Kindergarten Pacing Guide {with tips for using it!}

Hi Y’all!

One of my top ten must haves is a Kindergarten pacing guide.
I can’t live without one.
Although I don’t mind going off the beaten path every now and again…
I still need a plan.
I need to know where I’m going and the best way to get there.

Over the past nine years, I’ve used different versions of guides that I’ve found from different sources.
There are a number of very helpful bloggers who post their own guides to share with other teachers.
I’ve taken a little from here, a little from there, a little bit of best practices, and thrown in a lot of what I want.

Over three years ago, I posted a pacing guide I created.  It is editable so if certain parts don’t work for you or your school…you can change it!
It is one of my most pinned, shared and liked posts on Pinterest.  You can find it here.

But this summer, a few of my colleagues and I got together to work on a plan to purposefully integrate play into our kindergarten curriculum.
We spent four days establishing enduring understanding and key student skills for the entire school year.
It was a great experience! And I am so excited to see what my kiddos will do.
I promise to blog about this new endeavor later in the school year…

But for now, I’d like to share with you the pacing guide I created for this school year.

Do you teach Kindergarten? Are you wondering how to pace the year out so you can get everything covered? Then you're going to love this FREE Kindergarten pacing guide! Let an experienced Kinder teacher share how she uses a pacing guide & explain how you can make it work for your classroom or homeschool students! You'll love the columns for theme, letter of the week, sight words, read aloud, computation focus for the week, math, integrated play, and science and social studies. Get it now!!
Like I mentioned…

I NEED a Kindergarten pacing guide.

I like to have plenty of time to gather materials, do some research, and talk to other teachers about my lesson before I teach it.
I know…you can’t plan for everything…but I need to have a general sense of what I am/should be doing.
A Kindergarten pacing guide helps keep me focus and gives me motivation to try new things.
Our school uses Fundations to teach phonics.  We focus on a few letters per week and a number of sight words at one time.  I love this pacing guide because with one quick glance I know exactly what’s coming.  I can prepare my word wall cards and any crafts or poems I may want to integrate into teaching the letters.
We also use Lucy Calkins as a way to teach Writer’s Workshop.  Our kinder team worked on developing a sequence for teaching the different genres.  I’ve tried to highlight that in the pacing guide.
The section labeled, “Purposeful Play Curriculum” is the section where I sequenced our grade level’s work on play integration.  At first glance, it might not make sense to those who don’t work at our school, but you can see our attempts to integrate science and social studies standards into specific themed units.  
Our school ends the year with a huge event called, “Davis Town.”  All of kindergarten turns into a small town and the different classrooms become business.  We want to use this event as an opportunity to build purposeful play based experiences into the skills students will need to run their business for Davis Town.  Again, I will be sure to post about our work on play integration over the upcoming year.
If you are interested in utilizing this pacing guide for your own classroom, 
Take a look at this guide and find which elements can be used for you in your classroom.  If anything, it can be a helpful timeline of events.  I’ve even included some great read aloud ideas for you! 
Unfortunately, this version is  not editable and I won’t be able to make any changes to it.  
I hope that you can get great use out of this Kindergarten pacing guide!
Follow:
0

3 Comments

  1. Cairn
    August 1, 2015 / 8:38 pm

    Thank you!!!

  2. Danielle
    August 1, 2015 / 8:54 pm

    Thank you for sharing this. I'm excited to show it to my team!

    Danielle
    Carolina Teacher

  3. Unknown
    August 3, 2015 / 6:08 pm

    Thank you for sharing! What a great visual for the year!