What does a student learn in
New York, Pre-Kindergarten, English Language Arts ?

Students pick up new words by playing, talking, and exploring. The goal is real use in real moments, not memorizing a list.

Students talk about how words connect to each other, like grouping things that are animals or things you eat. They learn what new words mean by talking and listening during stories and activities.

Students pick up new words through stories, conversations, and play, then use those words when they talk, draw, or act out ideas.

Students sort everyday objects like food, animals, or shapes into groups and explain what each group has in common.

Students learn words by pairing them with their opposites, like hot and cold or big and small. Knowing these pairs helps students understand new words faster.

Students practice naming the things they see, touch, and hear every day, like a dog, a chair, or rain. The goal is building the habit of putting words to the world around them.

Students listen to a book read aloud, then talk about it with the class. They share what they noticed, ask questions, and respond to what others say.

Students listen to a story or book read aloud, then tell back what happened or share a few facts they remember. It's an early step toward reading with understanding.

Students ask and answer simple questions about the people, animals, or events in a book. A teacher might ask "What happened first?" or "Who is this story about?" and students practice finding the answer in the words or pictures.

Students perk up when they hear a word they don't know yet and want to find out what it means.

Students listen to and talk about different kinds of books, from stories to poems to simple facts about the world. Hearing many types of text helps them notice how a how-to book sounds different from a bedtime story.

Students learn that one person wrote the words in a book and another drew the pictures. They can point to each person's job when asked.

Students look at the pictures in a book and talk about how they connect to the words on the page. A picture of rain helps explain a story about a storm.

Students listen to a story or book and connect it to their own life or something they know about the world. A teacher might ask, "Has this ever happened to you?" and students share what the story reminds them of.

Reading starts with knowing how a book works. Students learn that print moves left to right, that words have spaces between them, and that the marks on a page carry meaning.

Students begin to notice that spoken words are made of smaller parts, like the two claps in "cookie" or the first sound in "cat." This is the start of learning how reading and writing work.

Students practice connecting letters to the sounds they make, taking their first steps toward reading words on their own.

Students hold a book, turn pages in order, and pretend to read by telling the story from the pictures. They act like readers before they can decode words.

Reading moves in one direction: left to right, top to bottom, and from one page to the next. Students learn to follow that path with their eyes before they start sounding out words.

Reading and writing are connected. Students learn that the words people say out loud can be written down and read back.

Spaces between words help print make sense. Students learn that each cluster of letters surrounded by white space is its own word, which is why sentences don't run together on the page.

Students spot and name letters of the alphabet, starting with the ones in their own name.

Words are made of letters grouped together. Students learn to see where one word starts and another ends, noticing that the letters in a word belong together as a unit.

Students learn to tell letters apart from numbers, recognizing that letters like A or B are different from numbers like 3 or 7.

Students learn which side of a book is the front and which is the back before they begin reading.

Recognizing rhymes means hearing that two words end with the same sound. Students listen to songs and chants, then pick out or name words that rhyme, like "cat" and "hat."

Students clap or tap along to the parts of a spoken word, like "cup" and "cake" in cupcake. They start to hear that longer words are made of smaller chunks.

Students pick out the very first sound in a short word. They hear "map" and say "/m/" or hear "sun" and say "/s/." This is an early step toward reading.

Students learn that each letter makes a specific sound. They practice hearing and saying the sound a consonant like "b" or "m" makes when they see it.

Students take turns talking and listening in group conversations and during play, with classmates and adults. This standard is about learning to share ideas out loud and stay engaged in a back-and-forth exchange.

Students listen to stories, songs, and pictures books, then talk about what they noticed. The goal is getting comfortable with different kinds of reading and media before formal school begins.

Students listen to a short story or conversation and point out who is talking.

Students describe people, places, and things they know using words and sentences. They might talk about a family member, a favorite spot, or something that happened at school.

Students make a drawing, poster, or other picture to share an idea or story with the class.

Students share what they think, feel, or notice out loud, using their own words to talk about everyday experiences, stories, and ideas.

Talking in a group means listening when others speak and waiting for your turn. Students practice staying on the same topic instead of changing the subject.

Students take turns talking with a partner or in a group, keeping the conversation going across more than one back-and-forth exchange.

Students learn to adjust how they talk depending on who they are speaking to, like using simpler words with a younger child or a gentler tone with someone who is upset.

Students pick something they like or dislike and say or draw why they feel that way. This is an early form of opinion writing, where a preference becomes a reason worth sharing.

Students pick a topic they know, like a pet or a favorite food, and share what they know about it by drawing, talking, or making early marks on paper.

Students draw pictures or tell a story out loud to show what happened, in the order it happened. This is the start of learning to write by putting ideas into a sequence.

Students respond to a story or something that happened to them by drawing a picture, acting it out, or making a simple poem.

This standard doesn't apply yet. Writing process skills like revising and editing start in grade 4.

Students ask simple questions about a topic, then explore books or materials together to find answers they can share with the group.

Students talk about what they learned from a book, a walk, or a classroom activity, sharing what they noticed or found out.