Summer Distance Learning

The Kids A-Z curriculum will be used as the primary ELA resource for the Distance Learning Program. The website offers fun, engaging literacy-based activities which motivates early emergent readers and additional resources that meets the needs of intermediate learners.
Kids A-Z is also a valuable resource for meeting the needs of ELL and SWD subgroups through audiobooks and books in additional languages. The program offers running record assessments, also available in other languages, which helps to correctly target students’ instructional and independent levels.

Once a student is assigned a reading level, students can then listen to a story on Head Sprout or read the story independently on Raz-Kids Plus.

After each story, students are given a quiz to measure their understanding. The program catalogs students’ performance and provides feedback through reports and graphs that highlight each student’s mastery and deficits within a skill area.

Teachers have the option to select stories to target student’s skill deficits. In addition to being a valuable class resource, Kids A-Z provides parents access to their child’s performance data, ensuring transparent communication between home and school. During the summer distance learning, teachers will use Kids A-Z in the following ways:

• Assess students’ reading level with the running record.
• Provide Whole Group instruction with Close Reading resources on students’ instructional level.
• Reading Specialist will follow a 6-day cycle to provide support in break-out groups.
• During small group instruction, teachers can provide intervention using skill-based text.
• Students can practice the skills taught by reading a skill-based text on their independent level.
• Kids A-Z will be supplemented by Discovery Education, ReadWorks and NewsELA.

The mathematical skills students learn from kindergarten through sixth grade are the foundational skills upon which higher-level mathematics courses build. It is highly beneficial that students master mathematics concepts (Fluency with Whole Numbers, Fluency with Fractions - inclusive of Decimals, Percent, Rates, Integers, Ratios & Proportionality and Measurement), applications, and skills, prior to learning higher level mathematical courses. Mastering elementary and middle school mathematics increases students’ chances for success when taking an algebra course. 

The New York State K-12 Social Studies Framework is designed to prepare students for college, careers, and civic life with courses that are rigorous and aligned to New York State Learning Standards, both Common Core and Social Studies. It incorporates the New York State Common Core Learning Standards and recommends the use of the C3 Inquiry Arc as instructional methodology. Social Studies practices are identified, as well as the key ideas, conceptual understandings, and content specifications.

A strong and effective social studies program helps students make sense of the world in which they live, allows them to make connections between major ideas and their own lives, and it helps them see themselves as active members of a global community. (NYC DOE, 2014)

While knowledge of content is very important, it is equally important to engage our students in historical thinking. Students engaged and challenged to think like historians, raise questions, think critically, consider many perspectives and gather evidence in support of their interpretations as they draw upon chronological thinking, historical comprehension, historical analysis and interpretation, historical research, and decision-making. These are the skills that will serve them well as participating citizens of a democracy. (NYC DOE, 2014)

The six social studies practices of gathering, using and interpreting evidence, chronological reasoning and causation, comparison and contextualization, applying geographic reasoning, understanding economics and economic systems, and engaging in civic participation. (NYC DOE, 2014)