Kindergarten Accomplishments

• Knows the parts of a book and their functions.

• Begins to track print when listening to a familiar text being read or when rereading own writing.

• “Reads” familiar texts emergently, i.e., not necessarily verbatim from the print alone.

• Recognizes and can name all uppercase and lowercase letters.

• Understands that the sequence of letters in a written word represents the sequence of sounds (phonemes) in a spoken word (alphabetic principle).

• Learns many, though not all, one-to-one letter-sound correspondences.

• Recognizes some words by sight, including a few very common ones ( “the,”“I,” “my,”“you,”“is,”“are”).

• Uses new vocabulary and grammatical constructions in own speech.

• Makes appropriate switches from oral to written language styles.

• Notices when simple sentences fail to make sense.

• Connects information and events in texts to life and life experiences to text.

• Retells, reenacts, or dramatizes stories or parts of stories.

• Listens attentively to books the teacher reads to class.

• Can name some book titles and authors.

• Demonstrates familiarity with a number of types or genres of text (e.g., storybooks, expository texts, poems, newspapers, and everyday print such as signs, notices, labels).

• Correctly answers questions about stories read aloud.

• Makes predictions based on illustrations or portions of stories.

• Demonstrates understanding that spoken words consist of sequences of phonemes.

• Given spoken sets like “dan, dan, den,” can identify the first two as the same and the third as different.

• Given spoken sets like “dak, pat, zen,” can identify the first two as sharing one same sound.

• Given spoken segments, can merge them into a meaningful target word.

• Given a spoken word, can produce another word that rhymes with it.

• Independently writes many uppercase and lowercase letters.

• Uses phonemic awareness and letter knowledge to spell independently (invented or creative spelling).

• Writes (unconventionally) to express own meaning.

• Builds a repertoire of some conventionally spelled words.

• Shows awareness of distinction between “kid writing” and conventional orthography.

• Writes own name (first and last) and the first names of some friends or classmates.

• Can write most letters and some words when they are dictated.