Stay on track for a successful school year with this handy list of essential skills!

Entering kindergarteners should be able to:

• Recall their first and last names and names of family members.
• Recognize and name most upper- and lowercase letters from A–Z.
• Recognize and name numbers from 1 to 10.
• Recognize and identify the following simple shapes: square, triangle, circle, rectangle and oval.
• Recognize and name the following colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, black and white.
• Identify parts of their bodies, basic articles of clothing (e.g., hat, shoes, shirt) and familiar buildings (e.g., school, store, hospital).
• Count from 1 to 10.
• Understand general time concepts (e.g., yesterday, today, tomorrow, last week).
• Understand the use of ordinal numbers (e.g., first, second, third).
• Follow simple instructions (e.g., “Please put your lunch box on the shelf.”).

Entering 1st graders should be able to:

• Recognize, identify and write upper- and lowercase letters from A–Z.
• Identify beginning sounds from A–Z.
• Understand that letters can be combined to make sounds (e.g., “The letters ‘tr’ combine to make the sound you hear at the beginning of the word train.”).
• Recognize at least 20 sight-words.
• Summarize or retell a story that has been read to them.
• Spell and write their first and last names.
• Count by ones, fives and tens up to 100.
• Understand the use of one-to-one correspondence in counting (e.g., counting only one object per number).
• Name the days of the week and months of the year.
• Recall simple addition and subtraction facts with answers up to ten.
• Understand that clocks are used to measure the passing of time.
• Correctly hold a pencil or crayon.
• Cut with scissors along a straight line.
• Follow classroom rules and take turns.

Entering 2nd graders should be able to:

• Read first grade-level books with relative ease (including demonstrated ability to recognize basic sight-words and “sound out” unfamiliar words).
• Recall events that happen in the beginning, middle and end of a story.
• Write complete sentences with correct punctuation and capitalization.
• Identify the five senses and the body parts associated with each.
• Recall simple addition facts with sums up to 20 and their corresponding subtraction facts (e.g., 9 + 5 = 14, 5 + 9 = 14, 14 – 5 = 9, 14 – 9 = 5).
• Perform two-digit addition and subtraction problems without regrouping. That is, no “carrying” is necessary for addition problems (e.g., 14 + 23 = 37), and no “borrowing” is necessary for subtraction problems (e.g., 45 – 33 = 12).
• Tell time on a clock face to the hour and half hour (e.g., 5:00, 5:30, etc.).
• Recognize and name pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters and their values.
• Identify and extend simple patterns (e.g., “red, blue, red, blue, red, ____”).
• Understand the concepts of greater than, less than and equal to.
• Read and follow simple directions.
• Work independently while seated for an extended period of time.

Entering 3rd graders should be able to:

• Read paragraphs, short stories and simple chapter books with fluency, expression and comprehension.
• Identify high frequency words with unusual or “tricky” spellings.
• Add and subtract multiple-digit numbers with regrouping. That is, addition problems that require “carrying” a number from one place value to the next (e.g., 148 + 36 = 184) or subtraction problems that require “borrowing” a number from a higher place value (e.g., 261 – 108 = 153).
• Understand the basic concept of multiplication (e.g., 2 x 4 means two groups of four).
• Tell time on a clock face to the hour, half hour, quarter hour and five minutes.
• Accurately use coins to make and count change.
• Understand the relationship between word problems and mathematical calculations.
• Multiply single-digit numbers.
• Work cooperatively with a partner or in a group.

Entering 4th graders should be able to:

• Read chapter books with fluency, expression and comprehension.
• “Decode” and identify unfamiliar words through the use of prefixes, suffixes and root words. (For example, the word “dishonest” can be broken down into two parts: the prefix “dis-” meaning “not,” and the root word “honest” meaning “truthful.”)
• Read about a topic in order to gain more information (i.e., reading to learn vs. learning to read).
• Write a structured paragraph about a topic.
• Multiply and divide single- and multi-digit numbers (e.g., 3 x 281 = 843; 614 ÷ 2 = 307).
• Calculate elapsed time (i.e., how much time has passed from one event to another).
• Understand the concepts of fractions and decimals as they relate to whole numbers.
• Compare fractions and decimals (e.g., ½ is greater than .2; ¾ is less than .9, etc.).
• Have a more complex understanding of the relationship between choices and consequences.