1. All students experience a wide range and variety of material and produce evidence of understanding that print conveys meaning

• identify the main idea and relevant details in informational material, such as newspapers magazines, brochures and posters
  
• identify similarities and differences in stories, nursery rhymes, poems, folk tales, etc.
  
• draw simple inferences and determine why certain characters behave the way they do * relate literature to own life experiences using prior knowledge
  
• sequence events; make, modify, and confirm predictions; and express opinions
  
• retell, act out a story, or create a new ending consistent with the story
  
• identify and describe the story elements of plot, setting, and characters.
  

2. All students share favorite books and work independently with letters, words and stories, applying concepts and skills that have been previously acquired

• read, discuss, and write about many books
  
• participate in author studies
  
• maintain a reading log of books read independently
  
• use a repertoire of strategies to persevere, even when reading becomes difficult.
  

3. All students demonstrate increasing proficiency in basic reading skills, vocabulary development, and reading fluency at their instructional level

• apply concepts about print
  
  • match oral words to printed words
    
  • identify title, author, illustrator, and table of contents
    
  • identify letters, words, and sentences
    
• apply phonemic awareness
  
  • count the number of syllables in a word
    
  • count the number of sounds in a word or syllable
    
  • create and state a series of rhyming words
    
  • blend sounds for more complex words (/m/-/a/-/n/ becomes man)
    
  • segment/separate a word into its sounds (cat becomes /c/-/a/-/t/)
    
  • identify beginning, middle, ending sounds of words
    
  • change beginning, middle, ending sounds of words to make new words
    
  • distinguish long and short vowel sounds in orally stated single-syllable words (bit-bite)
    
• apply decoding word recognition strategies
  
  • use high-frequency words, regular/irregular words, word families, word endings, etc.
    
  • blend beginning/ending consonants, digraphs, and short vowel sounds to decode single-syllable words (CVC)
    
• decode single-syllable words containing long vowels (CVCe words)
  
• begin to decode single syllable words with vowel digraphs and r-controlled vowels
  
• identify compound words and contractions
  
• identify suffixes (e.g. s, ed, ing) and root words (e.g. look, looked, looking)
  
• read unknown words using meaning, grammar, and phonics
  
• search, predict, monitor, and self-correct while reading
  
• apply reading comprehension strategies:
  
  • formulate and respond to who, what, where, when
    and how questions
    
  • summarize, restate, predict
    
  • use picture clues to read, understand, and confirm unknown words
    
  • use context to resolve ambiguities about word and sentence meaning.

1. All students participate in writing for a variety of purposes

• select a focus when writing
  
• begin to develop a writing voice
  
• use descriptive words when writing
  
• write brief narratives describing an experience (e.g., fictional, autobiographical)
  
• write brief expository descriptions of a real object, person, place, or event using sensory details.
  

2. All students participate in writing activities and apply them to story mapping, illustrating, labeling, editing, revising, brainstorming, comparing/contrasting, discussing and dictating.

1. All students use, with some assistance, appropriate conventions of written language

• distinguish between declarative, exclamatory, and interrogative sentences
  
• use periods, question marks, and exclamation marks correctly when constructing simple coherent sentences
  
• capitalize the first word of a sentence, names of people, and the pronoun "I"
  
• print correctly and legibly attending to form and spatial alignment
  
• begin to edit and revise individual and group writing
  
• identify and correctly use singular and plural nouns.
  

2. All students participate in shared language experiences to develop vocabulary

• classify grade-appropriate categories of words (e.g., concrete collections like animals and foods).
  

3. All students continue to spell correctly

• write sentences using core of high-frequency words
  
• spell three- and four-letter short vowel words and phonetically spell other sight words
  
• begin to alphabetize to the first letter
  
• begin to use word sources (dictionary, previously written work, and words from the environment) to write and confirm unknown words to approximate conventional spelling.

1. All students listen for information, ask questions for understanding, and respond to the questions of others in a respectful manner

• follow and give multi-step directions
  
• in a discussion, be able to wait for turn, listen to others while waiting and stay on the topic
  
• relate an experience or creative story in a logical sequence
  
• speak audibly in complete, coherent sentences
  
• use descriptive words.
  

2. All students participate in oral language activities

• recite poems, rhymes, songs, and stories
  
• relate an important life event or personal experience.