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Unit 1: Space
Kindergarten

Kindergarten Unit Plan #1: Space

Time: January 7th, - February 1st, 2019
Developed by Madison Dovell

Table of Contents
Overview…………………………………………………………………………...2
Rationale …………………………………………………………………………...2
Outcomes by Learning Area …………………………………………………… 2-3
Dramatic Play Center……………………………………………………………….3
Resources for Students……………………………………………………………. 4
Timeline by Lesson ……………………………………………………………...4-8
Gym………………………………………………………………………….4
Numeracy……………………………………………………………………5
Literacy……………………………………………………………………5-8
Assessment Pan…………………………………………………………………8-11
Self Reflection…………………………………………………………………….11
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Unit 1: Space
Kindergarten
Overview:
This unit was developed partially in collaboration with Nathan Comstock, input from
supporting Teacher Mentors and influencers was also found to be useful and thus, contributed
highly to what is laid out in this unit plan. This unit is based around the outcomes from all eight
of the learning areas provided by the Government of Alberta Kindergarten Statement (2008) with
a major focus on early literacy and early numeracy. The outcomes that I have been asked to
assess are taken primarily from the literacy and numeracy areas but there is also a citizenship and
identity area, and a behavioral area which summarize outcomes presented in the other 6 learning
areas. Since this is the first of four units, the first week is spent building respectful relationships
with the students and allowing them an opportunity to learn more about their teacher.

Rationale:
This unit plan was developed in order to allow students multiple opportunities to display
their growth within the four main assessment areas as mentioned above during activities that are
grounded in play. The unit is centered around one major dramatic play center which will be a
space station, complete with a massive box which will potentially represent a rocket ship.
The large group literacy activities are going to (hopefully) include at least one exposure
to each of the six stands of literacy per week. The tasks will be rich in literature and invite
students to explore and experience communication in a variety of forms. The numeracy small
group lessons will run all week long with a new group being invited to participate each day.
Within these two areas, assessment will take place primarily during specific activities. Outcomes
found in the behavioral, and citizenship and identity areas will be assessed primarily on an
ongoing basis.

Outcomes:
Early Literacy:
1. Speaking & Listening:
1.1: Shares new learning with others
1.2: Listens to the ideas of others
1.3: Follows one or two step instructions
2. Reading & Viewing:
2.1: Associates sounds with consonants that appear at the beginning of personally
significant words
2.2: Recalls evets and identifies characters in familiar stories read aloud by others
2.3: Relates aspects of oral, print and other media texts to personal feelings and
experiences
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Unit 1: Space
Kindergarten
3. Writing & Representing
3.1: Forms recognizable letters by holding a pen or pencil in an appropriate and
comfortable manner
3.2: Copies scribed words and print texts to assist with writing
Early Numeracy:
GLO 1: Develop Number Sense
1.1: says the number sequence up to 10 by 1s from any number
1.2: subitizes and names familiar arrangements of 1 to 5 objects or dots
1.4: represents and describes numbers 1 to 10, concretely and pictorially
1.5: Compares quantities 1 to 10, using one-to-one correspondence (equal)
GLO 2: Uses patterns to describe the world and to solve problems
2.1: demonstrates an understanding of repeating patterns (two or three elements)
by: identifying, reproducing, extending, and creating patterns using
manipulatives, sounds, and actions.
Citizenship & Identity:
CI1: Cooperates in a group and joins in activities
CI2: Makes decisions and solves problems
CI3: Shows understanding of sharing and participates in cooperative play
CI4: Asks for help and expresses frustration appropriately
Behavior:
B1: Stays on task
B2: Active listener
B3: Recognizes and respects personal space
B4: Follows rules and routines

Dramatic Play Center

Space Station: The purpose of the space station is to allow students to play with and experience
new and unique scientific and space-oriented objects, and to allow them to work together
through imaginary play with the goal of experiencing as many new and rich situations as
possible.
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Unit 1: Space
Kindergarten
Resources
- Books, constellation maps, regular maps, radio, monitor, keyboard, telescope,
notepads, calculators, telephone, photographs of astronauts, kaleidoscope,
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4993sBLAzGA – live feed from the space
station that I can turn on in the morning during the soft start
- Teacher Resources can be found within the Timeline

Timeline Lesson by Lesson:

Gym Lessons
Each gym class begins with 15 minutes of unstructured free play with one form of gym
equipment. There is only one week in January that students will attend school for all 4 days, so
after discussion with the other PSIII student, we determined that 1 gym lesson per week would
allow students the opportunity to understand the games fully and potentially foster a
development of strategy within those games.
Week 1: Hula-hoop tag: Students will be instructed to play tag as normal, but there will be 5 (?)
safe spaces (hula-hoops) that only 1 student at a time can stand in
Resources: Hula-hoops
Free Play Item: Hula-hoops
Week 2: Gold Hunter: Students will be divided into four teams. Bean bags (one point) and
basketballs (five points) will be placed throughout the gym resembling gold pieces. Each team
will have their own gold mine where they will attempt to bring gold. Teammates will be assigned
different tasks (1) the runner: attempts to steal gold from the other team’s gold mines, if tagged
they most do ten jumping jacks to be free and return to their goldmine (2) the tagger, attempts to
tag the runner, but must remain in their own mine
Resources: Beanbags, basketballs, pylons for marking out mining areas
Free Play Item: Basketballs
Week 3: Kindergarten Corn Hole: Students will be put into teams or paired up and then given a
beanbag or two and a hula-hoop and they must toss the bean bags into the hoops and whoever
scores wins
Resources: Beanbags, Hula-hoops
Free Play Item: Beanbags
Week 4: Sports Tag: Select five taggers who will chase all the other free students, once tagged
they must freeze and stand in a sports pose, other free students can guess what sport they are
imitating, if they are correct then the student is free, if they are incorrect they must wait for
another student to correctly identify their sport
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Unit 1: Space
Kindergarten
Resources: None
Free Play Item: volleyballs

Small Group (Numeracy) Lessons

One small group lesson will be required each week as I will use that plan with four different
groups over the four days of the week. Within each of the possible lessons there is a focus on
connecting the concrete understanding to the representational understanding, and potentially to
the abstract understanding.
Week 1: Teacher Mentor suggested that students will be presented with a number of math
focused games for the students and I to play with while I familiarize myself with the resources
and the groups.
Week 2: Pattern Madness
- Students will be asked to use 5 objects from the room to make a pattern
- Then students will rotate and have to first identity the pattern and then they
will have to add on to that pattern, we will continue rotating and completing
each objective listed in the outcome
- identifying, reproducing, extending, and creating
o N2.1 (patterns)

Week 3: Self-Assessment of N1.1, N1.2, N1.5, N2.1 via Picture Check

Week 4: Match the Planet
- Students have planets with dice dots (subitizing) on the backs of them
(concrete), they will match these planets to a guide which will have those
same numbers but represented by aliens on them (representational) in order to
create their very own solar system
- Extension: draw a map for the people in the space station using the abstract
numbers (abstract).
o N1.1 (number sequence), N1.4 (concrete and pictorially),

Large Group (Literacy)

(Week 1: About the Teacher and Connections)
Day 1: Self Introduction
- Favorite book (We don’t eat our classmates), Favorite poem, Song with ukulele, Cats and
their names, husband, etc. (L, Read)
Day 2: Family Introduction
- Read a book on families – check RES library
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Unit 1: Space
Kindergarten
- Discuss my family and how many siblings I have, compare that to how many siblings
they have; boys vs. girls, I have a mom and dad, but they aren’t married anymore, (S,
Read, V)
Day 3: Community
- Watch a video of an Elder speaking about their community and then grand discussion on
our own community and what we like about it (L, V, S)
- Link: https://www.learnalberta.ca/content/aswt/talkingtogether/resource_index.html (still
looking for the perfect video
Day 4: Munsch
(Week 2: Winter)
Day 5: Moon Community
- Now that we’ve talked about our own community, you get to create your own community
on the moon!
- Remember all of the businesses that we talked about
- What if everyone from Raymond was to move to the moon – what may our community
look like?
o Pre-Discussion: Remember the places that we talked about when we looked at our
own community. Goals? If we want the whole community of Raymond to move
to the moon, what would we need? What is the moon like? How could we travel
around the community?
o Make our own moon colony
o Why: Students get to take all of the businesses that we talked about and translate
those to conditions on the moon.
o Outcome: 2.2.2.a (RV?),
o Strategy: Construction Play to show creative disposition, problem solving,
independence/team work,
- Whatever material they want, paper and pencil, Lego, connects, blocks,
- Pairs or by themselves – maybe I could use some masking tape to tape off areas if
students their own space
Day 6: Telescopes & Constellations
- Walk students through a bunch of different constellations – showing the names and some
background stories about them
- There has to be a library book on the big and little dippers (V, L)
- Can bring the telescopes to school on this day
- Students are invited to create a new constellation using black construction paper, star
stickers, paint, glitter, (Rep)
Day 7: Research about Spaceships
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Unit 1: Space
Kindergarten
- Bring in as many book options as possible so that students can flip through the pages and
pick out parts of spaceships that would be good for our spaceship
- We can write a list/draw a plan starting with just the box drawn on a big sheet of the
loose-leaf together of parts that would help and why (Read, S)
Day 8: Spaceship Take Off and Design your own
- Students will watch the take-off of the most recent mission into space (V)
- https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/space_tech_funpad_tagged.pdf -
space oriented games in a workbook style format
- Rover, Spacecraft, etc.
- Students will then design/draft a spacecraft with a partner to use to fly to Mars (my
favorite of the planets and the most likely for us to survive on) – Teachers can ask
questions about why they have chosen to include some things, their thoughts behind
certain aspects of the ship, etc. (Rep, S)

(Fri) Day 9: Space Songs

- A whole day of singing the best of the best song about space! Students will clap, dance,
and sing along to songs about space! (S, L)

(Week 3: Space P1)

Day 10: Martin Luther King Junior Day
- Read a book and discuss briefly the Civil Rights Movement (Read, L)
- Have children represent themselves on little cut out people, then we’ll string together all
the students to represent us all working together to make the work a better place (Rep)
Day 11: Space
Day 12: Planets Pt. 2
- This day they can design their own using a variety of materials
- Sensory Play
- Students are invited to create and name their own planet using paint and a variety of
textured objects such as; tinfoil, plastic wrap, paint brushes, sponges, their fingers, glitter,
etc. (Rep)
- They can cut out and trace the moons themselves
- Sensory Play
(Week 4: Space P2)
Day 13: RESTART:
What do they want to learn about?
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Unit 1: Space
Kindergarten
Day 14: How can we talk to astronauts?
Letter to Astronauts
- students are invited to either draw a picture, write a letter, or dictate a letter to an
astronaut of their choice (W, Rep)
- We can go through each astronauts biography together
- Biographies of each of the active astronauts are here:
https://www.nasa.gov/astronauts/biographies/active
- NASA/Johnson Space Center
- CB/Astronaut Office
- Houston, TX 77058
Day 15: Wrap Up Day
- We will talk through all the stuff we’ve done over the last few weeks
- Allow students to participate in any of the activities that we’re worked on
o Writing a letter
o Create a constellation
o Spaceship Design
(Fri) Day 16: Space Songs P2
- The same songs that were done in the first lesson but for the PM students (S)

Assessment Plan:
My assessment plan is centered around the idea that the students should have the
opportunity to show me the skills they have learned, as many times as possible. This way of
constantly recording the students progress will allow me to demonstrate easily to parents where
their child is at and how much progress they have made.
Four types of evidence will be collected in order to determine that a student has
successfully demonstrated their understanding of the outcome.
1. Observational: recorded via anecdotal notes and the Daily Outcome Tracker sheet,
these observations will allow me to assess student growth quickly and consistently.
Anecdotes will be filed on the cork board and compared and used for either formative
or summative assessment. (For)

2. Physical: things created by students to show their growth. These items will be stored
in a portfolio fashion so that they can be easily displayed to students and their parents.
These works allow students to feel proud of their work and these examples will be
used for summative assessment. (Of)

3. Conversational: Conversations are key to determining student understanding. They

can be recorded with video technology, or a short anecdote could be written up after.
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Unit 1: Space
Kindergarten
Video footage will be used as a summative assessment and anecdotes will be filed
and compared for both formative or summative assessment. (For/Of)

4. Self-Assessments: Allowing students to know what they need to be able to do,

focuses their efforts and makes them engaged in the learning. They are able to set
goals and work toward mastery. Self-assessments will be administered via either a
picture check list or a video conversation. Down the vertical side of the sheet, each
outcome will be represented by a picture/image. Across the top there will be three
options, 5 fingers, 3 fingers, or 1 finger. Student select their understanding of their
understanding. The finger scale will also be used during a video conversation. (As)
Each of these types of evidence is important for forming a complete and thorough
investigation and assessment of their understandings. All components will be dated, which is
crucial to display the growth the students have shown.
Summative assessments currently are made up of video recordings, but I will be asking
my TM what her currently method of summative evidence is because we want to show growth
and that may be easier if we consistently use the same recording system.
Because the same outcomes for Citizenship & Identity and Behavior are assessed all year
long, I have chosen to assess those skills daily throughout the unit. I will select between 3-4
students to keep an extra watch for each day, then using the Daily Outcome Tracker (DOT) I will
be able to determine who I’ve seen do what.
Assessments
Learning Title Observations Physical Conversational Self-Assessment
Outcomes
Type Formative Summative Form/Summ Formative
(Formative/Summative)

Numeracy Outcomes

N1.1: Says the number

Video Recorded
sequence up to 10 by 1’s Daily N/A
during W4
from any number

N1.2: Subitizes familiar

Video Recorded
arrangements of 1-5 Daily N/A
during W4
objects

N1.5: Compares quantities Video Recorded

Daily N/A
from 1-10 (equal) (1-1) during W4

N1.4 Represent numbers

Video Recorded
2-10 concretely and Daily Pictures on W4 N/A
during W4
pictorially
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Unit 1: Space
Kindergarten
N2.1: Identify, reproduce,
extend, and create W2/4 W2/4 W2/W5
repeating patterns

Literacy Outcomes

Recorded
SL1.1: Shares new
Daily N/A Conversations on
learnings with others Day 14 (W4)

Recorded
SL1.2: Listens to the ideas
Day 1 N/A Conversations on
of others Day 14

Recorded
SL1.3: Follows one or two
Day 10 Conversations on
step instructions Day 14

RV2.1: Associates sounds

with consonants that Day 2 – Family
appear at the beginning of Daily via Anecdotes
(REDO THIS)
personally significant
words

RV2.2: Recalls events and Day 15 (wrap up) –

identifies characters in after reading a
familiar stories read aloud space book 3+
by others times

RV2.3: Relates aspects of

Day 6 – Video
oral, print, and other Day 6 – pictures of
Moon Community
media texts to personal moon communities
Walk-throughs
feelings and experiences

WR3.1: Forms recognizable

letters by holding a pen or
Daily Observations
pencil in an appropriate
and comfortable manner

WR3.2: Copies scribed Daily – anecdotes

Day 14 – Letters
words and print texts to about writing their
(take a picture)
assist with writing own names

Citizenship & Identity

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Unit 1: Space
Kindergarten
Conversations via
CI1: Cooperates in a group
Daily Video Recording
and joins in activities W5

Conversations via
CI2: Makes decisions and
Daily Video Recording
solves problems W5

CI3: Shows understanding Conversations via

of sharing and participates Daily Video Recording
in cooperative play W5

CI4: Asks for help and Conversations via

expresses frustrations Daily Video Recording
appropriately W5

Behavior

Conversations via
B1: Stays on task Daily Video Recording
W5

Conversations via
B2: Active listener Daily Video Recording
W5

Conversations via
B3: Recognizes and
Daily Video Recording
respects personal space W5

Conversations via
B4: Follows rules and
Daily Video Recording
routines W5

Self-Reflection:
(Dec. 27th) For this unit my focus at the start was really on gathering all the knowledge
that I needed in order to understand how play-based education is supposed to look. I still have a
lot of learning to do, but I feel more confident in allowing for less structure and more free play
because I have a bit more of a straight forward unit plan to follow. I also found that the numeracy
GLOs and SLOs were easier to hit because I was able to divide them so easy. The literacy GLOs
and SLOs were much harder but I think my best bet is to pick rich activities that I can get excited
about and then got back after and determine which SLOs fit where – we’ll see how this goes.
(Dec. 30th) I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed today, but I have now been given the specific
SLO’s that I am being asked to cover so I think that will help me out quite a bit.
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Unit 1: Space
Kindergarten
(Dec. 30th afternoon) Things have gone much better since talking to my peer and mentor
teacher. I am feeling more confident in my assessment plan and all of my lessons seem to be
flowing together.
(Dec. 31st) Got things wrapped up to an appropriate level but this week will be a lot of
fine tuning and taking in everyone’s suggestions. The daily plan seemed to be very manageable
though I was worried that it was going to be too much. Lots will be changed when I get the new
schedule. I still have to create a check list, but I think this may be easier with the class lists.