Kindergarten ELA Assignment

Kindergarten students listen to their teacher read a story, then trace two sentences, filling in the blanks to indicate their favorite fruit and the color of that fruit. This assignment is partially aligned to the standards because the text is appropriate but the task is weak. Students don’t need to focus on any important elements of the text to answer the question.

It uses a grade-appropriate text. Students listen to an appropriate text read aloud that contains rich vocabulary and builds knowledge about how fruit grows.

Students don’t need to understand the text to answer the question. Students do not need to understand the text to choose a favorite fruit.

The question doesn’t meet any reading standards. The writing prompt would be stronger if it were specific to the language and details of the text. It is important for students to answer text-dependent and text-specific questions, but this question is neither.  

The question lets students practice their language skills through writing. Handwriting practice is important for students in kindergarten. However, if a task is intended to be a handwriting/encoding practice activity it should only include words that are decodable in kindergarten (i.e., not scrumptious). When kindergarten activities are intended to be a response to text, the prompt should focus on the key ideas in the text (in this case: seeds are the beginning of new plants, some plants produce fruit to hold seeds, the similarities and differences between the fruits and seeds of different plants).