My name is Desiree Milford, and I am the English Language Development teacher. It’s been such a pleasure working with the children and watching how much they have grown since the beginning of the school year. I admire all the hard work they have put into further developing their language skills! They are amazing!

We have gone through three units: The art of getting along, What’s the Weather, Virtual Field trip and currently Visual and Performing Arts. They all focus on what grammatical structures are used when discussing a specific topic with academic vocabulary. We have put a lot of emphasis on parts of speech and how to create formal and informal sentences not only orally, but in written form as well. Here is the breakdown of specific skills learned in each grade level.

 

Kindergarten- understand nouns, adjectives, verbs, conjunctions (but, and, because, when) and prepositions (under, next to, over and above) as individual words and how to put them together to make a sentence orally.  Other objectives include:

• describing events in past and present tense

• retelling stories in past and present tense

• expanding sentences by explaining exceptions: Sue went swimming but didn’t go running

• joining ideas or listing things: Sue went swimming and running

• providing reasons for actions: Sue went swimming and running because she liked to exercise

• sentences that explain cause and effect: Sue went swimming when she wanted to exercise

 

First Grade- use nouns, adjectives, present and past tense verbs, conjunctions (while, but, and, because, when) and prepositions (under, next to, over, near, through and above) as individual words and how to put them together to make a sentence orally. Other objectives include:

• describing events in past and present tense using comparative and quantitative adjectives

• retelling stories in past and present tense using positive and negative verbs

• using present progressive verbs to describe events

• identifying story elements and writing about them in present progressive and past tense

• noun phrases and indefinite pronouns

• prepositions of time to explain duration

 

Second Grade- understand nouns, adjectives, verbs, conjunctions (but, and, because, when) and prepositions (under, next to, over and above) as individual words and how to put them together to make a sentence orally and in written form. Other objectives include:

• describing events in past and present tense using comparative and quantitative adjectives

• retelling stories in past and present tense using positive and negative verbs

• using present progressive verbs to describe events

• identifying story elements and writing about them in present progressive and past tense

• noun phrases and indefinite pronouns

• prepositions of time and location

• cause and effect using conjunctions such as when, because, and, while, but.

 

Third Grade- understand nouns, adjectives, verbs, conjunctions (but, and, because, when) and prepositions (under, next to, over and above) as individual words and how to put them together to make a sentence orally. Other objectives include:

• describing events in past and present tense

• identifying regular and irregular verbs and verb phrases

• retelling stories in present tense, past tense, past progressive tense

• expanding sentences by explaining exceptions, condition or quality of something

• joining ideas, interjections, lists

• providing reasons for actions by creating compound and complex sentences

• using complex sentences that explain causation and correlation

• asking questions and answers using verb phrases

 

Fourth Grade- understand nouns, adjectives, verbs, conjunctions (but, and, because, when) and prepositions (under, next to, over and above) as individual words and how to put them together to make a sentence orally. Other objectives include:

• describing main events in a story in past tense, present tense, and past progressive tense

• retelling stories in present tense, past tense, past progressive tense

• expanding sentences by explaining exceptions, condition or quality of something

• prepositions of location, duration, and movement • use conditional ‘if’ and adverbs of location

• providing reasons for actions by creating compound and complex sentences

• using complex sentences that explain causation and correlation

• asking questions and answers using verb phrases, noun phrases, modal verbs and adverbs

 

Fifth Grade- nouns, adjectives, verbs, conjunctions (but, and, because, when) and prepositions (under, next to, over and above) as individual words and how to put them together to make a sentence orally. Other objectives include:

• describing events using descriptive and comparative adjectives in past and present tense

• using adverbial phrases with phrases of time to explain activities

• applying positive and negative verb phrases and prepositions

• time phrases to explain duration of activities and situations

• making predictions using time phrases

• summarizing stories and expressing opinions about it using verbs, verb phrases, and adjectives

• manipulating cause and effect phrases in compound and complex sentences using the conjunctions because and when

• using could have + past tense verbs to suggest alternative actions for story characters

 

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.  

~ Desiree Milford