During first grade, he was required to read 20 minutes every day outside of class.  Each week has two ar books that he brought home to read.  He took his ar test every friday.  The ar books are rated to be at his reading level and grade appropriate.  If you are not in the system and don't feel like spending the money on it, then there are graded books on the internet available for purchase.  His school uses the Singapore model for math.  For the words, he was given 20 words each week.  For each  of his spelling words he was supposed to write them three times.  Then he was supposed to write it in a sentence that had at least 6 words and did not start with I.  Then he had a spelling test every Friday.  I don't know as much about his social studies and science stuff since that was not homework sort of stuff.  We did struggle with him memorizing the continents and oceans.  He also had a science research project where he had to read stuff, put together information and make some sort of cool presentation.  And he seemed to learn a lot about Martin Luther King Junior. 

We also have the staar test to see if the kids learned the things.  This link has the released staar tests for each year, for each subject, and the answer keys.

Texas did not adopt common core standards.  But if you are looking at this website and live in a state that is not Texas, then you probably live in a place that did adopt common core standards.  This website has all of the common core standards by state.  that way y'all can figure out what your particular state requires.  I am mostly doing extra y'alls in here since we are talking about Texas versus some other place that is not Texas.

It is helpful to have a schedule for the day and for the year.  We use the teksresource system and they have a year at a glance that basically gives you an idea of how long to spend on each topic before moving on in order to hit all the stuff.  There is also a link to a school district and their yag, which probably looks a lot like the one that is in teksresource, but doesn't require a log in to see.

As a teacher, we have all sorts of acronyms, guidance from state, federal, consultants, and whatnot.  These are vertical alignment documents.  That means they explain what students are supposed to know and when.

The state of Texas has the TEKS, which are the things we are legally required to teach in the classroom.  Some of the TEKS are very broad and very much open to interpretation (so English has stuff like the student should infer and interpret, which is not super specific).  Other TEKS are very specific.  If you look at the math TEKS, they basically list every thing we are supposed to know about each specific topic, so it is not very hard to follow them and it does not require as much interpretation since they are very clear and specific.  Here is the link for all of the TEKS for every subject and grade in Texas:

Stuff for my home schooling friends

​I am a teacher, and this last while has been ridiculous with the cooties, the floods, the single digit week where as a Texan I had to learn how many gallons of snow flushes a toilet...

Are the schools open?  Sort of.  Today, then digital, no mask, only mask, your kid was next to some other kid and things are too dangerous, so keep your kid at home for a while.  How long?  Well, you need a doctor note, but doctors won't see the kid until they get a negative covid test, and wow, that was a whole week where the young folks weren't in a place learning things.

So, lots of friends have asked or mentioned they are moving their kids to homeschool just to stop all the uncertainty.  So here are some things that my kid has been working on during kindergarten and first grade.  

If your student is working on middle school math, then click on the help! math basics.  If your student is working on high school then click on either help! high school math, algebra I, geometry, algebra II, or precal.

Mr. Lake's Math Site