At Metropolitan School, we recognize that Pre-kindergarten students learn about the world through play. The objects Pre-kindergarten students find on a nature walk, like feathers, rocks and leaves, might help them figure out math concepts like “big, bigger, biggest” or motivate them to visit the book corner to find out more about birds. Teachers may introduce shapes, letters, and colors, but Pre-kindergarten is about learning more than what a circle looks like. It’s where students first develop a relationship with learning.

Based on  http://teachingstrategies.com/ our Play and Learn curriculum is designed to engage young learners’ natural curiosity and ignite within them an excitement for learning. Research has shown that all children learn cognitive, language and social skills more quickly through movement and meaningful play. Metropolitan School’s Play and Learn curriculum

  • Integrates motor skill development with communication, socialization, and cognitive skill development.
  • Employs a holistic model of instruction in which the child, environment, and functional tasks are integrated, not isolated, through organized play areas designed to meet a wide range of goals and objectives.
  • Includes activities that are meaningful and relevant to young children and appropriate for all early childhood children.

Recognizing that we learn about the world through our senses the classroom play-areas in our Pre-kindergarten classroom at Metropolitan School offer students the opportunity to learn and develop through:

  • Basic senses: smell, sight, taste, and hearing
  • Tactile (touch)
  • Vestibular (movement)
  • Proprioception (body position)

Play areas in our Pre-kindergarten classroom include:

  • Manipulatives that development spatial relations and manipulative hand skills, such as bead stringing, puzzles and adapted pegboards.
  • Gym activities that promote development of gross motor skills and enhance development of vestibular and proprioception, such as climbing, jumping, running and sliding.
  • Pre-writing on a vertical surface to teach a more precise finger grasp with small pom-poms when erasing, such as on large, vertical whiteboards.
  • Cooperative Sensorimotor Activities to develop skills with colors, numbers and spatial concepts.
  • Games, with the goal of facilitating turn-taking, social interaction, and reinforce learning readiness skills.

Through play areas and learning centers, Metropolitan School’s pre-kindergarten classroom provides a developmentally appropriate, theme-centered curriculum that integrates language / literacy, mathematics, science, social studies, art and music into meaningful learning activities designed to build a foundation for future learning at Metropolitan School.

Our number one goal for Pre-kindergarten students at Metropolitan School is that they learn “how to learn” and begin to see themselves as learners, because we know that strong Pre-kindergarten experiences will help a child think, “I am a good learner. I can find problems to solve. I can master a difficult task.” These experiences show Pre-kindergarten children the power that learning holds and creates an intrinsic desire to learn.

At Metropolitan School, we approach the kindergarten years as a time of preparation, establishing a foundation of knowledge and skills that will prepare them for success as they matriculate through the grades and graduate.

Our first goal is to ensure our program offers opportunities for students to grow socially and emotionally through center-based and small group learning experiences designed to nurture their ability to share, cooperate and communicate with others, as well as to increasingly learn how to self-manage their social behaviors and self-regulate their emotional reactions to events around them. Our second goal is to ensure students exit the kindergarten program academically prepared for grade one and beyond.

Creative Curriculum

Creative Curriculum is a comprehensive, research-based curriculum that features exploration and discovery as a way of learning. Creative Curriculum helps teachers create a high-quality learning environment and build a thorough understanding of best practices. Teachers plan and manage every movement of your child’s day. Through studies, which are hands-on, project-based investigations, Creative Curriculum helps teachers build children’s confidence, creative and critical thinking skills, and promote positive outcomes.

Parts of a daily lesson might include:

  • Warming Up
  • Oral Language
  • Phonological and Phonemic Awareness
  • Alphabetic principle
  • How the Alphabet Works
  • Getting Ready to Read
  • Selection Summary
  • Before Reading
  • During Reading
  • After Reading
  • Enjoying the Story
  • Think and Share
  • Print and Book Awareness
  • Talk about the Poem
  • Developing Writing
  • Across the Curriculum
  • Workshop Centers
  • Unit Project
  • Technology

Each lesson is intended to encompass all areas of your child’s development including social emotional, language and communication, physical development, cognition and general knowledge of English, math, and social studies.

For more information, kindly visit the link teachingstrategies.com/solutions/teach/preschool/

What learning experiences do kindergarten students have with science, social studies, and other specialist subjects?

Through our theme-based approach to teaching and learning at Metropolitan School, we offer students an integrated introduction to English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies within a homeroom setting, while also offering students specialist subject instruction in physical education, art, music, as well as Arabic and religion studies as prescribed by Egypt Ministry of Education.

 

Science 

The performance expectations in kindergarten help students formulate answers to questions such as: “What happens if you push or pull an object harder? Where do animals live and why do they live there? What is the weather like today and how is it different from yesterday?” Kindergarten performance expectations include PS2, PS3, LS1, ESS2, ESS3, and ETS1 Disciplinary Core Ideas from the NRC Framework. Students are expected to develop understanding of patterns and variations in local weather and the purpose of weather forecasting to prepare for, and respond to, severe weather. Students are able to apply an understanding of the effects of different strengths or different directions of pushes and pulls on the motion of an object to analyze a design solution. Students are also expected to develop an understanding of what plants and animals (including humans) need to survive and the relationship between their needs and where they live. The crosscutting concepts of patterns; cause and effect; systems and system models; interdependence of science, engineering, and technology; and influence of engineering, technology, and science on society and the natural world are called out as organizing concepts for these disciplinary core ideas. In the kindergarten performance expectations, students are expected to demonstrate grade-appropriate proficiency in asking questions, developing and using models, planning and carrying out investigations, analyzing and interpreting data, designing solutions, engaging in argument from evidence, and obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information. Students are expected to use these practices to demonstrate understanding of the core ideas.

Arts

The Early Childhood Art Curriculum follows the Core Standards in an engaged classroom that focuses on cultivating creativity and activating the imagination.

Music

Early Childhood Music at Met provides students with musical learning experiences which seek to maintain a balance between musical knowledge and performance skills.

  • Students read, notate, listen to, analyze, and describe music and other aural information, using the terminology of music.
  • Students create, perform, and participate in music.
  • Students apply vocal and instrumental musical skills in performing a varied repertoire of music.
  • Students developmentally appropriate movements in responding to music from various genres and periods (rhythm).
  • Students respond to, analyze, and make judgments about works of music.
  • Students create movements in response to music.
  • Students develop competencies and creative skills in problem solving, communication, and management of time and resources that contribute to lifelong learning and career skills.
  • Students improvise songs to accompany games and playtime activities.
  • Students demonstrate an awareness of music as a part of daily life.

Young minds require a solid foundation of knowledge to support future learning. Our Early Childhood School is designed to excite students, instill a love of learning and prime them for success at an early age.

Expeditionary Learning ( What will students learn in the English Language Arts?)

The Expeditionary Learning K-12 Language Arts curriculum is a comprehensive, standards-based core literacy program that engages teachers and students through compelling, real-world content. This highly-acclaimed curriculum draws on EL Education’s 25 years of experience in engaging teachers and students in active and meaningful learning.

The K-12 curriculum offers two hours of literacy instruction per day, depending on the grade level. Each grade level includes four modules, which span a full school year. The four modules allow students to build important content knowledge based on a compelling topic related to science, social studies, or literature. Each module uses rich authentic texts throughout.

KG2 ELA

 

Wonders ©2023 is an evidence-based ELA program that empowers students to take an active role in learning and exploration. Best-in-class differentiation and ELL resources support strong outcomes for all learners, and meaningful, authentic literature invites students to explore our world and learn more about themselves and each other in the process.

Wonders is designed to foster a love of reading in all children. Through exploration of texts and daily development of their skills as readers, writers, speakers, and active listeners, students experience the power of literacy. Combining the work of literacy experts with research on social emotional learning, Wonders helps educators strengthen skills, bolster learning, and encourage independence, enhancing the important and inspiring work that takes place in classrooms every day.

The following topics are woven throughout the Wonders Curriculum:

Foundational Skills

Phonological and Phonemic Awareness

Writing

Critical Thinking

Foundational Skills

Wonders offers a thorough grounding in foundational skills, from children’s first steps in phonemic awareness and print concepts, through academic vocabulary and advanced morphological analysis.

Word Work in Wonders refers to the explicit, systematic sequence of instruction provided for the foundational skills of phonological and phonemic awareness, phonics, structural analysis, high-frequency words, and spelling. Word Work is essential for all students, because it helps them learn to decode and encode words they need while reading and writing. Wonders Word Work instruction integrates phonological and phonemic awareness, phonics, and spelling skills with reading instruction to support and reinforce student learning.

Phonological and Phonemic Awareness

Wonders supports direct development of phonological and phonemic awareness to ensure every student can grow into a strong reader. Wonders lessons teach sounds in sequence, moving from easier to more complex. All the phonological and phonemic awareness lessons follow a consistent, gradual release approach that also provides guidance for giving students corrective feedback. Instruction is targeted and differentiated, so students get the level of support and amount of practice they need to develop their skills. Phonemic awareness instruction occurs in Grades K for all students. 

Phonics Instruction for All Readers

Wonders ensures complete coverage of phonics and spirals instruction to build this key foundational skill for every student. Research has shown that direct, systematic phonics instruction is appropriate and beneficial for advancing students’ skills from Kindergarten on (NICHD, 2001).

Phonics instruction in Wonders begins in the Start Smart unit in Kindergarten, with explicit instruction in letter recognition and letter-sound relationships.

Writing

Reading and writing are reciprocal processes that enhance and reinforce the skills that students must develop to be college and career ready. Wonders emphasizes the importance of reading and writing every day to ensure that even your youngest learners have opportunities to observe mentor writing and take their first strokes as budding writers.

Critical Thinkers

Students are learning so much more than reading in their classrooms. They’re learning how to learn, how to master new content areas, and how to handle themselves in and out of the classroom. Wonders resources have been developed to support teaching the whole child, for success through the school year—and throughout their lives.

Wonders focuses on three related areas to help students learn how to learn and become critical thinkers: social emotional learning, habits of learning, and classroom culture.

 

KG2 Math Curriculum

 

 

Reveal Math®, a balanced elementary math program, develops the problem solvers of tomorrow by incorporating both inquiry-focused and teacher-guided instructional strategies within each lesson.​

​In order to uncover the full potential in every student, Reveal Math champions a positive classroom environment, explores mathematics through a flexible lesson design, and tailors classroom activities to student need. These guiding principles allow student to take ownership of their mathematical journey!

Growth Mindset

Reveal Math is designed around the belief that all students can be doers of mathematics and dedicates time within the first unit to solely focus on the development of a growth mindset while learning math, making it clear that it is a journey that continues to evolve over time and is not fixed.

One way Reveal Math aims to promote a growth mindset is beginning every unit with an Ignite! Activity. These activities are an interesting problem or puzzle that:

  • Sparks students’ interest and curiosity.
  • Provides only enough information to open up students’ thinking.
  • Motivates them to persevere through challenges involved in problem-solving.

Fluency

Fluency is not just about memorization; it is about having a working understanding and mastery of operations, relationships, and concepts. Reveal Math speaks to all the elements of fluency throughout each unit. Daily Fluency activities include Number Routines, Digital Games, and Spiral Review. Every Unit includes a Fluency Practice page that follows a fluency progressing throughout the grade level, developing not only procedural fluency, but conceptual fluency as well.

Assessment

All of Reveal Math Assessments are designed with purpose to inform the instructional design of the program and are easy to act on with point of use item analysis, recommendations, and targeted intervention resources. This allows teachers to adjust instruction to respond to student needs.

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