Academics

We will learn, explore, and make friends through play. We will grow as leaders in our school community. We will celebrate our individual story of learning!

Your first step for preparing for school is to register for school! To learn more about Franklin's Kindergarten options and for information regarding how to enroll your child, please contact Central Enrollment.

Each child passes through a range of social, academic and developmental stages at his own pace. Here are some guidelines for what to look forward to in the year ahead.

In first grade, your child will become more independent and learn how to adapt to the school’s routine. First grade is probably the most critical period in your child’s education. It is a pivotal grade in which the foundation for the rest of the primary grades is set.

Each child passes through a range of social, academic and developmental stages at his own pace. Below are some guidelines for what to look forward to in the year ahead.

PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL SKILLS YOU CAN EXPECT OF YOUR SECOND GRADER:

• Begin to reason and concentrate

• Have a better ability to process information

• Work cooperatively with a partner or small group
• Understand the difference between right and wrong
• Make connections between concepts so student will be better able to compare and contrast ideas

ACADEMIC SKILLS YOU CAN EXPECT OF YOUR SECOND GRADER:

• Expanded vocabulary
• Read fluently with expression
• Recognize most irregularly-spelled words such as "because" and "upon"
• Begin to use a dictionary
• Add single and multi-digit numbers with regrouping
• Tell time to the quarter-hour
• Know the concept of multiplication, such as 2×3 is represented by two rows of three objects.

Each child passes through a range of social, academic and developmental stages at her own pace. Below are rough guidelines of what to look forward to in the year ahead.

In third grade your child will move beyond “learning to read” and will begin “reading to learn” and will start reading more for pleasure. Your child should enter third grade reading fluently and with comprehension. Students will be learning how to use a more formalized writing process of drafting, editing, and finalizing.

PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL SKILLS YOU CAN EXPECT OF YOUR THIRD GRADER:

• Work cooperatively and productively with other children in small groups to complete projects
• Understand how choices affect consequences
• Become more organized and logical in thought process
• Build stronger friendships
• Be helpful, cheerful and pleasant – as well as rude, bossy, selfish and impatient
• Better understand the consequences of behavior
• Be more influenced by peer pressure because friends are very important at this stage
• Want and expects immediate rewards for good behavior

ACADEMIC SKILLS YOU CAN EXPECT OF YOUR THIRD GRADER:

• Be able to copy from a chalk board
• Be able to write neatly in cursive because the small muscles of the hand have developed
• Read longer stories and chapter books with expression and comprehension
• Use prefixes, suffixes, root words and other strategies to identify unfamiliar words
• Multiply single and multi-digit numbers (3 x 4,652)
• Divide multi-digit numbers by one-digit numbers (165 / 5)
• Tell time to the half-hour, quarter-hour, five minutes and one minute

Every child passes through a range of social, academic and developmental stages at his own pace. Below are some guidelines about what to look forward to in the year ahead.

PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL SKILLS YOU CAN EXPECT OF YOUR FOURTH GRADER:

• Make more decisions and engage in group decision-making
• Want to be part of a group
• Think independently and critically
• Have empathy
• Show a strong sense of responsibility

ACADEMIC SKILLS YOU CAN EXPECT OF YOUR FOURTH GRADER:

• Be able to memorize and recite facts, although student may not have a deep understanding of them
• Increase the amount of detail in drawings
• Work on research projects
• Write a structured paragraph with an introductory topic sentence, three supporting details and a closing sentence that wraps up the main idea of the paragraph.
• Write a five-paragraph paper
• Use a range of strategies when drawing meaning from text, such as prediction, connections and inference
• Understand cause and effect relationships
• Add and subtract decimals, and compare decimals and fractions
• Multiply multi-digit numbers by two-digit numbers (26 x 5,348)
• Divide larger multi-digit numbers by one-digit numbers (1215 / 3)
• Determine the area of two-dimensional shapes
• Have a greater understanding of the concept of fairness

Each child passes through a range of social, academic and developmental stages, each at their own pace. Below are rough guidelines of what to look forward to in the year ahead.

In fifth grade, your child will build on the skills that were developed in fourth grade and study many of the same subjects at a higher level.

Your student will read many types of literature and informational material, think critically about what has been read, and discuss it with the teacher and other students. Students will write for many different purposes and learn new writing techniques, including making effective transitions, using dialogue to advance the plot and creating a mood, such as suspense. In math students will work with fractions, decimals, negative numbers and very large numbers (in the billions). They will also focus on multiplying and dividing multi-digit numbers.

This is a great time to get involved in community service activities to help foster character development, a sense of giving and responsibility.

PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL SKILLS YOU CAN EXPECT OF YOUR FIFTH GRADER:

• Develop increasing independence
• Improve problem-solving skills
• Acquire more advanced listening and responding skills
• Need for more sleep

ACADEMIC SKILLS YOU CAN EXPECT OF YOUR FIFTH GRADER:

• Enjoy organizing and classifying objects and ideas
• Be able to read and concentrate for long periods of time
• Read complex text fluently and with good comprehension
• Research a topic using a variety of sources and use the features of books (e.g., index, glossary, appendix) to find information
• Identify the conflict, climax and resolution in a story
• Write an organized, multi-paragraph composition in sequential order with a central idea
• Use problem-solving strategies to solve real-world math problems
• Add and subtract fractions and decimals
• Identify and describe three-dimensional shapes, and find their volumes and surface areas
• Use long division to divide large numbers by multi-digit divisors (86,554 / 392)