Kindergarten & First Grade

Aurora’s K/1 classroom has a full time Lead Teacher and Teaching Assistant.

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Isaac Pasternack

Lead Teacher

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Cheaunie Sparks

Teaching Assistant

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Aurora kindergarteners have the benefit of having older peers to help guide them, and Aurora first-graders gain confidence mentoring their younger peers.

Our social-emotional learning program, Open Circle, emphasizes skills like self-management, strengthening relationships, and sorting/solving problems. In morning meetings, students engage in greetings, games, and songs; talk about their experiences and feelings; and learn ways to resolve conflicts.

To make sure that lessons aren’t repeated and that certain topics are taught to specific learning levels, our curriculum runs on a two-year cycle.

Social Studies Units of study:
  • What is family?
  • What is my identity?
  • Lake Temescal
Related field trips:
  • K/1 Field Day at Lake Temescal
  • Joaquin Miller Park
  • All-School Field Day at Lake Temescal
Units of study:
  • What is community?
  • Aurora School
Related field trips:
  • Lake Temescal Park
  • Rockridge Public Library
  • Community Garden
  • Holy Names High School
Reading
  • Phonics activities (Teacher’s College Phonics Units & Fundations): letter sounds, blends, digraphs, short and long vowels, word families, and spelling patterns
  • Fluency development
  • Guided Reading group (Teacher’s College) strategies: directionality, one to one matching, initial sound
  • Partner reading
  • Poems, Rhymes, and songs
  • Comprehension strategies: making predictions, making connections, visualizing, and retelling
  • Read alouds
  • Self-selected literature
  • Just right book bags
  • Trick (Fundations) word study
Writing
  • Writing Workshop units :
    • Launching Workshop/Narrative Writing
    • Information Writing
    • Opinion Writing
    • Fiction Writing

  • Letter writing
  • Class books (often aligned with social studies topics)
  • Handwriting instruction
  • Writing Workshop units
    • Small Moments / Narrative Writing
    • Nonfiction Books / Information Writing
  • Letter writing
  • Class books (often social studies based)
  • Handwriting instruction.
Mathematics Math is taught by grade level.
Kindergarten units:
  • Numbers to five and ten
  • Numbers to ten
  • Bikes & bugs: double, add and subtract
  • Paths to adding, subtracting and measuring
  • Two-dimensional geometry
  • Three-dimensional shapes & numbers beyond ten
  • Place value
  • Computing and measuring with frogs and bugs
First grade units:
  • Numbers all around us
  • Developing strategies with dice and dominoes
  • Adding, subtracting, counting and comparing
  • Leapfrogs on the number line
  • Geometry
  • Figure the facts with penguins
  • One hundred and beyond
  • Changes, changes
Science Essential questions:
  • What do we notice about trees?
  • What do animals need to live and grow?
  • Where is air and what can it do?
  • When you look up at the sky, what do you see, and how does it change?
  • How do we observe and describe the wind?
  • How do daylight and weather change through the seasons?
Units of study:
  • Trees & Weather
  • Animals 2-by-2
  • Air & Weather
Possible field trips:
  • Joaquin Miller Park
  • Berkeley Botanical Garden
  • Tilden Naturalist Program
Essential questions:
  • What in the world is made of wood, paper, and fabric? What properties make these materials useful?
  • How can we use materials in engineering structures?
  • How can we change the motion of an object?
  • What is sound and how can we change the properties of sound?
  • What is shadow?
  • How does light travel and change direction?
  • How do animals (including humans) use light?
Units of study:
  • Materials & Motion
  • Sound & Light
Possible field trips:
  • Exploratorium
  • Lake Temescal Park
Social-Emotional Learning Elements of Open Circle:
  • Managing ourselves
  • Strengthening relationships
  • How to sort problems
  • Problem solving
Other elements of the K/1 SEL curriculum include:
  • Morning Meeting (Responsive Classroom): class promise, greetings, games, songs
  • Restorative Justice
  • All-School Community Creators
  • Aurora Active Ally Week
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