Teaching Beginning, Middle, and End in Kindergarten

Children are natural storytellers. They are imaginative, thoughtful, and creative right from the start. This is especially true when they are read to and told stories from an early age. But even with this in mind, children still need explicit instruction to master skills like retelling and vocabulary like characters and setting. Without this explicit instruction, you end up with stories missing important details and making very little sense. 

Unit 2 of my Kindergarten Reading Curriculum will turn your student's storytelling skills from haphazard (and maybe a little painful to listen to) to a full sequence of events and vocabulary to match. Unit 2 focuses on the art of retelling narrative stories. 

By the end of this unit, students will be able to retell simple stories by explaining the beginning, middle, and end. They will be able to reference the characters, setting, problem, and solution in a story. It also piggybacks off of Unit 1 by continuing to build your little readers' confidence. They will feel comfortable looking at familiar books even when the words are not decodable. 

With this unit, you can dive into narratives and help your students master important skills that they will need and use not only in kindergarten but throughout their entire education. 

These are definitely skills my students need, but what sets your unit apart? 

This unit (and my entire Reading Curriculum) is built with both teachers and students in mind. Each and every lesson is developmentally appropriate, lasting about 20 minutes (including time for independent tasks!). I won’t ever ask you to keep your students sitting on the carpet for longer than a few minutes for a short mini-lesson. This makes every lesson simple and straightforward! 

You will cover 4 key common core standards (listed within the unit) and a large variety of skills in just 20 days. 

You’ll also discover that every lesson plan is set up so that teachers can print and go! You do not need a list a mile long of materials, and the materials you do need are listed clearly on the plan. Many, if not most, of the materials required are included in the unit or on the slides for the day as well! No more needing to sit down and write a lesson plan based on the lesson plan in your curriculum, all you need is 20 minutes and a printer! 

What is included in the unit? 

When you purchase this unit you will gain access to 20 print-and-go lesson plans along with a calendar mapping out the unit and teaching points. Each of these lessons includes a teaching point, the materials you’ll need (with screenshots of any anchor charts so you can find them easily!),  a brief, scripted mini-lesson, a description of the student activity, and finally, share time. 

Following each lesson, you’ll also find the anchor charts needed and any student activities. I’ve also included a simple decodable for each week of the unit. 

This unit and all other units in my Reading Curriculum include fully editable slides that can guide your instruction! 

Oh, and I cannot forget, you will also find a few tips and tricks for helping your students navigate your classroom library and independent reading time. 

I also need to teach Narrative Writing, is that included in this unit? 

There is no writing included during my reading unit lessons (we pack those 20 minutes FULL of reading skills!) however, I’ve created a writing curriculum that goes hand in hand with these reading units! 

If you are following along with the entire curriculum, you will have just finished learning about Concepts of Print during Unit 1. During writing time, your students would have been focused on learning the basics of labeling with my Labeling Unit. 

Now in Unit 2, I have the perfect match! While learning about retelling narratives in reading, students can learn about writing narrative stories as well! Just like all of my units, the Narrative Writing Unit is developmentally appropriate, engaging, and easy to follow! You can read all about teaching Narrative Writing in kindergarten in this blog post! 

How can I get started?? 

Now here is something awesome. My Kindergarten Reading Curriculum is a GROWING bundle… meaning not all the units are added quite yet. When you grab this bundle NOW, you’ll be paying for just two reading units BUT when I add the rest of these units, you will get them for FREE. If you aren’t quite sold you can also buy the stand-alone unit here, just know by buying the entire bundle you will get much more bang for your buck! 

My Writing Curriculum is also an awesome, developmentally appropriate way to teach writing that is packed full of engaging activities and simple lesson plans! 
You can find all of my developmentally appropriate resources here!