Kindergarten is an important foundational year when children aged 5-6 are curious about the people and things around them and enjoy discovering new things!  Kindergarteners need and enjoy a lot of play time, both alone and in small groups, to practice their social skills and problem solving skills.  Parents play an important role in their child’s kindergarten educational journey as supporters and reinforcers of behaviors and academics at home.

Social and emotional strategies/skills include:

• Following directions
• Getting along with others at school and home
• Making and keeping friends through conversation and play
• Identifying emotions in self and others
• Using age appropriate strategies to regulate behavior and resolve conflict

Foundational English Language Acquisition(ELA) Skills include:

• Letter identification/sound recognition
• Print upper and lower case letters
• Blending/segmenting simple words
• Identification of high frequency words Fry's First 100 Words List
• Writing a simple sentence.

Foundational Math Skills include:

• Write and use drawings to represent numbers up to 20 
• Count to 100 by 1’s and 10’s
• Understand place value from 11-19
• Compare numbers up to 20 using less than, greater than, or equal to
• Solve addition problems up to 10
• Subtract by 5
• Identify 2D shapes (circle, triangle, square, rectangle, hexagon)
• Identify 3D shapes (sphere, cube, cone, cylinder)

Tips for Parents of Kindergarten Students:

• Talk with your child daily about the school day (friendship, activities, books, etc)
• Read together everyday
• Practice listening and following directions
• Sing songs, read rhyming books, notice rhyme in everyday language
• Use chalk, paint, other materials to practice letters while talking about sounds
• Use countdowns for birthdays, holidays, etc
• Play number guessing games up to 20 (how many candies in the bowl, how many minutes to do a task, etc)
• Ensure 9-12 hours of sleep per day by instituting regular bedtime routines.

First Grade, typically for students aged 6-7 years old, is the first required year of school for students.  First graders build on and refine the skills that are taught in kindergarten.  Students in this grade will develop more independence academically and socially but still require emotional support and approval.  First graders enjoy being a part of decision making, whether at home or school.

Social and emotional strategies/skills include:

• Follows directions with two steps
• Enjoys routines, rules, organized schedules with time frames
• Gets along with others at school and home
• Begins to understand that friendships are not controlled completely by them
• Uses age appropriate strategies to regulate behavior and resolve conflict
• Enjoys encouragement for positive behavior
• Begins to see other points of view

Foundational English Language Acquisition(ELA) Skills include:

• Identification of high frequency words Fry's First 100 Words List, CVC List, and Consonant Digraph Words
• Read 60 words per minute
• Discuss story elements such as plot, character, events, and setting as well as main idea and details
• Differentiate between fiction and non-fiction stories
• Write 3 sentences with capitalization, phonetic spelling, periods.
• Beginning comprehension of character, setting, problem, events, solution

Foundational Math Skills include:

• Count and write to 100 by 1’s and 10’s
• Add and subtract double digit numbers
• Compare place values through 100
• Find missing addends through 20
• Solve simple word problems

Tips for Parents of 1st Grade Students:

• Talk with your child daily about the school day (friendship, activities, books, etc)
• Read together everyday and encourage your child to point to the words
• Practice listening and following directions for 2-3 step tasks
• Encourage responsibility and independence
• Create a list of rhyming words
• Use a family calendar to organize the week and include your child in planning
• Ensure 9-12 hours of sleep per day by instituting regular bedtime routines.

Second grade is a wonderful year wherein your child will become more independent socially, emotionally, and academically. Children of this age (7-8) are more likely to begin to understand the concept of fairness, even though it may mean that they don’t get what they want.  

Social and emotional strategies/skills include:

• Understands and respects the rights of others
• Follows home and school rules independently
• Shows empathy and caring for others
• Uses words to reason and resolve conflict, seeks adult assistance when necessary
• Chooses materials and activities and participates respectfully
• Appears confident and comfortable around other children and adults
• Can sustain attention to work for 8 minutes 

Foundational English Language Acquisition(ELA) Skills include:

• Read 90 words per minute with expression
• Meet Basic Phonics Skills Assessment Test Standards
• Write a 5 sentence paragraph on topic using capitalization and ending punctuation
• Recognize parts of speech (verb, adjective, noun)
• Ask and answer questions to show understanding of literature and informational text
• Demonstrate comprehension by predicting outcomes of books and movies.
• Summarize the important details of stories.

Foundational Math Skills include:

• Read, write, and count within 1000
• Understand place value through the thousands place
• Compare 3 digit numbers using <, >, =
• Add and subtract 2 and 3 digit numbers with and without regrouping within 1000 to solve word problems
• Work with equal groups of objects to gain foundations for multiplication
• Measure using inches, feet, centimeters, and meters
• Identify triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, hexagons, and cubes
• Tell time to the quarter hour

Tips for Parents of 2nd Grade Students:

• Be a role-model, especially when faced with challenges and conflict.
• Talk with your child daily about the school day (friendship, activities, books, current events, etc)
• Read together everyday and take turns reading to each other
• Give your child the opportunity to make choices for their behavior that have consequences and abide by the consequence. 
• Praise your child for positive behaviors, making good decisions, and outcomes
• When other adults are present, ask your child questions that they know the answers to and enjoy discussing
• Use a family calendar to organize the week and include your child in planning
• Ensure 9-12 hours of sleep per day by instituting regular bedtime routine

Third grade is a year of great change for kids!  They are full of energy and are often in a hurry!  Their enthusiasm is magical and contagious!  Third graders play hard, but tire easily and can often be overzealous, taking on more than they are able to handle.  At this age(8-9), students learn well by doing, for example, with manipulatives and other hands-on activities.  Exaggerated story-telling using elaborate words is typical of this age group.

Social and emotional strategies/skills include:

• Works collaboratively in groups and contributes to the group effort.
• Explores fairness and justice with differences of opinion
• Adjusts better to change, showing signs of an easygoing personality
• Takes more risks and recovers from mistakes or problems more quickly
• Enjoys friendship groups with mostly same gender friends. 

Foundational English Language Acquisition(ELA) Skills include:

• Answer inference questions from text 
• Use text evidence to support statements
• Write multiple (3 or more) well formed paragraphs on a topic with sensory details and transitions, correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar
• Identify main idea, theme, message, and purpose with text evidence for fables, legends, myths, poems, and non-fiction reading
• Identify expository text features (e.g. table of contents, glossary, index, captions, maps, diagrams, etc.)

Foundational Math Skills include:

• Read, write and say numbers up to 100,000
• Memorize multiplication and division facts through 12
• Understand, solve, and explain 2 step word problems using all four operations
• Understand the foundational skills of fractions using multiple representations
• Compute multi-digit addition and subtraction problems up to 10,000
• Understand the attributes of shapes in different categories
• Use measuring tools to calculate length, width, height, area, and volume
• Tell time to the nearest minute

Tips for Parents of 3rd Grade Students:

• Give praise and recognition to your child
• Set aside time for your child to talk and explain their ideas
• Encourage your child so socialize in groups as feasible
• Encourage cooperation over competition in group tasks
• Help your child compartmentalize stressful things like school tests
• Write directions out for your child to follow (eg morning/bedtime routines)

Fourth grade is when students enter the upper elementary years at school and become better at making decisions, solving problems, and working in groups.  Their bodies are growing quickly, often in spurts, and emotions begin to emerge that may not have presented themselves before.  Fourth graders still enjoy learning in fun and gamified ways.  However, fourth graders also begin to emerge as deep thinkers, able to make cross curricular connections and choices.

Social and emotional strategies/skills include:

• Expresses needs and feelings verbally
• Identifies facial expressions and body language and uses cues in social situations
• Respects other peoples’ perspectives, especially in conflicts
• Depend less on adult guidance
• Research, plan, and solve problems independently

Foundational English Language Acquisition(ELA) Skills include:

• Summarize fiction and informational texts with key details
• Determine main idea and theme with evidence from the text
• Compare and contrast the way that multiple texts address a theme
• Utilize context clues for determining unfamiliar vocabulary definitions and clarify meanings of words and phrases with multiple meanings
• Describe text structures (e.g. chronology, comparison, cause/effect, problem/solution)
• Produce multi-paragraph pieces of writing with simple, complex and compound sentences, using proper grammar and punctuation
• Composes emails with that have an introduction and purpose for communication with the guidance and supervision of adults

Foundational Math Skills include:

• Use four operations with whole numbers to solve algebraic and word problems
• Use place value and properties of operations (associative, distributive, etc) to solve problems
• Multiply and divide fluently with 2 and 3 digit numbers
• Understand fraction equivalence and decimal notation for fractions
• Solve measurement conversions from larger to smaller units
• Draw and identify lines and angles and classify shapes by line and angle measurement
• Find area with accurate units

Tips for Parents of 4th Grade Students:

• Be patient with your child, especially when emotions change moment to moment
• Practice ways to deescalate unpleasant emotions to help make responsible decisions
• Encourage empathy with your child as s/he begins to see the world through other peoples’ lenses
• Encourage assertive behavior when asking for needs and wants in a calm respectful manner
• Help your child practice using the phrase, “May I explain” in situations where they feel they may be misunderstood
• Help your child to begin to advocate for themselves
• Continue the sleep schedule of 9-10 hours each night

Students in 5th grade are a great deal of fun to be around as they begin to test their senses of humor on others.  5th graders enjoy light hearted pranks and jokes that are more complex and make them think, such as riddles.  At around age 10, having a trusted adult other than a parent is important for them to get perspective on their thoughts, ideas, and struggles.  5th graders have an awareness of their strengths and weaknesses.  They require special motivation and confidence building in areas where they perceive they have deficits.

Social and emotional strategies/skills include:

• Emotion management and de-escalation of frustration
• Understanding choices in problem solving and choosing wisely to prevent regret
• Managing revengeful feelings by seeking alternatives
• Calming down and thinking clearly before handling put-downs
• Expressing empathy and assisting others when they are struggling

Foundational English Language Acquisition(ELA) Skills include:

• Quote accurately from the text when summarizing and drawing inferences
• Read and comprehend informational texts including history, social science, science and technical texts
• Compare and contrast structure (chronology, comparison, cause/effect, problem/solution)
• Produce clear and coherent writing with organization and development that are appropriate to the task, purpose, and audience
• Write a research paper with information from multiple sources, cited sources, and a narrowed topic 
• Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in text, including figurative language (e.g. idioms, metaphors, and similes)

Foundational Math Skills include:

• Identify. read, write, and compare decimals and fractions through the thousandths
• Add , subtract, multiply, and divide decimals, fractions, and mixed numbers with like and unlike denominators
• Find area with squared units and volume of rectangular prisms and use cubic units 
• Identify points on the coordinate plane for real world problem solving
• Write and interpret numerical expressions in base ten with decimals, fractions, powers

Tips for Parents of 5th Grade Students:

• Be patient with your child as his/her body is experiencing growth spurts that have physical and emotional effects
• Provide opportunities for your child to spend time with other trusted adults to build healthy relationships
• Talk through your feelings of frustration and how you manage negative emotions
• Be a role model of healthy friendships
• Look for signs of anxiety and assist in relieving your child of stress through exercise, outdoor play, and rest

Sixth grade is a year of great opportunity for kids.  This year is naturally filled with inconsistency as a great deal of physical growth (on average 3-4 inches!) and personal discovery is going on.  Sixth graders do not typically self-regulate their sleep schedule, nutrition intake, etc. and often like to debate their needs with adults.  Boys and girls are very peer-approval driven, requiring extra love and affirmation from parents and other loving adults.

Social and emotional strategies/skills include:

• Understands the many meanings of social groups, group membership, and how groups function
• Use humor to de-escalate difficult conversations/situations
• Identifies potential consequences of actions
• Meets new people more easily and makes friendship choices 

Foundational English Language Acquisition(ELA) Skills include:

• Finding and citing text evidence explicitly to support analysis and inference from the text
• Determine the meaning of words and phrases including figurative language and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of a specific word choice on meaning and tone
• Trace and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, distinguishing claims that are supported by reasons and evidence from claims that are not
• Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience
• Conduct short research projects to answer a question, drawing on several sources and refocusing the inquiry when appropriate

Foundational Math Skills include:

• Write and interpret numerical expressions - use parentheses, brackets, and braces in numerical expressions
• Solve word problems by showing the algebraic expressions with the variable
• Understand the place value system - read, write and compare decimals to thousandths understanding that the value of the digit to the left is 1/10 greater.
• Understand the relationship between decimals and fractions and be able to find equivalencies
• Add, subtract, multiply, and divide fractions with unlike denominators including in word problems
• Convert among different-sized standards of measurement.
• Measure volume by counting unit cubes and using formulas
• Understand perpendicular number lines & coordinate planes - x/y axis and x/y coordinates
• Identify and Graph points on a coordinate plane

Tips for Parents of 6th Grade Students:

• Note continuing growth spurts and be patient with physical, social, and emotional changes
• Assist your child in setting physical and social boundaries and identifying other peoples’ boundaries and abiding by them
• Help your child note the difference between passive, aggressive, assertive, and passive aggressive behavior and encourage him/her to be assertive when needed
• Point out opportunities for showing how interdependence between family members and how teamwork keeps things running smoothly
• Encourage slow thinking for situations that may have consequences 
• Express patience, love, and trust daily