Primary school

Reading skills are the foundation of all successful students. This foundation starts with learning to recognize letters and the sounds they make! These are the most important skills a pre-kindergarten student can acquire. Starting kindergarten without these skills mastered puts a student at a major disadvantage. It is imperative that students are prepped for kindergarten, so that they stay focused and do not fall behind.

Kindergarten through 3rd grade are the “learning to read years.” Mastering phonics will increase each child’s ability to decode words. Exposure to vocabulary enhances his or her ability to comprehend. Comprehension is critical because it is the foundation for reading, which builds upon phonics, decoding, and vocabulary.

Mastering math including addition, subtraction, and multiplication facts are crucial for a student in these grades. Basic math facts are a foundational necessity to successfully transition into learning concepts like fractions, decimals, and other higher-level math skills.

By 3rd grade, students are expected to be able to edit their own writing for essential skills such as grammar, capitalization, punctuation and sentence structure. They must know how to create pieces of writing with complex sentences and creative ideas. Also, students need to be able to write a paragraph with a topic sentence, supporting details, and a conclusion.

Having all these skills is a must for a successful transition to 4th grade!

Fourth grade students are expected to have the ability to “read to learn.” The years of learning to read are over, and it is time to read to extract information from what a student reads. Mastered phonics and decoding skills began to transform into sight reading, which increases speed, fluency, and comprehension. Continuous exposure to vocabulary enables the student to read and comprehend higher levels of text.  A successful, college-bound student is typically reading two to three years above their actual grade level by the end of 5th grade!

Fractions and decimals are a pivotal skill in any student’s math career. Having all the prerequisite skills for fractions and decimals will determine a student’s success at learning these concepts. Learning these concepts will have a major impact on future success in pre-algebra and other upper-level math courses coming in the 6th through 12th grades!

Expanding on skills learned from earlier grades, a 4th and 5th grade writing student learns to polish his or her topics through deeper introductions, smooth transitions, and forming conclusions. Students learn not only to express their ideas creatively, but also to organize them. They must be able to write clearly by using complete sentences and thoroughly constructed paragraphs.