Curriculum

Children will be able to use frequently occurring adjectives** in their writing and speaking, for example, describing a dog as "big," "friendly," or "playful."

Children will be able to capitalize the first word in a sentence and the pronoun "I," for example, changing "i am happy." to "I am happy."

Children will be able to determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grade 1 reading and content, choosing flexibly from an array of strategies.For example, when reading a story, they might figure out that "bat" can mean both a flying animal and a piece of sports equipment by considering the context of the sentence.

Children will be able to demonstrate understanding of frequently occurring verbs and adjectives by relating them to their opposites (antonyms). For instance, they might learn to identify "big" as the opposite of "small" or understand that "push" is the antonym of "pull" through various study exercises.

Children will be able to use frequently occurring conjunctions** such as "and," "but," "or," "so," and "because" to connect ideas in sentences, for instance, saying "I want to play outside, but it is raining."

Children will be able to recognize and name end punctuation, such as identifying periods, question marks, and exclamation points in sentences. For example, they might say, "This sentence ends with a period: 'She likes to read.'"

Children will be able to use sentence-level context as a clue to the meaning of a word or phrase. For example, they might read the sentence, "The cat sat on the mat and took a nap," and understand that the word "sat" means to rest because of the surrounding words.

Children will be able to identify real-life connections between words and their use. For example, they might note places at school that are colorful, linking the adjective "colorful" to specific locations like the art room or a bulletin board decorated with student artwork.

Children will be able to use determiners** (e.g., articles like "a" and "the," and demonstratives like "this" and "that") in their sentences. For example, they might say, "I see the dog" or "This is my favorite book."

Children will understand how to write a letter or letters for most consonant and short-vowel sounds (phonemes). For example, they will write "b" for the /b/ sound in "bat" or "a" for the /a/ sound in "cat."