Curriculum

Children will know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words. For example, they will use their understanding of letter-sound relationships to read words like "cat," "fish," and "jump" by sounding out each letter. Additionally, they will recognize common digraphs such as "sh" in "ship" and "ch" in "chat," allowing them to decode those words effectively.

Children will recognize the distinguishing features of a sentence, such as the first word, capitalization, and ending punctuation. For example, they will learn that sentences begin with a capital letter, such as in "The cat is sleeping," and end with punctuation marks like a period, question mark, or exclamation point.

Children will demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print. For example, they will be able to identify the front and back covers of a book, recognize the title and author, and understand that text is read from left to right and top to bottom.

Children will read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding. For example, after reading a simple story, they will visualize the events by creating mental images or drawings of key scenes. They might be encouraged to retell the story in their own words, highlighting the main characters, important events, and their favorite parts.

Children will distinguish between similarly spelled words by identifying the sounds of the letters that differ. For example, they might compare the words "bat" and "bet," noting that the sounds of the letters "a" and "e" are different.

Children will be able to read high-frequency words by sight. For example, they will recognize common words like "the," "and," "is," and "you" without needing to sound them out.

Children will associate the long and short sounds with the common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels: A, E, I, O, and U. For example, they will learn that the short sound for "A" is heard in "cat," while the long sound is in "cake."

Children will demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary sound for each consonant. For example, when shown the letters, they might correctly say the sounds like /b/ for "B," /k/ for "C," and /t/ for "T."

Children will know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words. For example, they will use their understanding of letter sounds and patterns to read simple words like "cat" and "dog" by sounding them out.

Children will add or substitute individual sounds (phonemes) in simple, one-syllable words to make new words. For example, if given the word "bat," they might substitute the /b/ sound for /c/ to create the new word "cat." Alternatively, they could add a sound to create "brat" from "rat" by adding the /b/.