English Language Arts Common Core Curriculum Maps Condensed from Jossey-Bass for Teacher Use
Kindergarten / Theme and Essential Question / Text Themes / Reading Focus / Language Focus / Speaking and ListeningFocus / Writing Focus / Social Studies
Science
Connections / Art/Music
Connections
Unit 1 / A Colorful Time with Rhythm and Rhyme
How does rhyme affect the way that we hear and read poetry? / Picture books
Traditional Poetry
Nursery Rhymes / With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about unknown words in a text.
Recognize common types of texts (e.g., storybooks, poems).
Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and phonemes.
Recognize and produce rhyming words. / With guidance and support from adults, explore word relationships and nuances in word meanings.
Sort common objects into categories (e.g., shapes, foods) to gain a sense of the concepts the categories represent. / Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about kindergarten topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.
Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions (e.g., listening to others and taking turns talking about the topics and texts under discussion). / Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose opinion pieces in which they tell a reader the topic or name of the book they are writing about and state an opinion or preference about the topic or book (e.g., “My favorite book is….”) / Colors in nature (e.g., rainbows)
The five senses (e.g., seeing color-eyes, hearing rhythm and rhyme-ears) / Color in painting (e.g., Matisse, Whistler, Rivera, Bruegel, Frankenthaler, Gauguin, Picasso)
Color(e.g., the color wheel, warm and cool colors, and primary and secondary colors)
Unit 2 / Tell a Story, 123
How are the beginning, middle, and the end of a story different from each other? / Counting Books
Fictional and Informational Stories based on Three / With PaS, retell familiar stories, including key details.
With PaS, compare/contrast the adventures and experiences of characters in familiar stories.
With PaS, ask and answer questions about key details in a text. / Demonstrate command of conventions: capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
Capitalize the first word in a sentence and the pronoun I. / Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about kindergarten topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.
Continue a conversation through multiple exchanges. / Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to narrate a single event or several loosely linked events, tell about the events in the order in which they occurred and provide a reaction to what happened. / Farm animals and their needs
Farming / Millet, van Gogh, Picasso
Unit 3 / Exploring with Friends in the Neighborhood
How is reading like exploring? / Fictional characters in literary texts and neighborhoods in informational texts / With PaS, identify characters, settings, and major events in a story.
Ask and answer questions about words in a text.
With PaS, identify the main topic and retell key details of a text. / Demonstrate command of conventions: grammar and usage when writing or speaking.
Understand and use question words (interrogatives) (e.g., who, what, where, when, why, how). / Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose informative/explanatory texts in which they name what they are writing about and supply some information about the topic. / Community helpers (e.g., wide range of careers)
Community (i.e., town, city, or community) and geography of such
Human body / Carnival of the Animals, Fifth Movement “ The Elephant” (Camille Saint-Saens); elements of music (e.g. moving responsively to music)
Kindergarten / Theme and Essential Question / Text Themes / Reading Focus / Language Focus / Speaking and Listening
Focus / Writing Focus / Social Studies
Science
Connections / Art/Music
Connections
Unit 4 / America: Symbols and Celebrations
Why are symbols important? / Texts about American symbols and celebrations / With PaS, ask and answer questions about key details in a text. / Demonstrate command of conventions: grammar and usage when speaking or writing.
Spell simple words phonetically, drawing on knowledge of sound-letter relationships. / Describe familiar people, places, things, and events, with PaS, provide additional detail. / Geography: U.S.
Celebrations of diversity (e.g., Chinese New Year, Cinco de Mayo, Kwanzaa, Chanukah, and Christmas) / Patriotic songs(e.g., “America the Beautiful, “ America(My Country, “Tis of Thee”,
“Yankee Doodle”, “You’re a Grand Ole Flag”; band music (e.g., marches of John Philip Sousa)
Sculpture
Unit 5 / The Great Big World
Why is it important for writers to describe settings carefully? / Mr. Popper’s Penguins
Lon Po Po: A Red Riding Hood Story from China by Ed Young
Paired fiction/nonfiction to compare setting
Atlas, nonfiction books, video, and online media are compared / With PaS, identify characters, settings, and major events in a story.
With PaS, compare/contrast the adventures and experiences of characters in familiar stories.
With PaS, identify basic similarities in and differences between two texts on the same topic (e.g., in illustrations, descriptions, or procedures.) / Demonstrate command of conventions: capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.
Spell simple words phonetically, drawing on knowledge of sound-letter relationships. / With guidance and support, explore a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.
With guidance and support, recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question. / Working with maps and globes
(locating and naming the seven continents) / Landscapes from around the world
Unit 6 / Wonders of Nature: Plants, Bugs, and Frogs
How does nature inspire us as readers, writers, and artist? / Emergent-reader informational texts
Picture books by Eric Carle and Robert McCloskey / Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose and understanding.
With PaS, identify the reasons an author gives to support points in a text.
With PaS, identify the reasons an author gives to support points in a text.
Read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding. / Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on kindergarten reading and content.
Use the most frequently occurring inflections and affixes (e.g., -ed, -s, re-, un-, pre-, -ful, -less) as a clue to the meaning of an unknown word. / With guidance and support, explore a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers. / Plants, Earth Day, seasons, bugs and frogs
Weather / Monet (e.g. , painting, “Water Lilies” series)