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Language Arts - Elementary Curriculum English Language Arts Kindergarten
Course Preface Course Preface
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Core Standards of the Course

College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for K-5 Reading

The K–5 standards on the following pages define what students should understand and be able to do by the end of each grade. They correspond to the College and Career Readiness (CCR) anchor standards for Reading.

Reading Standards for Literature

The following standards offer a focus for instruction each year and help ensure that students gain adequate exposure to a range of texts and tasks. Rigor is also infused through the requirement that students read increasingly complex texts through the grades. Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year’s grade-specific standards and retain or further develop skills and understandings mastered in preceding grades.

Key Ideas and Details

Reading: Literature Standard 1
With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about key details in a text.

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Reading: Literature Standard 2
With prompting and support, retell familiar stories, including key details.

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Reading: Literature Standard 3
With prompting and support, identify characters, settings, and major events in a story.

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Craft and Structure

Reading: Literature Standard 4
Ask and answer questions about unknown words in a text.


Reading: Literature Standard 5
Recognize common types of texts (e.g., storybooks, poems).

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Reading: Literature Standard 6
With prompting and support, name the author and illustrator of a story and define the role of each in telling the story.


Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

Reading: Literature Standard 7
With prompting and support, describe the relationship between illustrations and the story in which they appear (e.g., what moment in a story an illustration depicts).


Reading: Literature Standard 8
(Not applicable to literature)


Reading: Literature Standard 9
With prompting and support, compare and contrast the adventures and experiences of characters in familiar stories.

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Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity

Reading: Literature Standard 10
Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose and understanding.


Reading Standards for Informational Text

Key Ideas and Details

Reading: Informational Text Standard 1
With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about key details in a text.


Reading: Informational Text Standard 2
With prompting and support, identify the main topic and retell key details of a text.


Reading: Informational Text Standard 3
With prompting and support, describe the connection between two individuals, events, ideas, or pieces of information in a text.


Craft and Structure

Reading: Informational Text Standard 4
With prompting and support, ask and answer questions about unknown words in a text.


Reading: Informational Text Standard 5
Identify the front cover, back cover, and title page of a book.


Reading: Informational Text Standard 6
Name the author and illustrator of a text and define the role of each in presenting the ideas or information in a text.


Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

Reading: Informational Text Standard 7
With prompting and support, describe the relationship between illustrations and the text in which they appear (e.g., what person, place, thing, or idea in the text an illustration depicts).


Reading: Informational Text Standard 8
With prompting and support, identify the reasons an author gives to support points in a text.


Reading: Informational Text Standard 9
With prompting and support, identify basic similarities in and differences between two texts on the same topic (e.g., in illustrations, descriptions, or procedures).


Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity

Reading: Informational Text Standard 10
Actively engage in group reading activities with purpose and understanding.


Reading Standards: Foundational Skills

These standards are directed toward fostering students’ understanding and working knowledge of concepts of print, the alphabetic principle, and other basic conventions of the English writing system. These foundational skills are not an end in and of themselves; rather, they are necessary and important components of an effective, comprehensive reading program designed to develop proficient readers with the capacity to comprehend texts across a range of types and disciplines. Instruction should be differentiated: good readers will need much less practice with these concepts than struggling readers will. The point is to teach students what they need to learn and not what they already know—to discern when particular children or activities warrant more or less attention.

Note: In kindergarten, children are expected to demonstrate increasing awareness and competence in the areas that follow.

Print Concepts

Reading: Foundational Skills Standard 1
Demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print.

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a.
Follow words from left to right, top to bottom, and page by page.

b.
Recognize that spoken words are represented in written language by specific sequences of letters.

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c.
Understand that words are separated by spaces in print.

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d.
Recognize and name all upper- and lowercase letters of the alphabet.

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Phonological Awareness

Reading: Foundational Skills Standard 2
Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes).

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a.
Recognize and produce rhyming words.

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b.
Count, pronounce, blend, and segment syllables in spoken words.

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c.
Blend and segment onsets and rimes of single-syllable spoken words.

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d.
Isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds (phonemes) in three-phoneme (consonant-vowel-consonant, or CVC) words. *(This does not include CVCs ending with /l/, /r/, or /x/.)

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e.
Add or substitute individual sounds (phonemes) in simple, one-syllable words to make new words.

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Phonics and Word Recognition

Reading: Foundational Skills Standard 3
Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.

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a.
Demonstrate basic knowledge of one-to-one lettersound correspondences by producing the primary sound or many of the most frequent sounds for each consonant.

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b.
Associate the long and short sounds with the common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels.

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c.
Read common high-frequency words by sight (e.g., the, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do, does).

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d.
Distinguish between similarly spelled words by identifying the sounds of the letters that differ.

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Fluency

Reading: Foundational Skills Standard 4
Read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding.

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College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for K-5 Writing

The K–5 standards below define what students should understand and be able to do by the end of each grade. They correspond to the College and Career Readiness (CCR) anchor standards for Writing.

Writing Standards

The following writing standards offer a focus for instruction each year to help ensure that students gain adequate mastery of a range of skills and applications. Each year in their writing, students should demonstrate increasing sophistication in all aspects of language use, from vocabulary and syntax to the development and organization of ideas, and they should address increasingly demanding content and sources. Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year’s grade-specific standards and retain or further develop skills and understandings mastered in preceding grades. The expected growth in student writing ability is reflected both in the standards themselves and in the collection of annotated student writing samples in Appendix C.

Text Types and Purposes

Writing Standard 1
Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose opinion pieces in which they tell a reader the topic or the name of the book they are writing about and state an opinion or preference about the topic or book (e.g., My favorite book is...).

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Writing Standard 2
Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to compose informative/explanatory texts in which they name what they are writing about and supply some information about the topic.

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Writing Standard 3
Use a combination of drawing, dictating, and writing to narrate a single event or several loosely linked events, tell about the events in the order in which they occurred, and provide a reaction to what happened.

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Production and Distribution of Writing

Writing Standard 4
(Begins in grade 3)


Writing Standard 5
With guidance and support from adults, respond to questions and suggestions from peers and add details to strengthen writing as needed.


Writing Standard 6
With guidance and support from adults, explore a variety of digital tools to produce and publish writing, including in collaboration with peers.


Research to Build and Present Knowledge

Writing Standard 7
Participate in shared research and writing projects (e.g., explore a number of books by a favorite author and express opinions about them).


Range of Writing

Writing Standard 10
Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.


Writing Standard 9
(Begins in grade 4)


Range of Writing

Writing Standard 10
(Begins in grade 3)


College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for K-5 Speaking and Listening

The K–5 standards below define what students should understand and be able to do by the end of each grade. They correspond to the College and Career Readiness (CCR) anchor standards for Speaking and Listening.

Speaking and Listening Standards

The following Speaking and Listening standards offer a focus for instruction each year to help ensure that students gain adequate mastery of a range of skills and applications. Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year’s grade-specific standards and retain or further develop skills and understandings mastered in preceding grades.

Comprehension and Collaboration

Speaking and Listening Standard 1
Participate in collaborative conversations with diverse partners about kindergarten topics and texts with peers and adults in small and larger groups.

a.
Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions (e.g., listening to others and taking turns speaking about the topics and texts under discussion).

b.
Continue a conversation through multiple exchanges.


Speaking and Listening Standard 2
Confirm understanding of a text read aloud or information presented orally or through other media by asking and answering questions about key details and requesting clarification if something is not understood.


Speaking and Listening Standard 3
Ask and answer questions in order to seek help, get information, or clarify something that is not understood.


Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas

Speaking and Listening Standard 4
Describe familiar people, places, things, and events and, with prompting and support, provide additional detail.


Speaking and Listening Standard 5
Add drawings or other visual displays to descriptions as desired to provide additional detail.


Speaking and Listening Standard 6
Speak audibly and express thoughts, feelings, and ideas clearly.

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College and Career Readiness Anchor Standards for K-5 Language

The K–5 standards on the following pages define what students should understand and be able to do by the end of each grade. They correspond to the College and Career Readiness (CCR) anchor standards for Language.

Language Standards

The following Language standards offer a focus for instruction each year to help ensure that students gain adequate mastery of a range of skills and applications. Students advancing through the grades are expected to meet each year’s grade-specific standards and retain or further develop skills and understandings mastered in preceding grades. Beginning in grade 3, skills and understandings that are particularly likely to require continued attention in higher grades as they are applied to increasingly sophisticated writing and speaking are marked with an asterisk (*). See the table on page 33 for a complete list and Appendix A for an example of how these skills develop in sophistication.

Conventions of Standard English

Language Standard 1
Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.

a.
With guidance and support, identify and write many upper - and lowercase letters, including those in the student's name.

b.
Use frequently occurring nouns and verbs.

c.
Form regular plural nouns orally by adding /s/ or /es/ (e.g., dog, dogs; wish, wishes).

d.
Understand and use question words (interrogatives) (e.g., who, what, where, when, why, how).

e.
Use the most frequently occurring prepositions (e.g., to, from, in, out, on, off, for, of, by, with).

f.
Produce and expand complete sentences in shared language activities.


Language Standard 2
Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

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a.
Capitalize the first word in a sentence and the pronoun I.

b.
Recognize and name end punctuation.

c.
Write a letter or letters for most consonant and short-vowel sounds (phonemes).

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d.
Spell simple words phonetically, drawing on knowledge of sound-letter relationships.

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Knowledge of Language

Language Standard 3
(Begins in grade 2)


Vocabulary Acquisition and Use

Language Standard 4
Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on kindergarten reading and content.

a.
Identify new meanings for familiar words and apply them accurately (e.g., knowing duck is a bird and learning the verb to duck).

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b.
Use the most frequently occurring inflections and affixes (e.g., -ed, -s, re-, un-, pre-, -ful, -less) as a clue to the meaning of an unknown word.


Language Standard 5
With guidance and support from adults, explore word relationships and nuances in word meanings.

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a.
Sort common objects into categories (e.g., shapes, foods) to gain a sense of the concepts the categories represent.

b.
Demonstrate understanding of frequently occurring verbs and adjectives by relating them to their opposites (antonyms).

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c.
Identify real-life connections between words and their use (e.g., note places at school that are colorful).

d.
Distinguish shades of meaning among verbs describing the same general action (e.g., walk, march, strut, prance) by acting out the meanings.


Language Standard 6
Use words and phrases acquired through conversations, reading and being read to, and responding to texts.



UEN logo http://www.uen.org - in partnership with Utah State Board of Education (USBE) and Utah System of Higher Education (USHE).  Send questions or comments to USBE Specialist - Sara  Wiebke and see the Language Arts - Elementary website. For general questions about Utah's Core Standards contact the Director - Jennifer  Throndsen.

These materials have been produced by and for the teachers of the State of Utah. Copies of these materials may be freely reproduced for teacher and classroom use. When distributing these materials, credit should be given to Utah State Board of Education. These materials may not be published, in whole or part, or in any other format, without the written permission of the Utah State Board of Education, 250 East 500 South, PO Box 144200, Salt Lake City, Utah 84114-4200.