National Standards

The Ministry of Education have a set of standards that all primary school children should attain in Reading, Writing and Maths.

Here is a brief overview of what we are aiming to achieve with your child by their sixth birthday:

Reading
Working on at least 'Green' level texts.

• Can make simple inferences.
• Can read many Sight Words quickly.
• Can read many verbs, topic words, adjectives and adverbs.
• Has an understanding of speech bubbles and diagrams.
• Has an understanding of dialogue between speakers.
• Has an understanding how punctuation marks such as commas and speech marks affect reading.

Writing
Working on recording ideas and information for self and others.

• Can plan for writing using pictures.
• Can write simple sentences and some compound sentences independently.
• Can spell some key personal vocabularly and Sight Words independently.
• Can write at least three sentences independently.

Maths
Number & Algebra - Working mainly with numbers to 20

• Can count forwards to 20 and backwards from 20.
• Can say before/after numbers to 20.
• Can add two sets together by counting all objects.
• Can answer simple subtraction problems by counting backwards.
• Can continue AB and ABC repeating patterns.

Measurement - Working with non-standard measurements

• Can compare lengths, areas, capacities and weights of objects.
• Can sort objects by shape, size, colour or other characteristic.
• Can use simple prepositions and directions to locate objects.

Statistics

• Can gather basic information and display it as a simple graph.
• Can talk about the information shown on a simple graph.

Here is a brief overview of what we are aiming to achieve with your child by their seventh birthday:

Reading
Working on at least 'Turquoise' level texts.

• Can make simple inferences.
• Can make meaning even though the setting or context may be unfamiliar.
• Beginning to understand alternate viewpoints.
• Develops an understanding of new vocabulary and descriptive language from the context of the text.
• Reads labels on diagrams, and captions under pictures confidently.
• Able to use a glossary.
• Can gain meaning from complex sentences.
• Increased awareness of the use of punctuation marks, especially the comma.
• Uses punctuation to assist the phrasing of sentences.
• Can follow dialogue within a text.

Writing
Working on recording ideas and information for self and others.

• Knows the purpose for writing.
• Follows 'The Writing Process' - planning, drafting, re-crafting, publishing, sharing
• Attempts to spell words independently using phonemic awareness.
• Uses appropriate punctuation, eg, full stops, commas, question marks, exclamation marks and quotation marks.
• Able to write on a variety of topics.
• Uses a variety of sentence starters.
• Writes a mixture of long and short sentences (simple, compound sentences).
• Uses a variety of conjunctions such as, and, but, because.
• Uses words common to his/her vocabulary, and some words and phrases found in book language.
• Increased use of descriptive language, eg, nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives

Maths
Number & Algebra - Working mainly with numbers to 20

• Counts on and back from a given number.
• Skip counts in 2s, 5s and 10s
• Can partition whole numbers
• Uses the principle of equal sharing and symmetry to find fractions of sets, shapes and volume.
• Can continue a repeating pattern and describe it.
• Can continue a skip counting number pattern and describe it.

Measurement - Working with non-standard measurements

• Can compare lengths, areas, capacities, weights, volumes of objects and lengths of time.
• Can sort objects by more than one feature, and explain them using mathematical language.
• Can make patterns using reflection and translation, then describe how it was made.
• Can give directions using half and quarter turns and number of steps.

Statistics

• Can form a question to investigate.
• Can gather basic information and display it as a simple graph.
• Can identify similarities and differences between category data shown on a graph.
• Talks about the likelihood of outcomes 
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Click here to find more information about the Reading & Writing Standards.

Click here to find more information about the Mathematics Standards.

If you would like easy to read information please visit http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/National-Standards where you can find pamphlets that can be downloaded.  The pamphlet 'After one year at school' outlines the National Standard and provides examples of work we hope children would be able to do at the end of their first year at school. The pamphlet 'After two years of school' summarises what students show be able to achieve at the end of the second year at school.