Core Content

LITERACY PROGRAM

A comprehensive balanced literacy program based on strong research and effective classroom practices is used in the Kindergarten through second grade classrooms. Our literacy program aligns with the Common Core State Standards and serves as an Integrated Model of Literacy where listening, speaking, reading, writing, and language standards are integrated across all subjects. Learning outcomes for this literacy model emphasize depth of knowledge, problem solving and higher order thinking skills. This is a rigorous literacy model designed to create literate students for the 21st century who are fluent readers, critical thinkers, informative writers, effective speakers, and engaged listeners. Students are also expected to use technology as a source of information, research, and a means of communication.

• Develop a strong understanding and working knowledge of concepts of print, the alphabetic principle, and other basic conventions of the English writing system.
• Read increasingly difficult text, including a balance of literature and informational text.
• Interact with rich read-alouds, high quality text, and related activities to build the background knowledge and vocabulary critical to listening and reading comprehension.
• Engage in research and inquiry to investigate topics, analyze and develop arguments grounded in evidence from text, and present ideas through speaking, writing and technology.
• Compose narrative, informative/explanatory, and opinion pieces of writing.
• Determine and clarify meaning of new vocabulary to use in reading, writing, media, and collaborative conversations about grade level topics and text.
• Gain control over many conventions of English grammar, usage, and mechanics as well as learn other ways to use language to convey meaning.

Journeys Common Core (Houghton Mifflin): Is a comprehensive reading program that integrates common core-based instruction into seven units. A balance of informational text and rich literature is used to target skill instruction for comprehension, sight word recognition, letter sound relationships and phonemic awareness. Strong differentiated components including guided reading and literacy centers are a part of everyday instruction to meet the individual needs of all students.

1. Welcome to Kindergarten
2. Friendly Faces
3. Show and Tell
4. Outside My Door
5. Let’s Find Out
6. Growing and Changing
7. Look At Us

A careful selection and balance of high quality literature and informational text are the core instructional materials for the first and second grade reading programs. Based on the Integrated Model of Literacy, reading materials are in the form of big books, leveled readers, trade books, and picture books. Each form of text offers high quality instruction that provides rich experiences for integrating reading, writing, listening, speaking and language across all subject areas, including science and social studies. The first and second grade literacy programs are based on the rigorous literacy learning standards of the Common Core and are designed to meet the needs of all learners.

The University of Chicago School Mathematics Project began in 1983 and is still centered at the University of Chicago. Everyday Mathematics’ goals and objectives meet the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics “Principles and Standards for School Mathematics,” published in 2000, and the current Common Core State Standards. The standards define practices that should permeate instruction and assessment at all grade levels, Kindergarten through Grade 12.  

The Standards for Mathematical Practice are:

1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
4. Model with mathematics.
5. Use appropriate tools strategically.
6. Attend to precision.
7. Look for and make use of structure.
8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

In addition, articulation among grade levels and increased opportunities for formal training have provided strong support for teachers. Communication among New Trier Township teachers of mathematics has contributed significantly to our students’ mathematical success. Components of an enrichment program designed by the University of Chicago to coincide with the Everyday Mathematics Program are utilized when appropriate.

Kindergarten

• Counting and Cardinality: Know number names and the count sequence, count to tell the number of objects, and compare numbers.
• Operations and Algebraic Thinking: Understand addition as putting together and adding to, and understand subtraction as taking apart and taking from.
• Number and Operations in Base Ten: Work with numbers 11-19 to gain foundations for place value.
• Measurement and Data: Describe and and compare measurable attributes, classify objects and count the number of objects in each category.
• Geometry: Identify and describe shapes (squares, circles, triangles, rectangles, hexagons, cubes, cones, cylinders, and spheres), analyze, compare, create and compose shapes.

• Operations and Algebraic Thinking: Represent and solve problems involving addition and subtraction, understand and apply properties of operations and the relationship between addition and subtraction, add and subtract within 20, work with addition and subtraction equations.
• Number and Operations in Base Ten: Extend the counting sequence, understand place value, and use place value understanding and properties of operations to add and subtract.
• Measurements and Data: Measure lengths indirectly and by iterating length units, tell and write time, and represent and interpret data.
• Geometry: Reason with shapes and their attributes.

• Operations and Algebraic Thinking: Represent and solve problems involving addition and subtraction, add and subtract within 20, and work with equal groups of objects to gain foundations for multiplication.
• Number and Operations in Base Ten: Understand place value and use place value understanding and properties to add and subtract.
• Measurement and Data: Measure and estimate lengths in standard units, relate addition and subtraction to length, work with time and money, and represent and interpret data.
• Geometry: Reason with shapes and their attributes.

Science learning is maximized through hands-on experiences, reading, and research activities. Students are able to manipulate objects and materials, observe, measure, record data, predict outcomes, and make connections. Students are given many opportunities to communicate what they have learned through written and oral presentations. Using the Next Generation Science Standards students begin to develop an understanding of the four disciplinary core ideas:

1. Physical sciences
2. Life sciences
3. Earth and space sciences
4. Engineering, technology, and application of science 

The following is a link to more detailed information on the Progressions Within the Next Generation Science Standards

In the earlier grades, students begin by recognizing patterns and formulating answers to questions about the world around them. 

The program emphasizes science as inquiry and technological design concepts. It builds personal knowledge from the students’ own experience and thought. Teachers engage students in active participation through the use of discovery kits developed by the teaching staff and a professional science consultant. South is fortunate to have two gardens to integrate within the units of study. 

Kindergarten Disciplinary Core Ideas

• Pushes and Pulls
• Animals, Plants, and their Environment
• Weather and Climate
• Engineering and Design

First Grade Disciplinary Core Ideas

• Light and Sound
• Structure, Function, and Information Processing
• Space Systems: Patterns and Cycles
• Engineering and Design

Second Grade Disciplinary Core Ideas

• Structure and Properties of Matter
• Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems
• Processes that Shape the Earth
• Engineering and Design

In January 2016, Illinois adopted Illinois Learning Standards for Social Science, based on the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies. The purpose of these new, more rigorous standards is to better prepare students to be college and career ready. These standards are designed to ensure that students across Illinois focus on a common set of standards and have the opportunity to develop the knowledge, dispositions, and skills necessary for success in college, career, and civic life in the 21st century. The vision supporting this design is to produce students who are civically engaged, socially responsible, culturally aware, and financially literate (National Council for the Social Studies, 2016)

The Illinois Social Science Standards fall into two complementary categories: inquiry skills and disciplinary concepts. Inquiry skills involve questioning, investigating, reasoning, and responsible action while disciplinary concepts make use of social science ideas, principles, and content to pursue answers to the questions generated by student inquiries.

In social studies, disciplinary concepts are divided among the major disciplines of social science: civics, history, economics, and geography. These standards are taught in conjunction with inquiry skills. Standards on themes are aligned to the disciplinary concepts for our K-4 learners.

Kindergarten: My Social World

Unit Examples

• How are our rules and responsibilities at home and school alike and different?
• What is the difference between a need and want?
• How do I celebrate and remember important people and events?
• What are the major landforms in the world?
• What stories and music are important to me?
• What problems do I have, and what are possible solutions?

First Grade: Living, Learning, and Working Together

Unit Examples

• Who is the President of the United States?  Who are the leaders in my home, school, and neighborhood?
• What are producers and consumers?
• How were the experiences of older people like and unlike mine today?
• How can we use maps and globes to learn about the world?
• How do individuals learn from one another?
• How will solutions to problems identified impact my class, school, or neighborhood?

2nd Grade: Families, Neighborhoods, and Communities

Unit Examples

• How are rules and laws different?
• Who provides goods and services to our community?
• How do you believe the community will change in the future?
• How do the physical features of our community compare with other places?
• What is the story of Glencoe?
• What are the consequences of certain solutions to problems in our community?