What do kindergarteners need to know? What are kindergarten ELA standards in CA? Did you know kindergarteners had ELA standards? We’ve got you covered!
Introduction: Understanding Kindergarten ELA Standards
As parents, understanding what your child will learn in kindergarten is crucial to supporting their academic journey. But why do kindergarteners have ELA standards? The standards are there to build a solid foundation for your student. These standards provide building blocks for reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
Today, we’ll break down the key kindergarten ELA standards to help your child build academic success. We’ll discuss how these standards help children develop essential literacy skills and how you can support your child’s learning at home.
This comprehensive guide will offer valuable insights into what key kindergarten ELA standards to expect and how to best prepare your child for a successful school year. Let’s dive in and discover the building blocks of literacy for our youngest learners!
I. Reading Standards for Literature
These kindergarten ELA standards are important because they will help your student through their entire academic career. As we go forward, keep in mind these standards are for kindergarteners and children will understand them at the ability of a kindergartener. Please do not add stress to your student if they cannot produce a story arc. 🙂
1. Understanding Stories
In kindergarten, children will begin to explore stories in a more structured way. They will learn to ask and answer questions about the stories they read, which helps them engage more deeply with the text. Retelling familiar stories, including details about characters, settings, and major events, is a key focus. This not only improves their comprehension but also their ability to recall and sequence information.
2. Recognizing Story Elements
Children will start to identify important elements of a story, such as who the characters are, where the story takes place, and what happens in the story. They will also practice asking about new words and understanding their meanings within the context of the story. This helps build their vocabulary and comprehension skills. These are key kindergarten ELA skills but these are standards they will need throughout their public school education.
3. Engaging with Texts
Active engagement in reading activities is encouraged. This means children will participate in group reading activities and discussions about the stories they read. Such participation helps them develop a love for reading and enhances their ability to understand and interpret texts.
Tips: You can help by reading books with your child. While reading, make sure you stop and ask questions like, “how do you think Ariel feels?” Or, “Do you think Lola will ever eat a tomato?” Questions like these will help children think more deeply about the stories they are reading. You can begin discussing ideas of heroes and villains.
By focusing on these aspects, the Reading Standards for Literature aim to foster a deep understanding and appreciation of stories, setting the stage for a lifetime of reading enjoyment and success.
II. Reading Standards for Informational Text
Many students in the middle school and high school grades struggle in this area. Reading informational texts with your student will help them build the vocabulary and the type of thinking required in later grades. Reading informational texts together with your child will help your child maser kindergarten ELA standards.
1. Understanding Informational Texts
Kindergarteners will learn to explore and understand informational texts, which are different from stories. They will practice asking and answering questions about the main topic and key details of these texts. This helps them learn to identify important information and understand the main ideas presented.
Additionally, they will describe connections between individuals, events, or ideas within the text, which aids in comprehending how information is related and organized.
2. Exploring New Words
Children will encounter new vocabulary in informational texts. They will learn to ask questions about unknown words and understand their meanings in context. This process is crucial for building their vocabulary, and arguably one of the most important kindergarten ELA standards. They will also learn to identify parts of a book, such as the front cover, back cover, and title page, which helps them become familiar with the format and structure of informational texts.
3. Comparing Texts
As children become more comfortable with reading, they will start to compare and contrast different texts on the same topic. This skill helps them recognize similarities and differences in how information is presented, enhancing their analytical skills and understanding of different perspectives.
Tips: This is your chance to make science fun! Read about planets and life cycles. Consider how-to books and books with facts, or even joke books are fun! Ask questions like, “What’s happening here?” Or, “What do you think is going to happen next?” Making predictions is very important, and so is listing the order things happen. Keep reading journals with facts about the things you’ve learned together.
By mastering these kindergarten ELA standards, children will develop the ability to comprehend and engage with informational texts, which are essential for their academic growth and lifelong learning.
III. Reading Standards: Foundational Skills
I talk a lot about print awareness and phonological awareness, especially for younger children. These skills will set your child up for success because understanding the basic sounds of English will help them sound out words better. If you can also teach your child how to make connections in the words they’re reading, they’ll better be able to understand difficult words when they come across them later. Kindergarten ELA standards will be a breeze for your child if you teach these.
1. Print Awareness
Kindergarteners will develop a strong understanding of how books and printed text work. They will learn to follow words from left to right, top to bottom, and page by page. Recognizing all uppercase and lowercase letters of the alphabet is also a key goal. These skills are essential for understanding the basics of reading and writing. Without these foundational skills it will be impossible to master kindergarten ELA standards.
2. Phonological Awareness
Phonological awareness involves recognizing and working with the sounds of spoken language. Children will practice recognizing and producing rhyming words, blending sounds to make words, and breaking words into syllables. They will also learn to isolate and pronounce the beginning, middle, and ending sounds in simple words. These activities help them understand how sounds form words, which is crucial for reading development.
3. Phonics and Word Recognition
Children will begin to understand the relationship between letters and sounds (phonics). They will practice sounding out words and recognizing common sight words like “the,” “is,” and “my.” This skill is fundamental for reading fluently and accurately.
4. Reading Fluently
Fluency in reading means being able to read text smoothly and with understanding. Kindergarteners will practice reading simple texts with purpose and comprehension. This helps them develop confidence and enjoyment in reading, setting a strong foundation for more complex reading tasks in the future.
Tips: You can help by creating a print-rich environment. Kids need to see words. Read everything. Make a game out of recognizing letters and build a time and space for you to read together.
By mastering these foundational kindergarten ELA standards, children will build the necessary tools for successful reading and writing, paving the way for academic achievement and a lifelong love of learning.
IV. Writing Standards
Writing is not an easy skill for kids. They need to take time to build their pre-writing skills before they start to write. Writing can become a chore if children have no exposure to writing before school. Add these concepts to your introduction of kindergarten ELA standards.
1. Writing Basics
In kindergarten, children will begin to express their thoughts and ideas through writing. They will use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to create various types of texts. This includes opinion pieces, where they share their thoughts about a topic or book, informative/explanatory texts, where they provide information or explain something, and narrative texts, where they tell a story about an event or series of events. This helps them learn to organize their thoughts and communicate effectively.
2. Improving Writing
With guidance from adults, children will learn to improve their writing. They will respond to questions and suggestions from peers and teachers, adding details to strengthen their work. This process helps them understand the importance of revising and editing their writing to make it clearer and more detailed.
3. Using Digital Tools
In our digital age, it’s important for children to become familiar with using technology for writing. With adult support, kindergarteners will explore various digital tools to produce and publish their writing. They will also learn to collaborate with peers on writing projects using these tools. This experience prepares them for future academic tasks and enhances their digital literacy.
Tips: Build up your child’s hand muscles and coordination. Do sensory activities like threading beads on yarn or creating masterpieces with play dough. Use play dough tools to draw and make letters. Practice creating designs with beans or rice on lined paper.
By developing these writing kindergarten ELA standards, children will learn to express themselves clearly and creatively, laying the groundwork for effective communication and academic success. These skills will help them later when they’re learning Kindergarten ELA standards.
V. Speaking and Listening Standards
Some children are better at speaking and some students are better at listening. Both are skills they need in order for a successful transition into kindergarten. These skills are important for kindergarten ELA standards but are also valuable life skills.
1. Conversation Skills
In kindergarten, children will learn to participate in group discussions with their peers and adults. They will practice following agreed-upon rules for conversations, such as listening to others and taking turns speaking. This helps them develop important social skills and the ability to engage in meaningful dialogues.
They will also learn to continue a conversation through multiple exchanges, enhancing their ability to communicate effectively. The key to success in speaking is never to push kids more than they are ready for.
2. Asking Questions
Children will learn to confirm their understanding of what they hear by asking and answering questions about key details. If something is not clear, they will practice requesting clarification. This skill is crucial for ensuring they comprehend the information being presented and can engage more deeply with the content.
3. Presentation Skills
Kindergarteners will develop their ability to describe familiar people, places, things, and events in detail. They will practice speaking audibly and clearly, expressing their thoughts, feelings, and ideas. Additionally, they will use drawings or other visual displays to provide additional detail when describing something. These activities help them become more confident and effective communicators.
Tips: Children at this age can complete multistep instructions, so you help prepare your child by building up their listening skills with easy multistep instructions. For example, you can ask your child to, “Go upstairs, change into your pajamas, and brush your teeth.” It may take a few tries to get it right but it will help them in school.
Create low-risk opportunities for your child to speak. Park days with friends or activities with fun activities create a space for children to speak naturally. Very shy children or anxious children may have a difficult time speaking in class if they haven’t had time to prepare for the onslaught of interaction. If you provide your child with low-risk opportunities to speak, it will help them prepare for these kindergarten ELA standards.
By mastering these speaking and listening kindergarten ELA standards, children will build a strong foundation for effective verbal communication, which is essential for their academic and social development.
VI. Language Standards
The end goals for ELA in high school are for students to be able to read, write, and speak, properly. It is something I work on tirelessly as a teacher of high school students. These kindergarten ELA standards are essential.
1. Grammar and Usage
In kindergarten, children will begin to learn the rules of grammar and proper language usage. They will practice printing many upper- and lowercase letters and using frequently occurring nouns and verbs. They will also learn to form regular plural nouns by adding “s” or “es” (e.g., dogs, wishes) and use question words (who, what, where, when, why, how) correctly. Understanding and using these basic grammar rules helps children construct clear and grammatically correct sentences. Working on these before kindergarten will help children mater kindergarten ELA standards.
2. Spelling and Punctuation
Children will learn the basics of capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. They will practice capitalizing the first word in a sentence and the pronoun “I,” recognizing and naming end punctuation marks like periods, question marks, and exclamation points, and writing a letter or letters for most consonant and short-vowel sounds. They will also begin to spell simple words phonetically, drawing on their knowledge of sound-letter relationships. These skills are fundamental for writing clearly and accurately.
3. Building Vocabulary
Kindergarteners will start to build a strong vocabulary foundation. They will identify new meanings for familiar words and apply them accurately (e.g., knowing “duck” as both a bird and an action). They will also use common prefixes and suffixes to understand the meaning of new words.
Additionally, children will explore word relationships and nuances in word meanings by sorting common objects into categories, demonstrating understanding of frequently occurring verbs and adjectives by relating them to their opposites (antonyms), and identifying real-life connections between words and their use. They will distinguish shades of meaning among verbs describing the same general action by acting out the meanings.
Children are sponges at this age and will soak up vocabulary. It’s a great time to talk to them, read to them, and listen to them. It’s a great time to give the gift of language because it will make learning kindergarten ELA standards easier for them.
Tips: Be gentle, but do correct incorrect grammar. You don’t have to correct everything all the time – we don’t want to create an aversion to speaking or writing, but gently explain how to correctly pronounce words because it will help them spell better. Correct grammar so they have an easier time writing in school. The key is to do it gently.
By developing these language Kindergarten ELA standards, children will enhance their ability to communicate effectively, understand texts more deeply, and express themselves clearly. These skills form the basis for successful reading, writing, and overall academic achievement.
Conclusion: Understanding Key Kindergarten ELA Standards
Understanding the key Kindergarten ELA standards is essential for supporting your child’s academic journey. These standards encompass a wide range of skills, from reading and understanding stories to developing foundational writing abilities, engaging in meaningful conversations, and building a robust vocabulary. By focusing on these areas, children are equipped with the necessary tools for future academic success and a lifelong love of learning.
We invite you to join us in this educational journey by implementing these Kindergarten ELA standards at home.
To further support your child’s learning of Kindergarten ELA Standards, here are some valuable resources:
- California Department of Education – ELA Standards: California ELA/ELD Standards
- Reading Rockets – Early Literacy Development: Reading Rockets
- National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC): NAEYC Resources
- Scholastic – Parent Resources: Scholastic Parent Resources
- PBS Parents – Reading and Language: PBS Parents
By utilizing these resources, you can find additional activities, books, and strategies to enhance your child’s knowledge of Kindergarten ELA standards. Let’s work together to ensure our children have a strong foundation for their educational journey.
Happy reading!
