Kindergarten through 2nd grade are crucial years, because they are the foundation for academic language and content knowledge that will influence students' future literacy in all subject areas. We teachers must engage students in rich, content-based curriculum that inspires, challenges, and provides them with tools to become lifelong learners. To do so, we must challenge some long-standing beliefs about literacy instruction in the early grades.
Myth 1: Until students learn to read for themselves, they cannot participate in rigorous activities.Myth 2: Most instructional time should focus on isolated foundational skills and drills.Myth 3: Science and social studies instruction should be reduced in time and content until students can read and write independently.
As a districtwide literacy coach, I have helped schools understand the value of incorporating "learning to read" and "reading to learn" into rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum to reinforce both skills and comprehension. Although students in early grades need direct instruction in foundational skills, they also need content knowledge and a cultivated interest in content areas if they are to move from decoding to deeply comprehending text (Duke & Block, 2012). The sample units below provide avenues for engaging students in social studies, reading for comprehension, and learning to read and write while building comprehension and foundational skills.
Investigating the World Through College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Standards
Traditional K–2 units often feature topics like "Me, Myself, and I" or "Me and My Family." In fact, these topics often repeat throughout preK–2 with only slight variations. These topics do little to increase new learning and vocabulary and, more important, are not aligned to the C3 Social Studies Standards Framework, which recommends that students in elementary grades learn about geography, civics, financial literacy, and history. To remedy the rigor gap in early grades, we must expose students to new concepts and increase the length of a unit.
Consider a curriculum where kindergarteners are engaged in an 8- to 10-week geography unit titled Where in the World Do We Live? At the end of the unit, students will know how to use maps, globes, and other simple geographic models to identify cultural and environmental characteristics of places. As a final assessment, students will draw models of the world's continents and oceans, label some countries, describe some environments, and explain some cultural elements. The map itself becomes a gateway to the world and a prominent opportunity for rich conversation and activities. This unit also directly aligns to the C3 standard related to geography, regions, and people: geographic reasoning brings societies and nature under the lens of spatial analysis and aids in personal and societal decision making and problem solving.
Here are more examples of social studies units for kindergarten that are aligned to C3 and English language arts (ELA) Common Core State Standards:
Bringing the World into the Early Learning Classroom - table
Subject Area | Unit Theme | Vocabulary and Concepts |
|---|---|---|
| Geography | Where in the world do we live? | Continents, oceans, Africa, environment, South America, Pacific Ocean, globe, cultural, customs, climate, travel, mountainous, deserts |
| Civics | Who takes care of our city? | Rules, laws, president, governor, mayor, respect, honor, communities, protect, safety, fairness, equity, freedom, groups, individuals, rights |
| History | Who are heroes from long ago? What national holidays and landmarks remind us of them? | Heroes, landmarks, national, national holidays, parades, fireworks, recognition, responsibility, courage |
| Economics and Financial Literacy | Wants and needs: What are they? | Money, savings, cost, earn, spend, banks, dollar, penny, quarter, dime |
Reading to Learn About the World
In a rigorous standards-aligned ELA unit, students read to learn through nonfiction books like Families Around the World and Homes Around the World and fiction books like The Berenstain Bears Around the World and Stories from Around the World for Little Children. The teacher reads the texts aloud, and specific lessons that accompany each text meet reading information and literature standards (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.K.1, 2, and 9 and CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.K.2, 3, and 6). Through reading and class discussions, students learn concepts about world geography, diverse customs, climate, various traditions, and environmental factors. As a benefit, they get extra exposure and time to learn rich vocabulary associated with age-appropriate global texts ().
Responding to the World with the Language Experience Approach (LEA)
In this sample ELA unit, students learn to read by engaging in a strategy called the LEA, a written response the teacher leads. In the LEA, the teacher explicitly demonstrates how to write in response to social studies texts, modeling for students how to think through and develop an idea into a written sentence or sentences, sound out individual words, and use capital letters (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RF.K.1–3). The teacher and students collaboratively create the LEA written response, a process that reflects a gradual release of responsibility that allows students to apply the foundational skills they learned in a meaningful, content-based context. With consistent practice, students master the ability to use foundational skills to read, write, and think about texts—and the culminating LEA written response provides a familiar text for practicing reading in whole or small groups. The LEA is one of many strategies that reinforces the explicit teaching of foundational reading skills alongside learning content and deepening comprehension.
Raising Global Learners Early
Our students live in a global world, and our curriculum should reflect that. It is time to rethink the social studies topics that have existed for so long in the early grades and move into the 21st century with global topics and curriculum. The C3 and Common Core standards provide a gateway to rigorous global education in the early grades. With these resources, we can nourish students' foundational skills while planting the seeds for future learning.