Kindergarten students at Parkview recently wrapped up a unit on the five senses. This unit is part of the CKLA literacy curriculum that is used in our district. This curriculum is split into two literacy strands: skills, and knowledge. The unit on the five senses is part of the knowledge strand, which focuses on building background knowledge, academic vocabulary, and listening comprehension.
Students began learning about the five senses with a lesson called My Senses are Amazing, which provided students with an overview of what the five senses are, the associated parts of the body, and how these senses help people. After this, there was a separate, in-depth lesson for each sense, so that students could learn specific vocabulary, such as iris, eardrum, and taste buds, among others. They also learned, in detail, how each sense works. For example, when listening to an informational read-aloud about the sense of hearing, students learned how sound waves, the eardrum, and the brain work together to make hearing possible. The last two lessons in this unit revolved around biographies about Ray Charles, and Helen Keller, and students learned about the experiences and challenges related to not having the senses of sight and hearing. Throughout this unit, students practiced foundational comprehension skills, such as identifying the main idea, and key details of text, as well as retelling using the correct sequence of events.
At the end of each CKLA knowledge unit, students participate in a culminating activity to celebrate their learning. We are so grateful to the Parkview Parent Group for providing the materials for these fun activities! For this unit, each class did an apple tasting activity. Each student got to taste yellow, green, and red apple slices. They discussed how even though they were tasting the apples, they were also using their senses of sight, smell, and touch. After the taste test, students voted on their favorite variety of apple, and each class created a graph, so that they could analyze the data, and determine a winner!
