skip to main content
placeholder for top bar

Core Curriculum

preschool student learning
The CUSD Preschool curriculum is designed to establish early academic capabilities that serve as the foundation for a lifetime of learning and is based on the California Preschool Foundations and Curriculum Frameworks. These outline key knowledge and skills that most children can achieve when provided with interactions, instruction, and environments that research has shown to promote early learning and development. The foundations provide early childhood educators, parents, and the public with a clear understanding of the wide range of knowledge and skills that preschool children typically attain when given the benefits of a high-quality preschool program. CUSD Preschool, to produce positive effects on children’s behavior, will be designed to develop the whole child, including social and emotional development and self-regulation.
 
CUSD Preschool staff works with transitional and traditional Kindergarten teachers for a continual flow of the core academic subjects. CUSD Preschool uses a pre-kindergarten version of the curricular programs used in transitional and traditional Kindergarten, including enrichment opportunities such as Visual and Performing Arts, Science Lab, Music and Movement, Computer Lab, Library, and Health Education. The staff also works closely with parents in providing parent education opportunities and resources on topics such as social/emotional development, reading readiness, fine motor development and early writing development, early math, and gross motor development.
The Creative Curriculum® for Preschool

The Creative Curriculum® for Preschool

The preschool is excited to introduce a newly adopted curriculum rolling out in Fall 2020 known as Creative Curriculum. Creative Curriculum® for Preschool is a comprehensive, research-based curriculum that promotes exploration and discovery as a way of learning, enabling children to develop confidence, creativity, and lifelong critical thinking skills. Creative Curriculum also aligns with the California Preschool Learning Foundations (PK Standards).
 
As you prepare children for success in school and life, it’s more important than ever to educate their whole self.
 
We can only begin to imagine the future careers that today’s children will take on, which is why it’s so important that we provide them with a strong foundation. Research shows that a whole child approach to education – one where children develop not only math and literacy skills but also the social-emotional, physical, and cognitive skills necessary to communicate, think both critically and creatively, and solve complex problems – is developmentally appropriate and better prepares children for a life well beyond their time in a classroom.
 
The Creative Curriculum® for Preschool is a comprehensive, research-based curriculum that promotes exploration and discovery as a way of learning, enabling children to develop confidence, creativity, and lifelong critical thinking skills.
 
Approach: Why Whole Child?
 
At Teaching Strategies, we know a whole-child approach to learning is the most developmentally appropriate way to educate children. Why? Because a whole-child approach fosters all areas of children’s development and learning – from social-emotional and cognitive skills to literacy, math, and science understanding – and is a powerful approach as preschool children transition to kindergarten.
 
With The Creative Curriculum®, children are immersed in learning through purposeful play-based experiences on topics they’re familiar with from their everyday lives. Children find rigorous skill development opportunities like counting, measurement, and language comprehension while also developing positive relationships, gross-motor skills, and problem-solving abilities.
 
And research tells us it’s working. Our latest efficacy study details how The Creative Curriculum® for Preschool helps programs significantly increase CLASS scores and children meet or exceed widely held expectations.
Teaching Pyramid

Teaching Pyramid

CUSD Preschool implements California’s Teaching Pyramid, a systematic framework that promotes social and emotional development through teaching children how to self-regulate and offering a prevention and promotion model.
 
What is the Teaching Pyramid?
 
The Teaching Pyramid provides support for children's appropriate behavior, prevents challenging behavior, and addresses problematic behavior. WestEd's Teaching Pyramid is based on evidence-based practice originally developed by the Center on the Social Emotional Foundations in Early Learning (CSEFEL), authorized by the California Department of Education (CDE), and aligned with California's Early Learning and Development System.
Handwriting Without Tears

Handwriting Without Tears

The Handwriting Without Tears curriculum draws from years of innovation and research to provide developmentally appropriate, multisensory tools and strategies for use in the classroom.  The program follows research that demonstrates children learn more effectively by actively "doing" with materials that address all learning styles.  The teaching order is successful because it follows a developmental teaching sequence.  Easy letters are taught first, beginning with capital letters and taught in groups of similar stroke sequence.  When students master easier skills, they are better prepared to learn more difficult groups -- those prone to reversals or having diagonal lines.  As a result, children gain mastery and confidence more quickly. They can focus on the content of their work rather than the mechanics of letter formation—the Handwriting Without Tears teaching order results in fluid, legible, and automatic writing.