End of Year Kindergarten Activity Set

This activity set was created to be paired with a reading of "Curious You: On Your Way!" By Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld for an end of year activity.

Included:

Tree Map
Paragraph writing page
Kindergarten Graduation Certificate

You will also need:
Curious You: On Your Way!
or
any other book about the transition from kindergarten to first grade.

The tree map and paragraph writing page are meant to teach/ reinforce paragraph development and English language arts skills.

My lesson plan:
I begin with reading "Curious You: On Your Way!" to the children at the learning circle. Then we will bring up the tree map on the smart board and talk about them moving on to first grade after kindergarten. This takes about 15 minutes.

Next, I will discuss characteristics of first graders and fill in our tree map together through oral discussion.
For many of the characteristics, I plan to nudge the kids towards our specific school pledge/ school character traits (caring, careful, safe, responsible, on time, have a can-do attitude, etc) as well as academic skills required to graduate kindergarten (can count, read, write, follow the rules, etc). This takes about 5 minutes.

Then, I will send the students to their desks to fill out their own tree maps from the board. For children with special accommodations or whom are not yet able to read, I will provide them with an extra copy which has been filled out which they may copy from. This seems to be a good support for children who need additional supports. This takes about 10 minutes.

After the kids have their tree maps filled out, I pass out the paragraph page. We do a quick reteach of how to fill it out, then the kids get to work. Typically this takes about 15 minutes.

All together, I would try to block 45 minutes for this lesson. The standards highlighted may all be covered when presenting the full lesson.

As an add on, there is a graduation certificate with a haiku on it I wrote (inspired by the book), a place to write the child's name, and a place for the school or teacher's class name.