Thoughts on Reading, Writing, and 'Rithmetic

Name all alphabet letters.

Produce the correct sound for all consonant letters.

Produce the "long" and "short" vowel sounds for the 5 main vowel letters.

Produce the correct sound for the "h" digraphs (th, sh, wh, ch) and see these as a unit in words like much, sheep, this and what.

Count the number of syllables in a word.

Read single syllable words that are phonetically "regular" (plant, spell, crunch, and ground).

Figure out two-syllable words like baby, little, basket, and puppy and three syllable words like understand, suddenly, and fantastic.

Recognize about 100 "high-frequency" words, many of which are phontically irregular words like light, Father, does, and break.

Spell phonetically:  "streem" for stream, "serkal" for circle, "hapeenes" for happiness.

Remember how to spell "high-frequency" words that were studied earlier in the school year.

Read aloud first grade books and be able to retell the information.

Write legibly with appropriate spacing between words.