CA ELA Standards (Grade K)

Print many upper- and lowercase letters.

Use frequently occurring nouns and verbs.

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

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

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

Produce and expand complete sentences in shared language activities.

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

Recognize and name end punctuation.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Understand that words are separated by spaces in print.

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

Recognize and produce rhyming words.

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

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

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/.)

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

Blend two to three phonemes into recognizable words. CA

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

Associate the long and short sounds with common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels. (Identify which letters represent the five major vowels [Aa, Ee, Ii, Oo, and Uu] and know the long and short sound of each vowel. More complex long vowel graphemes and spellings are targeted in the grade 1 phonics standards.) CA

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

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

Activate prior knowledge related to the information and events in texts. CA

Use illustrations and context to make predictions about text. CA

Activate prior knowledge related to the information and events in texts. CA

Use illustrations and context to make predictions about text. CA

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

Continue a conversation through multiple exchanges.

Understand and follow one- and two-step oral directions. CA