School Skills for Summer {Elementary}

Doing Summer POINTS with your child?  Add these skills for summer learning.


 Skills to review before First Grade:

·         Cut along a line with scissors

·         Hold a crayon and pencil correctly

·         Know the eight basic colors: red, yellow, blue, green, orange, black, white, and pink 

·         Recognize and write the letters of the alphabet in upper- and lowercase forms

·         Know the relationship between letters and the sounds they make

·         Recognize the first 100 Basic Sight Words such as the (lists available online)

·         Read simple sentences

·         Spell his first and last name, using appropriate capital and lower-case letters

·         Write word family words such as bat, sat, mat and fan, can, tan

·         Retell a story that has been read aloud

·         Identify numbers up to 20

·         Count by ones, fives, and tens to 100

·         Know basic shapes such as a square, triangle, rectangle, and circle

·         Know her address and phone number

Skills to review before Second Grade:

• Write words with letter-combination patterns such as words with a silent e
• Read and write high-frequency words such as where and every
• Write complete sentences with correct capitalization and punctuation
• Read aloud first-grade books with accuracy and understanding 
• Count change (quarter, nickel, dime, penny)
• Tell time to the hour and half-hour
• Quickly answer addition and subtraction facts for sums up to 20
• Complete two-digit addition and subtraction problems without regrouping

Skills to review before Third Grade:

• Expand his vocabulary (introduce dictionary skills)
• Read fluently with expression
• Read to learn (non fiction), rather than learning to read  
• Recognize most irregularly spelled words such as because and upon
• Write complete sentences and a beginning paragraph
• Add single- and multi-digit numbers with regrouping
• Tell time to the quarter-hour
• Know the concept of multiplication (for example, 2 x 3 is two rows of three)

Skills to review before Fourth Grade:

• Be able to write neatly in cursive (small muscles of the hand have developed)
• Read longer stories and chapter books with expression and comprehension
• Use prefixes, suffixes, and root words and other strategies to identify unfamiliar words
• Multiply single- and multi-digit numbers
• Divide multi-digit numbers by one-digit numbers
• Tell time to the half-hour and quarter-hour and to five minutes and one minute

Skills to review before Fifth Grade:

• Increase the amount of detail in drawings
• Work on research projects
• Write a structured paragraph with an introductory topic sentence, three supporting details, and a closing sentence that wraps up the main idea of the paragraph
• Be able to memorize and recite facts, although he may not have a deep understanding
• Use a range of strategies when drawing meaning from text, such as prediction, connections, and inference
• Understand cause-and-effect relationships
• Add and subtract decimals, and compare decimals and fractions
• Multiply multi-digit numbers by two-digit numbers
• Divide larger multi-digit numbers by one-digit numbers
• Find the area of two-dimensional shapes

Skills to review before Sixth Grade: 

• Read complex text fluently and with good comprehension
• Research a topic using a variety of sources, and use the features of a book (for example, the index, glossary, and appendix) to find information
• Identify conflict, climax, and resolution in a story
• Write an organized, multi-paragraph composition in sequential order with a central idea
• Use problem-solving strategies to solve real-world math problems
• Add and subtract fractions and decimals
• Identify and describe three-dimensional shapes, and find their volumes and surface areas
• Use long division to divide large numbers by multi-digit numbers