Long-Term Planning
Data from Kipapa’s Strive HI Report showed that in the past three years, reading scores have dropped. In 2015, 63% of students were meeting the standards, and since then the score has dropped to 55%. Due to the regression of reading scores, reading is an immense focus at our school. As kindergarten teachers, it’s crucial that we help students establish a strong reading foundation, so they can build on what they know in following school years. Therefore, half of our instructional time is spent on developing their foundational reading skills. Understanding where our focus is, helps us effectively plan our instruction and work towards rigorous reading goals.
The long-range goal for my kindergarten students is making 1.6 years of reading growth by the end of the school year. The goal is rigorous because many of my students enter kindergarten without letter-sound and alphabet recognition. To support their needs, I collaborate with my grade level to plan out the school year, working together to ensure our students have appropriate amounts of time dedicated to learning and understanding the content and also provide time for them to apply the content. To ensure that this is accomplished, we backwards plan so students have the opportunity to achieve the rigorous reading goal.
Our first step in our collaborative process is long-term planning. Long-term planning acts as a map where we can review our curriculum program and identify where and when standards will be covered. Thus, our reading curriculum assists in forming the pace of our school year. As we discuss the units’ goals and objectives, we see what subjects interconnect so we can implement cross-disciplinary skills, supporting students deeper learning and engaging them in applying their content knowledge.
After we identified the cross-disciplinary skills that overlap, we look at each unit and determine the foundational reading skills that will help students access the content. The skills are then connected with a common core state standard, so we have a clear understanding of the unit’s objective.
Long-Term Planner - Calendar
Pictured to the Left: Grade K Calendar for all subjects.
As a grade level, we collaborate to create a calendar that serves as a pacing guide, ensuring we complete all units by the end of the year. Wonders has ten units so that we can accomplish all of them within our given time frame. The pacing guide also helps us identify when subjects overlap and provide opportunities to challenge students to use cross-disciplinary skills.
When we pace out the year, we also take into account holidays and other grade-level activities that impact pacing. For example, during October in quarter one, we only work on Wonders Unit 2 Week 3. Our grade level decided to do that because the end of quarter one is filled with high-stakes testing for report card grades and we have a week of fall break.
Long-Term Planner - Planning Outline
Pictured Above: Wonders Unit 1-10 Breakdown
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Long-term planning consists of dissecting each unit and identifying the content covered. As a grade level, we review the curriculum and create unit plans that show each units focus and the concepts that are being introduced. Wonders is built on word work and comprehension. Word work focuses on building students phonemic awareness, phonics, high-frequency words, oral vocabulary/category words, and handwriting/grammar skills. The comprehension part introduces students to fiction and non-fiction texts and develops their reading comprehension strategies and skills by analyzing the different texts. Developing a long-term plan that maps out each unit, helps us understand how the lessons are sequenced and how the content is introduced and built upon. A comprehensive understanding of what will be taught helps us effectively out each unit and lesson so students are able to achieve their rigorous reading goals.
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