First Grade Readiness Guide
Your child is ready to make the leap from Kindergarten to First Grade! This is a big, exciting transition, and we're here to help. Below are resources, links, and tools you can use to help make sure your child is set up for success as a First Grader.
- Clean your own personal space (learn by helping around the house!).
- Use the restroom and fasten all clothing items independently.
- Pack your backpack, open all lunch containers (juice boxes, etc) independently.
- Put papers into a folder and put the folder into your backpack independently.
- How To: Tie Your Shoes.
- Follow the social rules of conversation by listening and taking turns talking.
- Participate in shared reading and writing activities (for example, the teacher reads a big picture book aloud and students take turns sharing ideas about it).
- be willing to receive feedback and then try to adjust for improvement.
- participate in games with partners or small groups without much prompting (playing catch, jumping rope, imaginative games).
- In many situations, demonstrate a willingness to adjust behavior to resolve conflicts prior to asking for help from an adult.
- Read regularly with your child.
- Discuss story elements such as plot, character, events, and setting.
- Recall the sequence of events in oral and written stories, and retell a story.
- Recognize all 26 letters and the sounds they make.
- Sight Words- recognize these 100 words on sight.
- Play games and use flashcards.
- Understand basic punctuation (capitalize first letter of a sentence, use periods and question marks, etc.).
- Builds simple words and sentences using the sounds made by letters to "sound spell".
- Write and recognize all 26 letters.
- Recognize and write numbers up to 100.
- “Skip Count” by fives and 10s to 100.
- Recognize that addition means putting two groups together and that subtraction means taking away from one group.
- Mentally add numbers to 10.
- Add and subtract within 20 using objects or drawings.
- Recognize shapes .
- Identify, describe, and reproduce patterns with numbers, shapes, colors, movements, or words.
- Outline a shape/image with precision.
- Cut a shape with precision.
- Print all letters clearly.
- Demonstrate correct pencil grip.
- Run, hop, jump, leap, slide, gallop, and skip.
- Combine two locomotor movements to form a pattern (skip, skip, jump, jump, repeat).
- Perform kicking, striking, throwing and catching patterns in a simple fluid environment (a throwing and catching game or a kicking game).
- Put together simple tumbling patterns that involve weight shift, rolling, and flight (hop, hop, hop, somersault, run and leap).
- Move to a simple rhythmic beat while recognizing the pattern.