The Pre-K & Kindergarten Curriculum (Pre K – K3)
Berkeley International School provides a solid educational and emotional foundation for our young learners. Special emphasis is placed on creative, social, emotional and physical development.
Our learning program focuses on:
1. Increasing development in physical coordination, fine and gross motor skills.
2. Increasing ability to cope with personal, social, and emotional needs.
3. Fostering each child’s natural curiosity and his/her creative potential.
4. Motivating each to have more independence and self-direction.
5. Increasing the awareness and appreciation for other people, places, experiences, and ideas.
6. Developing higher skills in reading, writing, listening, thinking and speaking English.
Our teachers provide an array of learning experiences to the young children by encouraging them to explore, discover and flourish.
Students enrolling at Berkeley International School will receive instruction in the following academic curriculum areas:
English Language Arts
Reading
1. Word Analysis, Fluency, and Systematic Vocabulary Development
Students know about letters, words, and sounds. They apply this knowledge to read simple sentences.
2. Reading Comprehension
Students identify the basic facts and ideas in what they have read, heard, or viewed. They use comprehension strategies (e.g., generating and responding to questions, comparing new information to what is already known).
3. Literary Response and Analysis
Students listen and respond to stories based on well-known characters, themes, plots, and settings.
Writing
1. Writing Strategies
Students write words and brief sentences that are legible.
2. Written and Oral English Language Conventions
The standards for written and oral English language conventions have been placed between those for writing and for listening and speaking because these conventions are essential to both sets of skills.
3. Written and Oral English Language Conventions
Students write and speak with a command of Standard English conventions.
Listening and Speaking
1. Listening and Speaking Strategies
Students listen and respond to oral communication. They speak in clear and coherent sentences.
Students deliver brief recitations and oral presentations about familiar experiences or interests, demonstrating command of the organization and delivery strategies in Listening and Speaking Standard 1.
Social Studies
Learning and Working Now and Long Ago
Students in kindergarten are introduced to basic spatial, temporal, and causal relationships, emphasizing the geographic and historical connections between the world today and the world long ago. The stories of ordinary and extraordinary people help describe the range and continuity of human experience and introduce the concepts of courage, self-control, justice, heroism, leadership, deliberation, and individual responsibility. Historical empathy for how people lived and worked long ago reinforces the concept of civic behavior: how we interact respectfully with each other, following rules, and respecting the rights of others.
• Students understand that being a good citizen involves acting in certain ways.
• Students match simple descriptions of work that people do and the names of related jobs at the school, in the local community, and from historical accounts.
• Students compare and contrast the locations of people, places, and environments and describe their characteristics.
• Students put events in temporal order using a calendar, placing days, weeks, and months in proper order.
• Students understand that history relates to events, people, and places of other times.
Mathematics
By the end of kindergarten, students understand small numbers, quantities, and simple shapes in their everyday environment. They count, compare, describe and sort objects, develop a sense of properties and patterns, use problem solving strategies and use applications of addition and subtraction.
2. Students understand and describe simple additions and subtractions.
3. Students use estimation strategies in computation and problem solving that involve numbers that use the ones and tens places.
Algebra and Functions
1. Students sort and classify objects.
Statistics, Data Analysis, and Probability
1. Students collect information about objects and events in their environment.
Mathematics Reasoning
1. Students make decisions about how to set up a problem.
2. Students solve problems in reasonable ways and justify their reasoning.
Sciences
Physical Sciences
1. Properties of materials can be observed, measured, and predicted.
Life Sciences
2. Different types of plants and animals inhabit the earth.
Earth Sciences
3. Earth is composed of land, air, and water.
Investigation and Experimentation
4. Scientific progress is made by asking meaningful questions and conducting careful investigations. As a basis for understanding this concept and addressing the content in the other three strands, students should develop their own questions and perform investigations.
Information Technology(IT)
A basic introduction to the computer. Key boarding skills, identification of computer parts, e.g.,monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc.
Thai Language and Culture
Practice of reading, writing and speaking the Thai Language. Students will learn skills which are important for communication, social life learning and traditional Thai customs.
Additional Studies
In addition to these academic programs students will receive instruction in Art, Music, Physical Education, Health/Values, and Library.
