Curriculum

Children will be able to demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.** For example, they will write sentences that correctly use capital letters at the beginning and proper punctuation at the end, such as "I love to read!"

Children will be able to identify new meanings for familiar words and apply them accurately. For example, they will recognize that "duck" can refer to a bird and also understand it as the verb "to duck" under something, using context clues to determine the correct meaning in different situations.

Children will be able to sort words into categories to gain a sense of the concepts the categories represent.** For example, they might group words like "red," "blue," and "green" under the category of "colors," or "shirt," "pants," and "hat" under the category of "clothing."

Children will be able to print all upper- and lowercase letters. For example, they might write the alphabet, showing correct formation of letters like "A," "b," "C," and "d" in both uppercase and lowercase.

Children will be able to capitalize dates and names of people.** For example, they might write, "My birthday is on April 5," and "I met Emily at the park."

Children will be able to use the most frequently occurring inflections and affixes (e.g., -ed, -s, re-, un-, pre-, -ful, -less) as clues to the meaning of an unknown word. For example, they might deduce that "helpful" relates to providing help because of the suffix "-ful," or understand that "redo" means to do again because of the prefix "re-."

Children will be able to use common, proper, and possessive nouns. For example, they might write sentences using "dog" as a common noun, "Sarah" as a proper noun, and "Sarah's book" as a possessive noun.

Children will be able to use end punctuation for sentences.** For example, completing a sentence like "I have a dog" with a period, or using a question mark for "Do you have a pet?" and an exclamation point for "That is amazing!"

Children will be able to explore word relationships and nuances in word meanings with guidance and support from adults. For example, they might discuss different shades of meaning between words like "tall" and "high" or understand how "look," "glance," and "gaze" differ in context and intensity.

Children will be able to use singular and plural nouns with matching verbs in basic sentences, such as "He hops" for singular and "We hop" for plural.