Kindergarten Understanding What Your Child Will Learn

Your child will learn many new concepts and skills over the course of the school year. In Texas, all public schools use the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) as the basis for what they teach students. TEKS are provided for kindergarten in the following content areas:  English Language Arts & Reading  Social Studies  Music  Spanish Language arts & Reading  Physical Education  Theatre  Mathematics  Health Education  Technology Applications  Science  Art Below are a few of the TEKS that your child will learn along with strategies you can use to support your child’s learning at home. Reading

TEKS for English Language Arts What does it mean? How can you support your child? and Reading By the end of the year, a  Provide a wide variety of K(4) Developing and sustaining kindergartner should be reading material foundational language skills: reading books on a variety of top- listening, speaking, reading, ics and other written materials (e.g.  Show your child that you enjoy writing, and thinking—self- menus, posters, magazines, etc.) reading by reading near him/her sustained reading. The student on a kindergarten-level. Your child  Read to your child every day reads grade-appropriate texts is expected to choose what they independently. The student is are reading and read for longer  Read more than books—read expected to self-select text and periods of time as the year goes labels, signs, newspapers, etc. interact independently with text for on. increasing periods of time.

Writing

TEKS for English Language Arts What does it mean? How can you support your and Reading child? A kindergarten student should K(10) Composition: listening, develop drafts of stories and  Tell stories to and with your speaking, reading, writing, and reports that share facts and infor- child thinking using multiple texts— mation or give directions by writing process. The student uses  Provide your child with a  telling their story the writing process recursively to variety of paper, pens, compose multiple texts that are  drawing pictures markers, and pencils legible and uses appropriate  writing words  Encourage your child to draw conventions. The student is pictures that show their stories expected to: At the beginning of kindergarten, and information students will rely on storytelling (B) develop drafts in oral, pictorial, and drawing pictures to share their  Help your child label their or written form by organizing ideas. stories and information. As the pictures year goes on, students will begin to  Model writing for your child label their pictures with some words followed by writing a sen- tence or two about their pictures. EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION DIVISION Mathematics

TEKS for Mathematics What does it mean? How can you support your child? K(2) Number and operations. The A kindergarten student should be student applies mathematical able to  Incorporate counting to daily process standards to understand routines (shopping, cooking,  recognize written numbers 0 - how to represent and compare car rides, etc.) whole numbers, the relative 20  Have your child identify positions and magnitude of whole  write the numbers 0 - 20 numbers, and relationships within numbers on labels and signs the numeration system. The  When given a number 0 - 20,  Read counting books with your student is expected to: display that many objects child (B) read, write, and represent  When given a number 0 - 20,  Help your child practice writing whole numbers from 0 to at least draw that many pictures numbers 0-20 20 with and without objects or pictures

Science

TEKS for Science What does it mean? How can you support your child? K(2) Scientific investigation and A kindergarten student should be reasoning. The student develops able to ask questions about  Model asking questions for abilities to ask questions and seek animals, plants, objects, and your child answers in classroom and outdoor events (weather, seasons, etc.). investigations. The student is ex-  Go on walks to find interesting pected to: natural materials in your neigh- borhood or community (A) ask questions about organ- isms, objects, and events observed  Encourage your child to ask in the natural world questions by showing interest in their questions Social Studies

TEKS for Social Studies What does it mean? How can you support your child? K(16) Social studies skills. The  A kindergarten student should student uses problem-solving and be able to solve problems by  Model problem-solving for your decision-making skills, working choosing an informed solution. child independently and with others, in a variety of settings. The student is  A kindergarten student should  Allow your child to help you expected to: find out multiple solutions and solve problems evaluate the pros and cons of  Find appropriate problems at (A) use a problem-solving process each solution before making a home for your child to solve to identify a problem, gather infor- decision. mation, list and consider options, independently consider advantages and disad-  After trying out a solution, a vantages, choose and implement a kindergarten student should solution, and evaluate the effec- reflect on how well their tiveness of the solution. solution worked.

EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION DIVISION