Colombo, Sri Lanka
Targheeb’s curriculum is designed to provide thorough and appropriate instructions for Pre-Kindergarten, Kindergarten through first to fifth grades. Subjects cover English Language Arts/Literacy, Mathematics/Numeracy, creative arts and crafts, social and emotional skills, and understanding the world.
Targheeb’s curriculum is a robust standard-based curriculum designed to align with the most current international and national learning standards. The curriculum also offers a dual language program with Arabic, Islamic Studies and Quran at each level/grade throughout pre-school years, primary/elementary globally. Science and Social Studies are also introduced as cross curricular subjects within English Language Arts lessons to develop essential knowledge, skills, and practices.
In Kindergarten (KG), yet another level of rich step-a-head online learning experience is promoted through the instructional process while young learners will cover the following areas of study:
Phonological Awareness
In Kindergarten, children will learn the phoneme sounds A-Z used at the beginning, middle and end of 3 letter consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words. Activities will include identifying and saying the sound of each alphabet and saying the word, learning new sight words from read aloud and AA leveled reading books and rhymes, and matching sounds with their correct picture(s) and words.
Alphabet Recognition
Children will be able to use their prior knowledge and decode words, learn the English alphabetical order, review and practice their sounds, by sounding the letters, joining them together and saying the new words correctly. They will also differentiate between vowel and consonant letters and be able to correctly pronounce 1, 2 or 3 syllable words. They will also use their prior knowledge and apply the correct usage of the uppercase and lowercase letters when either beginning a sentence, writing proper nouns and common noun.
Oral Language and Vocabulary
Children will use English language to express greater fluency in speaking, describe things, convey or share ideas and feelings, respond to questions, narrate or retell stories, predict or make inferences, and continue to engage in different situations based on thematic lessons.
Literature and Listening Comprehension
Children will understand words and expressions through a variety of read aloud texts. The use of different genre such as fiction; fables to encourage moral stories, folktales to understand community, social and cultural or religious values; picture story books to create imagination and inferencing; and non-fiction books such as informational books written about topics that children have a natural interest in such as animals, food, vehicles, sports, or seasons of the year. These activities will encourage interesting dialogue and understanding of context by children.
Activities will also be designed to draw children’s attention to detail, understanding context and acquiring knowledge and learning something new each lesson.
Children will use their prior knowledge of uppercase and lowercase alphabets, write left-to-right using with appropriate spacing between the words. Children will also be able to construct simple sentences using a simple subject (doer) and a predicate (action), be able to express in writing an answer in response to a basic question, they will learn to write a proper nouns using a capital letter at the beginning of a given name such as name of a person or place, and the use lowercase letters for common nouns such as things, use question marks when writing a question or use an exclamation mark when expressing a strong feeling or command.
Children will read and listen to a variety of guided reading texts, rhymes and read-aloud. They will also be enrolled to an online American reading program where their reading and comprehension skills will be evaluated through regular assessments. The assessments will include quizzes, multiple choice questions (MCQs), games and other activities. Reading genres will include fiction and non-fiction books, and they will also learn story elements such as setting, character, plot, problem solving, and conclusion at their appropriate level.
Children will review numerals 1 – 10, continue to count numerals from 11 – 20. They will also learn the sequence of cardinal numbers, greater than, less than, ordinal numbers, odd and even numbers, skip count by 2s 3s 4s, and 5s colors, 2D shapes, patterns, sorting, matching, and classify things into different groups, repeating and growing or increasing patterns. They will also learn to add and subtract 1- and 2-digit numbers. Students also will learn measuring tools and units and be able to estimate and measure basic units, identify light and heavy, small and large, short and tall, small and big and know the use of appropriate measuring tools. Students will also learn Time and Money, and problem-solving using addition and subtraction operations. Children will also review number 1 – 10 and be introduced to numbers 11 – 20 in Sinhala.
Financial Literacy:
Children will further explore the four keys of Financial Literacy, earn, spend, save and share, review where money comes from, history of money, bartering, participate in activities related to goods and services, buying and selling and differentiate between needs and wants,
Sinhala Language:
Targheeb’s Kindergarten curriculum offers a well-balanced program in which it also incorporates Sinahala Language to meet the Sri Lankan national curriculum for English medium.
The program aims to engage children in their early years in a way that they learn through fun activities and play.
Phonetic Awareness:
Children will be introduced to a total of 57 letters including 16 vowels and 41 consonants in the Sinhala alphabets ‘Sinhala hodiya’, their phoneme sounds and 2-3 syllable words. The child will also be introduced to diacritic letter sounds at this stage which includes all matha’s and Pillie’s.
Alphabet Recognition:
Children will learn to identify letters and their sounds using consonants and vowels. They will also learn new vocabulary and letter formation using the Sinhala alphabet in preparation for writing. They will also learn how the diacritic letters were formed using the ‘Pili’s and Matha’s and connecting to each respective letter taken from the Sinhala hodiya.
Oral language and vocabulary:
The lessons will be conducted in Sinhala allowing young learners to work on their listening and speaking skills. They will learn to make inferences, express ideas, feelings and respond to questions in the class effectively. They will learn basic 1 – 2 syllable words appropriate to their age and used for writing. At this stage they will learn new vocabulary words that includes pili’s and matha’s and they’ll learn how to include these words when they communicate and get engaged in activities. Children will also learn numbers 1 – 20 in Sinhala.
Writing:
Children will also learn to write the Sinhala alphabets and words appropriate to their age and context. They will gradually learn to write the formation of this diacritic letters and then slowly connect them to words and then build short sentences. By end of the last term of the year they’ll know to write 3-4 syllable words using pili’s and matha’s. children will be engaged in various activities like tracing, drawing, coloring, matching, sorting etc.to reinforce their motor skills and refine their knowledge in what they’ve learnt so far.
Reading
The lessons will be thematic and children will be explored to a variety of text from read-aloud Sinhala stories. They will also decode letter sounds to form 3-4 syllable words. Reading will also include rhyming words, poems or nursery rhymes and others appropriate to their age. Their reading will extend from beginners (simple words) to their level of understanding and possibility of connecting reading short words, long words and 3-4 short sentences with simple and diacritic letters.
The 2020 epidemic of Covid 19 has made it more than essential for all, big and small to have computer skills. With the introductions to Computers in Pre-K, KG will focus on learning new skills.
Students will learn to use Paint Brush skills in order for them to be able to interact on the whiteboard swiftly. Study will include introduction to the menu, typing of text, use of pencil/freehand drawing, freehand spray, erase tool draw lines, a curve, squares, circle/oval, use colors using picker/eyedropper, and a zoom in/zoom out tool.
Targheeb’s primary or early learner’s framework is designed carefully bearing in mind the importance of the several aspects of early learning.
Firstly, the live, online, interactive lessons allow teachers and students to interact together using the virtual classroom whiteboard to communicate and participate in the classroom activities that include typing, drawing, selecting text and navigating with the mouse to work on the whiteboard.
During the lessons, they will also be trained to carry a good posture, correct use of the keyboard as, learning keyboarding improves accuracy and can help with decoding and sight-reading skills for children.
The Kindergarten program recommends that children undertake regular homework activities such as reading, narrating, retelling of events, writing, tracing, coloring, art and craft to help children develop their motor skill.
Outdoor activities will be planned as appropriate when the outdoor conditions permit.
Children in Kindergarten will be able to better understand more words and larger numbers, use of expressions and ideas, recite their name, address, and phone number, understand basic concepts about print (like knowing which way the pages go and that words are read left to right and top to bottom), differentiate between opposites, addition and subtraction, light and heavy objects, big and small, colors and shapes, living and non-living things, know that stories have a beginning, middle, and end, count groups of objects up to 20 and recite numbers to 20, and increase their span of focus in lessons and activities for 15 minutes or more.
Children learning in small groups will be communicating with each other during their lessons. They will ask questions and respond, share their work and retell stories and entertain others during the class. Social Studies and Science topics will be integrated into English Language Arts as cross curricular subjects. The lessons will consist of home projects which will require students to interact with the outside world, research and produce their project work.
When circumstances permit, children will be allowed to take part in outdoor playgroups or take tours to places of interest based on the projects giving them a sense of responsibility and an opportunity to be a part of their community and beyond.