Curriculum

Children will demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print. They will learn concepts such as reading from left to right, recognizing the front and back covers of a book, and identifying the title and author. For example, they might point out the title of a story and explain that it's what the book is called. This helps them develop early literacy skills, providing a strong foundation for future reading and writing success.

Children will be able to determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on kindergarten reading and content. For example, they might use context clues from a story to figure out that the word "bat" can mean an animal or a piece of sports equipment, depending on the sentence.

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 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 spell untaught words phonetically, drawing on phonemic awareness and spelling conventions.** For example, if a child hears the word "bicycle," they might spell it as "biksel" based on their understanding of the sounds in the word.

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 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 frequently occurring root words and their inflectional forms.** For example, they might recognize the root word "look" and identify its inflectional forms such as "looks," "looked," and "looking."

Children will be able to demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings.** For instance, they might discuss similes and metaphors, such as "as fast as a cheetah," and explore the meanings of words that are similar or related, like "happy" and "joyful."

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."