Parents are important, and together we
make a difference.
Welcome to the Travis Unified School District
and the experiences of being a kindergarten parent. We are committed to
providing the best possible atmosphere and support for your child's education.
We also firmly believe in the support and relationship that is essential
between the home and the school. A successful beginning in kindergarten
will point your child in the right direction.
These web pages are intended to give you
an overview of the standards in the core subject areas in a particular
grade level in our schools. We hope this information provides a foundation
and a focus to better help you work with your child and to help us develop
your child to his/her fullest potential. In addition to the core subject
areas highlighted on the web pages, health and physical education, library
media center skills, and music are a regular part of the curriculum. Technology
supports teaching and learning in every subject area.
The academic standards form the core curriculum
for all of our schools and thereby unify teaching and learning in the
Travis Unified School District. Our expectation is that all students will
achieve the standards of one grade level before being promoted to the
Dr. Jacki L. Cottingim, Superintendent
Instruction in Kindergarten
is focused on developing foundational skills that prepare students for
later learning in the language arts. Kindergarten students will learn
to make sense of the alphabet and its role in reading. Kindergarten students
will learn to use pictures and context to make predictions about stories
and summarize them. Students learn about setting, characters and important
events in a story. Kindergarten students learn not only to recognize,
identify and understand but also to write letters, words and beginning
narratives. Kindergarten classrooms provide an environment that is rich
in children’s literature, and encourages the development of oral language
skills, writing skills and reading skills.
- Students will be able to name all letters
and match them with their associated sounds. Kindergarten students will
- books are read from front to back.
- words are read from left to right.
- phonemic awareness.
- how to decode words and pronounce words.
- new vocabulary words.
- how to rhyme, match
sounds and blend sounds.
- Students will identify the basic ideas
in what they have read, heard or viewed. Kindergarten students will
how to locate
title, table of contents, name of author and illustrator.
how to use pictures
and context to make predictions.
how to connect
life experiences to the information in text.
how to retell
how to ask and
answer questions about a story.
to identify characters,
settings and important events.
- Students will write words and brief sentences
that are legible. Students learn how to:
Written and Oral English Language Conventions
- Students will write and speak with a command
of standard English conventions.
Listening and Speaking
will listen and respond to oral communication.
will speak in clear and coherent sentences.
Students in Kindergarten are introduced to
chronological and spatial thinking. They begin to interpret timelines,
and they learn to place key events and people in an historical era. Commemorative
holidays are a vehicle for learning history. Students are introduced to
the idea that people have lived in different ways in earlier days. The
concepts of courage, self-control, justice, heroism, leadership, and individual
responsibility are introduced.
- Students begin to learn the rights and
responsibilities of being a good citizen.
- Students learn state and national symbols
such as national and state flags, the bald eagle, and the Statue of
- Students match descriptions of work that
people do, and the names of those jobs with examples from the school,
local community and historical accounts.
- Students compare and contrast the locations
of people, places and environments and describe the human and physical
characteristics of places.
- Students put events in temporal order
by using a calendar, placing days, weeks and months in proper order.
- Students understand that history relates
to events, people and places of other times.
- Students appreciate the diversity of cultures
and people of historical and modern times beginning with their own families,
school, and community.
By the end of kindergarten, students understand
small numbers, quantities and simple shapes in their everyday environment.
They count, compare, describe and sort objects, and develop a sense of
properties and patterns.
The standards emphasize computational and
procedural skills, conceptual understanding and problem solving. Students
learn to communicate mathematically using symbols, signs, models and graphs.
They learn to reason by gathering and analyzing data, and they learn to
make connections between mathematical ideas and between mathematics and
- Students understand the relationship between
numbers and quantities.
understand and describe simple addition and subtraction.
- Students use estimation strategies in
computation and problem solving that involve numbers that use the ones
and tens place.
Algebra and Functions
- Students sort and classify objects.
Measurement and Geometry
- Students understand the concept of time
and units of measure.
- Students understand that objects have
length, weight, and capacity, and that comparisons may be made by referring
to those properties.
- Students identify common objects in their
environment and describe the geometric features.
- Identify and draw circle, square, triangle,
- Compare common objects by attributes
Statistics, Data Analysis, and Probability
- Students collect information about objects
and events in their environment.
- Pose information questions
- Identify and extend patterns
- Collect data
- Students make decisions about how to set
up a problem.
- Students solve problems in reasonable
Children are naturally curious
about the world in which they live. Children learn science by working
in a hands-on environment that is rich in opportunities to explore, test
and predict. Kindergarten standards include the following essential learnings:
The interactions of matter
and energy provide the forces by which our physical world is governed.
1) Properties of materials can be observed, measured, and predicted.
- Objects can be described in terms of the
materials they’re made of and their physical properties.
- Water can be a liquid or a solid and can
change back from one form to the other.
Living organisms are diverse, interdependent, and
are evolving and interacting with their environment.
2) Life is diverse. Different types of plants and animals inhabit the
- There are living and non-living things. Living things
have similarities and differences in appearance and behavior that can
be observed and described.
- Stories sometimes give plants and animals attributes
they do not have.
The Earth and universe are constantly changing.
3) The Earth is composed of land, air, and water.
- Characteristics of mountains, rivers, oceans, valleys,
deserts, and local landforms.
- Changes in weather occur from day to day and over
seasons, affecting the Earth and its inhabitants.
- The Earth has resources that can be identified and
Investigation and Experimentation
The scientific process includes asking meaningful
questions and conducting careful investigations.
4) To understand this concept, students will develop their own questions
and perform investigations. Students will:
- Observe common objects using the five senses.
- Describe the properties of common objects.
- Describe the relative position of objects using one
reference (e.g. above or below).
- Compare and sort objects based on one physical attribute
(including color, shape, texture, size, and weight).