Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Kindergarten expectations are high at Prescott

Remember when kindergarten meant learning the basics of the three "R's" and the most complicated part of the day was nap time?

Those days have changed for students, as the requirements have gotten more demanding.

According to information from the Prescott School District, during the first nine weeks, kindergarten students are expected to learn quite a bit in the categories of reading, math, writing and social studies/science.

For reading, students are expected to learn to recognize their first name, identify upper and lower case letters, recognize rhyming words, understand the difference between illustrator and author, and read a variety of environmental print.

In writing, they are expected to be able to print their name, recognize and write color words, follow patterns from predictable books, use correct spacing and write within line boundaries.

When they tackle math, the students are expected to demonstrate knowledge of positional words: top, middle, bottom, above, below, between, right and left.

They are also expected to identify objects with the same or different shape and size, identify circles, squares, rectangles, triangles, ovals, and diamonds, identify numbers to five, count object to five, identify groups with more or less, sort objects into groups and make and read a graph.

In Social Studies/Science students are to work and play well with others, use pencils, crayons, glue and scissors correctly, learn and follow school rules and procedures, identify the five senses and their purpose, identify body parts and name the four seasons.

This is for the first nine weeks, remember.

During the second nine weeks students are still taught the same courses, only the degree of difficulty is changed.

For reading, they will begin to apply letter-sound correspondence to begin to read, reproduce parts of stories in their words, dictate a story, recognize their first and last name and understand reading goes from left to right.

In writing they will learn to print their first name using capital letters at the begging and lower case letters for the rest of their name. They will also learn to recognize and write color words, write numbers to 12, write sight words and generate ideas and words for writing by using charts, word walls and other environmental print.

The students are to learn to count orally to 20 in math, and count objects to 10, while being able to identify numbers to 12, including word numbers.

They are to use ordinal numbers first through tenth, know the meaning of the terms more than and less than, estimate and compare the capacity of different containers and name the days of the week.

In Social Studies/Science they should learn to identify living and non-living things, identify food groups forming the food pyramid, know the life cycles of butterflies and frogs, practice good manners and identify the American flag and its characteristics.

For the third nine weeks, these kindergarten students are to participate in class discussions about books, identify all upper and lower case letters learned, identify a period and question mark, recognize a sentence expresses a complete thought and distinguish between fantasy and realism.

Writing gets a bit simpler as they are to print their first and last name correctly, write all upper and lower case letters learned, write the numbers in order to 20 and write sight words.

However, the math gets more complex for them as they are to identify solids such as rectangles, prisms, cylinders, cones, pyramids and spheres.

They are to create shapes from faces of solids, identify shapes and their characteristics, identify equal parts of a whole, separate shapes into two equal parts, identify a penny, nickel, dime and quarter, tell time to the hour, locate numbers on a clock face, place three events in logical order, count orally to 50 and skip count by fives and tens.

Their Social Studies/Science delves into identifying the major parts of a plant, recognizing the Earth is the planet they live on and identify other planets and their names, identify past and present presidents, identify jobs in the community, describe different types of transportation, describe the difference between a liquid and solid and recite the four seasons.

During the final nine weeks, the students will identify vowels and consonants in reading, blend letter sounds to read words and read simple stories.

They will write numbers to 31 correctly, write for their own enjoyment, draw a picture and write about it, and participate in teacher-led editing.

By this time they are expected to be able to count to100 orally in math, subtract numbers to 10, tell a joining story (adding), tell a separating story (subtracting) and count money using a combination of coins.

For Social Studies/Science, they are to be able to differentiate animals, define the characteristics of the four seasons, identify several national holidays, find Arkansas on the map, recognize Arkansas state symbols and describe a problem and explain a fair solution.

This is only part of what kindergarten students are expected to learn in the Prescott School District as they begin their academic career.