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

• make connections to own experiences from materials such as posters and signs, pictures books, nursery rhymes, poems, fairy tales, and legends
  
• identify characters, settings, and key events
  
• act out or retell stories in sequence
  
• use pictures and context to make predictions about characters and story endings

2. All students identify and work with favorite books independently or with others on teacher directed activities

• talk to others about books
  
• select familiar books and stories for rereading
  
• distinguish fantasy from realistic text.
  

3. All students develop proficiency in beginning reading skills and strategies

• identify the front, back, and title page of book
  
• locate title, table of contents, name of author, and illustrator
  
• demonstrate that print goes from left to right and top to bottom
  
• know concept of a letter, a word, and a sentence
  
• has one to one correspondence (points to word as they read)
  
• recognize own name
  
• match and name upper and lower case letters in random and alphabetical order
  
• know consonant and short vowel sounds and name words that begin with a specific sound
  
• read some high frequency words.
  

4. All students develop phonemic awareness

• identify and produce rhyming sounds
  
• hear and distinguish sounds within a word (beginning, ending, and medial)
  
• blend/combine sounds (/c/-/a/-/t/ becomes cat)
  
• segment/separate a word into its sounds (cat becomes /c/-/a/-/t/)
  
• count the number of sounds in syllables and syllables in words.

1. All students participate in writing activities: brainstorming, illustrating, story-mapping, clustering with pictures, discussing, dictating, editing, and revising.

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

• write own name using appropriate capital and lower case letters
  
• write words and brief sentences to accompany drawings or pictures
  
• use letters and phonetically-spelled words to write about experiences, stories, people, objects, or events.

1. All students begin to use appropriate conventions of written language

• print from left to right and top to bottom
  
• print capital and lower case letters attending to form and spatial alignment
  
• begin to identify and use simple punctuation.
  

2. All students participate in shared language experiences

• identify and sort common pictures and words from within basic categories (e.g., colors, shapes, foods)
  
• describe common objects and events in both general and specific language.
  

3. All students begin to spell correctly

• write consonant-vowel-consonant words
  
• write some high-frequency words
  
• copy print from environment (i.e. word walls, room labels, charts).

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

• follow and give one- and two-step directions for a classroom activity
  
• share ideas and feelings
  
• answer and ask questions in complete thoughts
  
• speak loud enough to be heard, but not too loudly (inside voice vs. outside voice)
  
• wait for own turn to speak, without distracting others, and look at others when they speak.
  

2. All students participate in oral language activities

• describe people, places, things, location, size, color, shape, and action
  
• recite short poems, rhymes, and songs
  
• relate an experience or creative story in a logical sequence.