What's new in Kindergarten?

If you haven't already seen it, you need to check out Lucy Calkins' new curricular units for Readers' and Writer's Workshop which are correlated to the Common Core Standards  (which Kindergarten is suppose to be using this year in our county!)

Did I mention that they are an on-line resource and can be downloaded? For only $10 each? And they are grade specific? Amazing!  You can't see me, but I am dancing with delight!

Not only do the units incorporate all of the teaching that we have gleamed over the years from actually visiting Teachers' College for their Summer Institutes, but it also links together Lucy's Units of Study for Primary Writing, Fountas and Pinnell's Phonics Lessons and Baer's Words Their Way! As I have been reading the monthly units, I realize that at Chets Creek we will have to move into the first grade units before the end of the kindergarten year to account for the fact that Florida has universal Voluntary  Pre-kindergarten.  Our students are coming to us with more experiences so we can breeze through some of the earlier units more quickly, but this will be interesting work for our Reading Council this year.  This will become our Reading and Writing Pacing Guide.  Can't wait to see what each of the grade level Reading Leads think about this new resource.  If you get a chance, let me know what you think about the units.