Literacy

Reading

Comprehension:

• Summarizes stories focusing on characters, setting, problem, key events and resolution.
• Makes inferences and personal connections, draws conclusions and forms opinions about events, characters and setting based on supporting evidence from the text and personal experience.
• Restates and summarizes main ideas and facts from nonfiction.
• Extends ideas and makes connections using multiple sources.

Decoding:

• Applies meaning (context clues, background knowledge); knowledge of English language (sentence structure and grammer); and visual information (phonics, knowledge of word parts).

Independent Reading:

• Reads silently for information, pleasure and insight for a sustained period of time.
• Develops personal appreciaition for different genres and favorite authors and illustrators.
• Maintains a balance between fiction and nonfiction reading.

Writing

Writing Process:

• Self-selects and stays on topic maintaining a focus.
• Expresses voice.
• Considers format appropriate to audience and purpose.
• Revises content to make meaning clear.
• Self-edits selected pieces for conventions and grammar.
• Publishes selected pieces of narrative and expository writing.

Written Product:

• Writes with organization, voice, appropriate content, and mechanics.

Grammar and Usage:

• Writes in sentences using varied sentence structure.
• Writes in paragraphs.
• Identifies and demonstrates correct usse of parts of speech; proper and common nouns, action verbs and adjectives.
• Uses periods, question marks, and exclamation points correctly.
• Uses quotation marks for dialogue and selected uses of commas and apostrophes.

Spelling:

• Uses more conventional spelling in writing.

Handwriting:

• Uses legible handwriting for personal communication and makes appropriate choice between word processing and manuscript/cursive writing for formal publication.