are the standards that should anchor and drive instruction.

 

Signature Elements

The practices, strategies, and routines at the core of teaching and learning within the content area/discipline.

Kindergarten Standards

This is the list of kindergarten standards found on the SFUSD report card. They represent understandings that endure within the discipline, leverage deeper understandings within the content area, and/or support readiness for success at the next grade level.

Arts
  • Engages and develops the ability to express self with increasing creativity, complexity, and depth through 2D and 3D visual art
  • Engages and develops the ability to express self through creative movement and creative expression
  • Engages and develops the ability to create music through instruments, voice, or with objects
Digital Learning
  • Demonstrates understanding that technology is a tool to support learning 
  • Names the different parts of a Chromebook 
  • Creates with different digital learning resources to show their view of the world
  • Shares thinking in different ways digitally 
English Language Arts
  • Retells stories and names the topic of informational texts including important details with help from teacher
  • Identifies basic similarities and differences between two stories and texts on the same topic with help from teacher
  • Uses drawing, dictation, and writing to describe an event
  • Uses drawing, dictation, and writing to give information about a topic
  • Uses drawing, dictation, and writing to share an opinion
  • Participates in discussions, asks and answers questions about topics and texts
  • Names and produces the sounds of all letters
  • Prints all upper and lower case letters
  • Reads 25 high-frequency words
  • Uses sound-letter knowledge to spell simple words
English Language Development
  • Contributes to discussions in all settings by taking turns and asking and answering questions
  • Expresses an opinion to persuade and negotiate using basic learned phrases in conversations in all settings
  • Listens actively to read alouds, presentations, and discussions by asking and answering detailed questions, restating and paraphrasing
  • Describes ideas, experiences and key details from a variety of grade level texts and multimedia
  • Understands and applies how writers and speakers use language
  • Knows and applies basic literacy skills in reading and writing
Health
  • Identifies and practices basic hygiene
  • Understands and applies basic safety concepts
  • Identifies and chooses healthy foods and activities
History/Social Studies
  • Compares and contrasts the location of people, places, and environments (maps, layouts, and symbols)
  • Describes and applies the characteristics of a good citizen
  • Places events in order (days, weeks, months)
Mathematics
  • Reasons about problems, explains thinking, and considers thinking of others
  • Counts to 100 in various ways
  • Counts with one-to-one correspondence up to 20 objects
  • Can write the numbers to 20
  • Breaks numbers up to 10 into pairs in various ways
  • Represents and solves addition situations up to 10 in various ways
  • Represents and solves subtraction situations up to 10 in various ways
  • Fluently adds and subtracts within 5
  • Names and describes 2D and 3D shapes
  • Compares two objects by a measurable attribute
Physical Education
  • Travels safely within a large group while performing various locomotor skills (walking, running, jumping, hopping,
  • skipping, galloping)
  • Tosses a ball to oneself, using an underhand throwing pattern, and catches it
  • Bounces a ball continuously, using two hands at the same time
  • Identifies locomotor skills (walking, running, jumping, hopping, skipping, galloping)
  • Identifies body parts involved when stretching
Science
  • Asks questions based on observations to find more information about the natural and human-made world
  • With guidance, plans and conducts an investigation in collaboration with peers
  • Distinguishes between a scientific model and an actual object, process, or event; compares and contrasts scientific models
  • Designs or builds a device that solves a specific problem
Social-Emotional Development
  • Works/plays collaboratively with others
  • Regulates emotions and works with focus
  • Approaches challenges as learning opportunities
  • Accomplishes personal and academic goal
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Essential Content CORE Rubric Teaching Practices

Design Lessons that Advance Students to Grade-Level Standards and/or IEP Goals
  • Demonstrate knowledge of subject matter and academic content standards.
  • Address rigor and depth of standards.
  • Select appropriately demanding instructional materials, tasks, texts for grade/course and time in the school year based on guidance in standards, students’ language development, and/or students’ IEP goals (e.g. Lexile level and complexity of text).
  • Use developmentally appropriate practices.
  • Use subject-appropriate pedagogical practices, including those found in SFUSD curricula (Reader’s Workshop, Writer’s Workshop, Math Signature Strategies, ELD practices).
  • Explicitly address how English works through complex texts (i.e. text level, sentence level, phrase level, word level)
  • Develop and provide accommodations and modifications as needed to ensure all students are able to attain learning goals.
  • Address students’ IEP goals and other specific learning needs in developing learning goals and preparing lessons.
  • Design single lessons and sequences of lessons.
    • Develop a vision for student success and standards-aligned, long- and short-term goals that are ambitious, measurable, and appropriate for all students.
    • Develop and/or uses a long-term, sequential plan that leads to mastery of the most important content for the grade or course.
    • Develop and clearly communicate a well-framed, standards-aligned, and appropriately rigorous instructional objective(s) and language objective(s) to describe the goal(s) of the lesson.
    • Develop and/or use daily lesson activities that are well-sequenced and move students toward mastery of grade-level standards.
    • Develop and/or use appropriately demanding instructional materials, such as texts, questions, problems, exercises, and assessments.
  • Plan differentiated instruction considering students’ individual learning needs and levels of readiness, ensuring content is accessible to all students.
  • Anticipate common student misunderstandings given the content and ensure strategies are in place to overcome those misunderstandings.
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Teaches Lesson Content Accurately and Coherently
  • Explain and model accurate content, practices, and strategies, and all content necessary for students to achieve the learning goal(s).
  • Use explanations of content that are clear, coherent, and support student understanding of content.
  • Provide opportunities for engagement and identity exploration through a variety of creative, technological, and artistic forms and disciplines.
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This page was last updated on August 29, 2023