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Kentucky Standards

Kentucky Kindergarten ELA Standards

All 34 Kentucky English language arts standards for kindergarten, each explained in plain English. The official wording is in Kentucky Department of Education's document, linked at the end of this page.

34 standards

Reading Foundational Skills

4 standards
RF.K.1
Track print left to right and down each page, know that letters in order spell spoken words, notice spaces between words, and name all capital and lowercase letters.
RF.K.2
Hear and make rhymes, clap syllables, say the first, middle and last sounds in a short word like cat, and swap a sound to make a new word, like cat to hat.
Common Core RF.K.2
RF.K.3
Say the main sound of each consonant, link long and short vowel sounds to their letters, tell apart look-alike words, and read and spell words like cat and sun.
RF.K.4
Read easy decodable texts smoothly and with understanding, and know common sight words on sight, even oddly spelled ones like said and the.

Reading Standards for Literature

9 standards
RL.K.1
With help, ask and answer questions about details stated in a story, and make sensible inferences about what it means.
RL.K.2
With help, say out loud the key details of a story that show what lesson it teaches.
RL.K.3
With help, name the characters, setting and main events of a story to follow how it unfolds.
RL.K.4
With help, point out words in stories or poems that show feelings or call up sights, sounds, tastes and smells, like crunchy or gloomy.
RL.K.5
With help, recognize common kinds of literary text, like stories, poems and plays, by how they are built.
RL.K.6
With help, name the author and illustrator of a story and tell how the words and the pictures each tell it.
RL.K.7
With help, tell how the pictures in a story connect to the words and events they show.
RL.K.9
With help, tell how the adventures and experiences of characters in stories are alike and how they differ.
RL.K.10
With help, listen to rich stories read aloud and use background knowledge and comprehension strategies, like predicting, to understand them.

Reading Standards for Informational Text

10 standards
RI.K.1
With help, ask and answer questions about key facts in a nonfiction text, and make sensible inferences to figure out what it teaches.
RI.K.2
With help, say out loud the key details of a nonfiction text that show what it is mostly about.
RI.K.3
With help, name the people, events, ideas or facts a nonfiction text presents from start to finish.
RI.K.4
With help, ask what an unfamiliar word in an informational book means and answer questions about words in it.
Common Core RI.K.4
RI.K.5
Show where the front of a book is, where the back is, and find the page inside that gives the title.
Common Core RI.K.5
RI.K.6
With help, name the author and illustrator of a nonfiction text and tell what each one adds to share its ideas.
RI.K.7
With help, tell how pictures, photos or diagrams connect to the words in a nonfiction text.
RI.K.8
With help, find the claim an author makes in a nonfiction text and the reasons given to back it up.
RI.K.9
With help, find information from two or more texts on the same topic, like two books about frogs.
RI.K.10
With help, listen to rich nonfiction read aloud and use background knowledge and comprehension strategies, like asking questions, to understand it.

Handwriting

1 standard
HW.K.1
Print every capital and lowercase letter of the alphabet and the digits 0 to 9 by hand.

Composition

6 standards
C.K.1
Draw, dictate, write or type to share an opinion on a topic with reasons and details, link sentences, add a closing idea, and revise with adult help.
C.K.2
Draw, dictate, write or type to introduce a topic and give facts about it, join ideas with words like because, add an ending, and revise with help.
C.K.3
Draw, dictate, write or type to tell one real or made-up event in order, with details about actions, thoughts or feelings, an ending, and revisions made with help.
C.K.4
With adult help, try out different digital tools to make and publish work, sometimes together with classmates.
C.K.5
With help, take part in shared class research and writing projects, like a group book about pets.
C.K.6
With help, gather information from everyday experiences or given sources to answer questions or come up with new ones.

Language

4 standards
L.K.1
Use common nouns and verbs, plurals with s or es, question words like who and why, prepositions like in and under, and complete sentences when talking or writing.
L.K.2
In writing, capitalize the first word of a sentence and I, name end marks, write letters for most consonant and short vowel sounds, and sound out spellings like hop.
L.K.4
Figure out what a new word means, like duck as a bird and duck as a move, and use endings and beginnings like -ed, -s and un- as clues.
Common Core L.K.4
L.K.5
With an adult's help, sort objects into groups, pair words with their opposites, link words to real life, and act out the difference between walk, march and strut.
Common Core L.K.5

The official Kentucky documents

The plain-English lines on this page are EMStudio's own explanations of Kentucky's standards, not the official wording, which Kentucky Department of Education publishes in the documents above. Codes and strand names identify each standard.