Students focus on developing foundational literacy skills including learning alphabet sounds and letters, listening and speaking skills, introduction to books that tell stories and provide information, and beginning to learn how to read and comprehend simple texts.

Students extend literacy knowledge and begin to write more independently. By the end of first grade, students are expected to decode and recognize grade-appropriate words accurately and automatically when they read. Vocabulary and communication skills increase through exposure to high-quality literature and informational text.

Reading focuses more heavily on strategies for comprehending literature at a deeper level and analyzing informational text. Students are expected to become more fluent when reading aloud and silently. Students begin using reference materials to locate information. Written compositions are longer, and students use more conventional grammar, punctuation, and organization.

Students move away from learning foundational reading skills and begin to use reading as a tool to gain new knowledge. There is more attention placed on analyzing what they read and conveying a clear message in their writing. Third graders are expected to read and respond to grade-appropriate texts independently.

Students read a wide variety of literature in different genres. They study structural elements of poems, prose, and plays and learn to summarize text. Students analyze informational text and consider how authors use evidence to support points. There is more focus on academic language and domain-specific vocabulary. Students write a variety of organizational structures and longer, informational, and narrative texts.

Students read a wide range of grade-level materials in all subject areas. The emphasis is on students' comprehension of complex texts. Students determine main themes or points, understand how author's evidence supports themes, and draw inferences supported by details. Students learn academic language and domain-specific vocabulary and use it in writing and speaking.

Instructional focus on two critical areas: (1) Representing, relating, and operating on whole numbers, initially with sets of objects; (2) Describing shapes and space. More learning time should be devoted to numbers than to other topics.

Instructional focus on four critical areas: (1) Developing understanding of addition, subtraction, and strategies for addition and subtraction within 20; (2) Developing understanding of whole number relationships and place value; (3) Developing understanding of linear measurement and measuring lengths; (4) Reasoning about attributes of, and composing and decomposing geometric shapes.

Instructional focus on four critical areas: (1) Extending understanding of base-ten notation; (2) Building fluency with addition and subtraction; (3) Using standard units of measure; (4) Describing and analyzing shapes.

Instructional focus on four critical areas: (1) Developing understanding of multiplication and division and strategies within 100; (2) Developing understanding of fractions, especially unit fractions; (3) Developing understanding of the structure of rectangular arrays and area; (4) Describing and analyzing two-dimensional shapes.

Instructional focus on three critical areas: (1) Developing understanding and fluency of multidigit multiplication and division; (2) Developing understanding of fraction equivalence, addition, and subtraction of fractions with like denominators and multiplication of fractions by whole numbers; (3) Understanding that geometric figures can be analyzed and classified based on their properties.

Instructional focus on three critical areas: (1) Developing fluency with addition and subtraction of fractions and understanding multiplication of fractions and division of fractions; (2) Extending division to two-digit divisors, integrating decimal fractions into the place value system, and developing fluency with decimal operations; (3) Developing an understanding of volume.