Hearing & Understanding

• Follow 3-4 oral directions in a sequence
• Understand direction words (e.g., location, space, and time words)
• Correctly answer questions about a grade-level story

Reading

• Have fully mastered phonics/sound awareness
• Associate speech sounds, syllables, words, and phrases with their written forms
• Recognize many words by sight; Reread and self-correct
• Use meaning clues when reading (e.g., pictures, titles/headings, information in the story)
• Locate information to answer questions
• Explain key elements of a story (main idea, main characters, plot)
• Use own experience to predict and justify what will happen in grade-level stories
• Read, paraphrase/retell a story in a sequence
• Read grade-level stories, poetry, or dramatic text silently and aloud with fluency
• Read spontaneously
• Identify and use spelling patterns in words when reading

Writing

• Write legibly
• Use a variety of sentence types in writing essays, poetry, or short stories (fiction and nonfiction)
• Use basic punctuation and capitalization appropriately
• Organize writing to include beginning, middle, and end
• Spell frequently used words correctly
• Progress from inventive spelling (e.g., spelling by sound) to more accurate spelling

Talking

• Be easily understood
• Answer more complex "yes/no" questions
• Ask and answer "wh" questions (e.g., who, what, where, when, why)
• Use increasingly complex sentence structures
• Clarify and explain words and ideas
• Give directions with 3-4 steps
• Use oral language to inform, to persuade, and to entertain
• Stay on topic, take turns, and use appropriate eye contact during conversation
• Open and close conversation appropriately

Working With Your Child to Achieve Success

• Talk with your child frequently
• Read a variety of books; read often and talk with your child about the story
• Help your child focus on sound patterns of words such as those found in rhyming games
• Have your child retell stories and talk about events of the day
• Talk with your child during daily activities; give directions for your child to follow (e.g., making cookies)
• Talk about how things are alike and different
• Lets create our own books from magazine pictures, then help me to write the story underneath
• Give your child reasons and opportunities to write