A Parent Guide to Understanding Kindergarten Skills: Helping Your Child Achieve Success For First Grade and Beyond Reading Writing Math Clipart by Scrappin Doodles
Kindergarten Reading Skills Comprehension: Phonics: Your child should be able to answer questions about the stories they read or hear and be able to compare characters from familiar stories. Ask about characters, setting, and events (if a fiction story). When they have read or heard a story, ask them to repeat what happened in the story in sequence. For non-fiction stories, provide support when asking to find the similarities and differences between texts on the same subject and when discussing how the illustrations support the text. Your child should know the letters and sounds of the alphabet, use the long and short vowels (single vowel patterns) when spelling words, and read common sight words. Invest in magnetic letters for the fridge to play multiple letter games. Say a letter sound and have your child find the matching letter. Ask them to cut out letters from magazines to create an ABC book (great for fine motor skills too!). Have them help you write a shopping list by sounding out words and asking what letters you need to write. Sight Words/High Frequency Words: The goal for sight words is to read them as soon as they are seen. If a student does not know the word within three seconds or needs to sound it out before telling you what it says, it is not counted as a word they know. At home you can have your child find sight words they don t know in the paper or junk mail. Have them practice spelling the words, writing them with fancy pens or markers, or tracing the letters in the carpet or in rice with their fingers. Vocabulary: Print Concepts: Your child should be noticing new words as they read. Point out difficult words and offer an explanation (the zoo now has a new aquarium which is like a giant fish tank). Try to find new words for things you say often such as, Let s travel in the automobile to the supermarket. When reading, ask your child to find the title, author, and illustrator on the cover of the story. Have them take turns identifying letters and words and noticing spaces between letters to denote words. When they read, make sure they are pointing to each word as they read (this helps with learning sight words too!). Phonemic Awareness: Ask your child to find rhyming words in stories from authors like Dr. Seuss or from the class poems. Play games like turning their name into rhymes (Mam-Sam) its okay if the rhyming word is made up. It makes it fun! Stretch out your words into its sounds and see if your child understands what you said (c a t = cat). Ask them to stretch out a word you say. You can also blend and segment (stretch) words or clap syllables from the story you are reading together. Find the beginning and end sounds of one syllable words such as bug (b / ug) and change a sound to create new words (change the /b/ and make hug).
Kindergarten Writing Skills Handwriting: Spelling: While handwriting is important, the focus in kindergarten should be on correctly forming letters according to your school s preference. By the end of the year they should know how to use dotted handwriting paper correctly. It has been shown the less time a child spends on figuring out how to put a letter on paper, the more it frees up their mind to concentrate on how to combine letters and words for writing. This is especially helpful when writing longer stories in first grade. When writing, your child should be spelling their sight words correctly. Create a small book or word list for them to use at home. If a word is not a sight word, they should be able to approximate the spelling by saying the word slowly to find the beginning and end letter sounds and identify a vowel. In kindergarten this process should be done with support. Sentence Fluency/Structure: Your child should be able to write a story with at least three sentences by the end of the year. Ask them when they are done writing to tell you about their story. Their ideas should be in order (I played outside. I saw my friend. We had fun.). Conventions: Organization: Ideas and Content: After reading a favorite story, go back and point out the capital letters and periods. Your child should begin to understand names and sentences have capital letters and a finished thought ends with a period. Play a game where your child needs to jump when you start a sentence and squat down when you end a sentence. As with sentence fluency, a story should be in sequence. Frequently have your child tell you three things about their day in the order they happened. For fun retell their story out of order and have them retell it in order, then write it down in a small booklet of stapled pages. When your child is done writing a story, ask them to revise. In class when we revise we check our writing for details. This should be done with help. I find it is best to have a child tell their story out loud before writing it. When they are done they can reread their writing. If a part or detail they told you was missed, suggest they add it. Your child s story illustration should also include the details they tell you. Adding to their picture is another way to revise to add details to their story. In kindergarten students use the pictures to primarily tell a story especially if they are just learning to read. Any story your child is writing should stick with one topic or big idea. If they are writing about their cat, the story should not be talking about a fish, the rain, and their cat (unless it is a Dr. Seuss book).
Kindergarten Math Skills Counting: Your child should be able to count their numbers to 100, starting at any point (e.g., 63 to 100). Have them count dried beans, steps when walking, etc. They can count while running in place, doing jumping jacks, or count the words in a story they are about to read or just finished reading. When they can count to 100, have them practice skip counting by 5s, and 10s. Addition/Subtraction: In first grade it is very important to know the addition and subtraction facts to 10 quickly and automatically (without needing to think about the answer). Kindergartners love to use objects to count, add, and subtract. Create a counting mat by drawing a fish bowl on paper and use goldfish crackers to create addition or subtraction problems your child can solve. Once they understand adding and subtracting you may begin writing the equation (1 + 2 = 3) to go with their math. Money: While at the store, ask your child to find your change for you. Have them identify the coins you need. At home they can sort pocket change by coin type. In first grade they will learn to count change up to one dollar. For now, have them learn the names of the coins and how much each coin is worth (this is a penny and it is worth 1 cent). 10s/1s (Place Value): Your child should be able to build any number from 11 to 19 in tens and ones. Write a number and ask them what digit is in the ones place (or tens place). Ask them to tell you a number that has a (e.g., 5) in the ones place. Have them draw tens and ones to create 2-digit numbers to 20. Measurement: In kindergarten measuring is about comparing and exploring. Instead of using a ruler to measure, students are encouraged to compare objects using things like blocks and paperclilps. At home your child can see how many marshmallows a spoon length is compared to a fork. Ask them to estimate the number of items in a jar. They should begin to recognize the difference between 5 objects and a 100 objects and develop what we call number sense.
The New Common Core Standards Note: The Common Core Standards are meant as a guideline for what your child should be able to do by the end of their grade level. Reading: Foundational Skills: The Common Core Standards for Reading include sections for Foundational Skills, Literature, and Informational Text. The Foundational Skills are further broken down into Print Concepts, Phonological Awareness (also called Phonemic Awareness), Phonics and Word Recognition, and Fluency. Phonics versus Phonological Awareness: Phonics involves the eyes and ears whereas phonological awareness involves only the ears. Phonics is learning to associate letters and groups of letters to spoken language. Phonological awareness is teaching a child to be aware of the ability to manipulate sounds without using print. Literature: Literature is further broken down into Key Ideas and Details, Craft and Structure, Integration of Knowledge and Ideas, and Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity. Key Ideas and Details: This section includes being able to have a discussion about a story, identify characters, settings, and events in a story, and the ability to retell a familiar story. Craft and Structure: The main ideas in this category are discussing unknown words in a text, recognizing genres (stories and poems), and distinguishing the difference between authors and illustrators with support. Integration of Knowledge and Ideas: With support, the ability to compare and contrast character(s) experiences in familiar stories and understanding that illustrations help to tell a story are the focus of this section. Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity: The ability to participate in class shared readings with purpose and understanding. Informational Text: Informational Text is broken down similarly to Literature. Key Ideas and Details: This section includes being able to discuss and identify topic and main details, and make connections within the text. Craft and Structure: This involves distinguishing the difference between authors and illustrators with support, identifying the front and back cover and title page of a book, and discussing unknown words in a text. Integration of Knowledge and Ideas: Being able to describe the relationship between illustrations and the text, identifying supporting details, and finding text evidence to support points in a text. Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity: The ability to participate in class shared readings with purpose and understanding.
Writing: The Common Core Standards for Writing include sections for Text Types and Purposes, Production and Distribution of Writing, Research to Build and Present Knowledge, and Range of Writing. Text Types and Purposes: Production and Distribution of Writing: Research to Build and Present Knowledge: Young kindergarten writers are expected to begin to develop a knowledge of the relationship between letters and words. At the end of kindergarten, your child should be able to use a combination of invented spelling (phonetically based writing), sight words, and dictation (a teacher provides the spelling) to create a story that can be orally retold. Please don t panic if their stories look like scribbles in the beginning of the year. This is a normal part of the writing process. This section includes writing opinion pieces about a favorite book through drawings and dictation, explanatory/informative texts, and narratives about a single event told in sequence. With help from adults, writing should be revised to add details and can be published through digital tools such as Microsoft Word. Writing should be a collaborative effort to create a shared story (e.g., an author study of favorite books) and find facts or recall information from personal experiences with support. Range of Writing: Although this section is listed for kindergarten it does not begin until third grade. It includes being able to follow the writing process (write, revise, edit) and write on a variety of topics and in a variety of styles (e.g. narratives, poetry, informational).
Math: The Common Core Standards for Math include sections for Counting and Cardinality (exclusive to kindergarten), Operations and Algebraic Thinking, Number and Operations in Base Ten, Measurement and Data, and Geometry. Counting and Cardinality: This section is further broken down into know number names and the count sequence, count to tell the number of objects, and compare numbers. Know Number Names and the Count Sequence: The main focus of this section is being able to count to 100 from any given number 1-100 and writing numbers 0 to 20. Count to Tell the Number of Objects: This section is about recognizing a number represents a quantity and being able to count up to 20 objects in multiple patterns when asked how many? Compare Numbers: This includes matching two groups of up to 10 objects to compare if the groups are greater, less than, or equal to each other and comparing numbers 1-10 in written form. Operations and Algebraic Thinking: This section includes understanding the process of addition and subtraction, solving addition and subtraction problems within 10, adding and subtracting within 5, and exploring all the ways to make number up to and equal to 10. Number and Operations in Base Ten: This section is all about understanding place value (base ten) to the tens place to represent the numbers from 11 to 19. Measurement and Data: Measurement includes measuring, describing, and comparing two objects with common attributes. This should also include classifying and counting up to 10 objects into given categories using their attributes. Geometry: This section is about reasoning with shapes and their attributes. It includes identifying, describing, analyzing, comparing, creating, and composing shapes (circles, triangles, squares, rectangles, cubes, cones, hexagons, spheres, and cylinders). For further information check out www.corestandards.org and your state s department of education website.