Sample Alignment of New York’s

Learning Standards and Core Knowledge

Please note: This is not intended to be a comprehensive alignment. 

Rather, these charts show how Core Knowledge topics align with the New York Learning Standards.

Sample alignment completed in April, 2000 by

Cyndi Wells

Director, Teacher Training

Core Knowledge Foundation

The section (below) demonstrates how the specificity of the Core Knowledge Sequence enhances

the English Language Arts Standards. 

English Language Arts, Standard 2 – Language for Literary Response and Expression (Elementary)

Key Idea #1: Listening and reading for literary response involves comprehending, interpreting, and critiquing imaginative texts in every medium, drawing on personal experiences and knowledge to understand the text, and recognizing the social, historical and cultural features of the text.

Performance Indicators for Students:

  • Read a variety of literature of different genres: picture books; poems; articles; and stories from children’s magazines; fables, myths, and legends; songs, plays and media productions; and works of fiction and nonfiction intended for young readers.
  • Recognize some features that distinguish the genres and use those features to aid comprehension
  • Understand the literary elements of setting, character, plot, theme, and point of view and compare those features to other works and to their own lives
  • Use inference and deduction to understand the text
  • Read aloud accurately and fluently, using phonics and context clues to determine pronunciation and meaning
  • Evaluate literary merit.

Core Knowledge Content - K

Core Knowledge Content – Grade 1

Core Knowledge Content - Grade 2

Core Knowledge Content - Grade 3

Book and Print Awareness

Phonemic Awareness

Decoding and Encoding

Reading and Language Comprehension

Writing and Spelling

Mother Goose and Other Traditional Rhymes

·       A Diller, A Dollar

  • Baa, Baa, Black Sheep
  • Hickory, Dickory, Dock
  • Little Jack Horner
  • Little Miss Muffett
  • Rain, Rain, Go Away
  • Three Blind Mice

Other Poems

  • Mary Had a Little Lamb

Stories

  • Cinderella
  • Goldilocks and the Three Bears

Aesop’s Fables

  • The Lion and the Mouse
  • The Hare and the Tortoise

American Folk Heroes and Tall Tales

  • Johnny Appleseed
  • Casey Jones

Sayings and Phrases

  • April showers bring May flowers
  • Practice makes perfect

Phonemic Awareness

Decoding, Word Recognition, and Oral Reading

Reading Comprehension and Response

Writing

Spelling, Grammar, and Usage

Poetry

  • The Owl and the Pussycat
  • Sing a Song of People
  • Solomon Grundy

Stories

  • The Frog Prince
  • Medio Pollito

Aesop’s Fables

  • The Fox and the Grapes
  • The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

Different Lands, Different Stories

  • Lon Po Po and Little Red Riding Hood
  • Issun Boshi, Tom Thumb, Thumbelina, Little Finger of the Watermelon Patch

Sayings and Phrases

  • An apple a day keeps the doctor away
  • Sour grapes
  • There’s no place like home

Decoding, Word Recognition, and Oral Reading

Reading Comprehension and Response

Writing

Spelling, Grammar, and Usage

Poetry

  • Bed in Summer
  • Harriet Tubman
  • Windy Nights

Stories

  • Iktomi Stories
  • The Tongue-Cut Sparrow

Mythology of Ancient Greece

  • Pandora’s Box
  • Demeter and Persephone

American Folk Heroes and Tall Tales

  • Paul Bunyan
  • John Henry

Sayings and Phrases

  • Don’t judge a book by its cover
  • Keep your fingers crossed

Reading Comprehension and Response

Writing

Spelling, Grammar, and Usage

Vocabulary

Poetry

  • Catch a Little Rhyme
  • Eletelephony
  • Trees

Stories

  • Alice in Wonderland
  • The People Could Fly
  • Three Words of Wisdom

Myths and Mythical Characters

  • Jason and the Golden Fleece
  • Horatius at the Bridge

 

 

Sayings and Phrases

  • Actions speak louder than words
  • A feather in your cap

English Language Arts, Standard 2 – Language for Literary Response and Expression

(continued)

Core Knowledge Content - 4

Core Knowledge Content – Grade 5

Core Knowledge Content - Grade 6

Writing and Research

Grammar and Usage

Poetry

  • Concord Hymn
  • Monday’ Child is Fair of Face
  • A Tragic Story

Stories

  • The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
  • Robin Hood
  • The Magic Brocade

 

Myths and Mythical Characters

  • The Sword in the Stone
  • Sir Lancelot

Speeches

  • Sojourner Truth: “Ain’t I A Woman”

Sayings and Phrases

  • Bury the hatchet
  • Once in a blue moon
  • RSVP

Writing and Research

Grammar and Usage

Vocabulary

Poetry

  • I Hear America Singing
  • Jabberwocky

Stories

  • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
  • Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
  • The Secret Garden

 

Drama

  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Myths and Legends

  • Morning Star and Scarface
  • American Indian trickster stories

Speeches

  • Abraham Lincoln: “The Gettysburg Address”

Sayings and Phrases

  • Eat crow
  • Make a mountain out of a molehill
  • A penny saved is a penny earned

Writing and Research

Speaking and Listening

Grammar and Usage

Spelling

Vocabulary

Poetry

  • There is no frigate like a book
  • Woman Work

Stories

  • The Iliad and The Odyssey
  • The Prince and the Pauper

 

Drama

  • Julius Cesear

Classical Mythology

  • Apollo and Daphne
  • Pygmalion and Galatea

Sayings and Phrases

  • All’s well that ends well
  • Money is the root of all evil
  • Rome wasn’t built in a day

The section (below) demonstrates the comprehensive nature of the topics included in the Core Knowledge Sequence. 

Social Studies, Standard 2 – World History (Elementary)

Key Idea #1: The study of world history requires and understanding of world cultures and civilizations, including an analysis of important ideas, social and cultural values, beliefs, and traditions.  This study also examines the human condition and the connections and interactions of people across time and space and the ways different people view the same event or issue from a variety of perspectives. 

Performance Indicators for Students:

  • Read historical narratives, myths, legends, biographies, and autobiographies to learn about how historical figures lived, their motivations, hopes, fears, strengths, and weaknesses
  • Explore narrative accounts of important events from world history to learn about different accounts of the past to begin to understand how interpretations and perspectives develop
  • Study about different world cultures and civilizations focusing on their accomplishments, contributions, values, beliefs, and traditions.

Key Idea #2: Establishing timeframes, exploring different periodizations, examining themes across time and within cultures, and focusing on important turning points in world history help organize the study of world cultures and civilizations. 

Performance Indicators for Students:

  • Distinguish between past, present, and future time periods
  • Develop timelines that display important events and eras from world history
  • Measure and understand the meaning of calendar time in terms of years, decades, centuries, and millennia, using BC and AD as reference points
  • Compare important events and accomplishments from different time periods in world history.

Key Idea #3: Study of the major social, political, cultural, and religious developments in world history involves learning about the important roles and contributions of individuals and groups. 

Performance Indicators for Students:

·       Understand the roles and contributions of individuals and groups to social, political, economic, cultural, scientific, technological, and religious practices and activities

·       Gather and present information about important developments in world history

·       Understand how the terms social, political, economic, and cultural can be used to describe human activities or practices

Key Idea #4: The skills of historical analysis include the ability to investigate differing and competing interpretations of the theories of history, hypothesize about why interpretations change over time, explain the importance of historical evidence, and understand the concepts of change and continuity over time. 

Performance Indicators for Students:

·       Consider different interpretations of key events and developments in world history and understand the differences in these accounts

·       Explore the lifestyles, beliefs, traditions, rules and laws, and social/cultural needs and wants of people during different periods in history and in different parts of the world

·       View historic events through the eyes of those who were there, as shown in their art, writings, music, and artifacts.

Core Knowledge Content - K

Core Knowledge Content – Grade 1

Core Knowledge Content - Grade 2

Core Knowledge Content - Grade 3

Core Knowledge Content - Grade 4

Core Knowledge Content - Grade 5

Core Knowledge Content - Grade 6

Spatial Sense

Overview of the Seven Continents

Early Civilizations (Mesopotamia,

Ancient Egypt; History of World Religions)

Mexico

Early Civilizations: Asia (India, China)

Modern Civilization and Culture: Japan

Ancient Greece

Canada, Important Rivers

Ancient Rome (Geography of Mediterranean Region; Roman Empire’ “Decline and Fall”)

The Vikings

Mountains

Europe in the Middle Ages

Spread of Islam and the “Holy Wars”

Early and Medieval African Kingdoms

China: Dynasties and Conquerors

Lakes

Meso-American Civilizations

European Exploration,  Trade, and Clash of Cultures

Renaissance and Reformation

England from the Golden Age to the Glorious Revolution

Russia: Early Growth and Expansion

Feudal Japan

Deserts

Lasting Ideas from Ancient Civilizations (Judaism, Christianity; Greece and Rome)

Enlightenments

French Revolution

Romanticism

Industrialism, Capitalism and Socialism

Latin American Independence Movements

The section (below) demonstrates the sequential building of topics included in the Core Knowledge Sequence.


Mathematics, Science and Technology, Standard 4 - (Elementary)

Key Idea #3:  Matter is made up of particles whose properties determine the observable characteristics of matter and its reactivity.

Performance Indicators for Students:

  • Observe and describe properties of materials using appropriate tools.
  • Describe chemical and physical changes, including changes in states of matter.

Key Idea #4:  Energy exists in many forms, and when these forms change energy is conserved.

Performance Indicators for Students:

  • Describe a variety of forms of energy (e.g., heat, chemical, light) and the changes that occur in objects when they interact with those forms of energy.
  • Observe the way one form of energy can be transformed into another form of energy present in common situations (e.g., mechanical to heat energy, mechanical to electrical energy, chemical to heat energy).

Key Idea #5:  Energy and matter interact through forces that result in changes in motion.

Performance Indicators for Students:

  • Describe the effects of common forces (pushes and pulls) on objects, such as those caused by gravity, magnetism, and mechanical forces.
  • Describe how forces can operate across distances.

Core Knowledge Content - K

Core Knowledge Content – Grade 1

Core Knowledge Content - Grade 2

Core Knowledge Content - Grade 3

Introduction to Magnetism

·       Identify familiar everyday uses of magnets

  • Classify materials according to whether or not they are not attracted by a magnet

Matter

  • Basic concept of atoms
  • Names and common examples of three states of matter: solid, liquid, gas
  • Water as an example of changing states of matter

Introduction to Electricity

  • Static electricity
  • Basic parts of simple electric circuits
  • Conductive and nonconductive materials
  • Safety rules for electricity

Simple Machines

  • Simple machines (lever, pulley, wheel-and-axle, gears, inclined plane, wedge, screw)
  • Friction, and ways to reduce friction

Sound

  • Sound is caused by an object vibrating rapidly
  • Sounds travel through solids, liquids, and gases.
  • Sound waves are much slower than light waves
  • Qualities of sound (pitch, intensity)
  • Sound and how the human ear works

Core Knowledge Content - Grade 4

Core Knowledge Content - Grade 5

Core Knowledge Content - Grade 6

CHEMISTRY

Atoms

  • All matter is made up on particles too small for the eye to see, called atoms
  • Scientists have developed models of atoms
  • Atoms are made up of even tinier particles: protons, neutrons, electrons
  • The concept of electrical charge

Properties of Matter

  • Mass
  • Volume
  • Density
  • Vacuum

Elements

  • Elements are the basic kinds of matter
  • Familiar elements

Solutions

  • Solute
  • Solvent
  • Concentration and saturation

Electricity

  • Electricity as the flow of electrons
  • Static electricity
  • Electric current
  • Electric currents
  • Experiments with simple circuits
  • Closed circuit, open circuit, short circuit
  • Conductors and insulators
  • Electromagnets
  • Using electricity safely

CHEMISTRY: MATTER AND CHANGE

Atoms, Molecules, and Compounds

  • Basic atomic structure
  • Atoms are constantly in motion
  • Atoms may join together to form molecules and compounds
  • Common compounds and their formulas

Elements

  • Elements have atoms of only one kind
  • The Periodic Table
  • Some well-known elements and their symbols: H, He, C, N, O, Na, Al, Si, Cl, Fe, Cu, Ag, Au
  • Metals and non-metals

Chemical and Physical Change

  • Chemical change changes what a molecule is made up of and results in a new substance with a new molecular structure
  • Physical change changes only the properties or appearance of the substance, but does not change what the substance is made up of.

Energy, Heat, and Energy Transfer

Energy

  • Six forms of energy: mechanical, heat, electrical, wave, chemical, nuclear
  • The many forms of energy are interchangeable
  • Sources of energy
  • Fossil fuels
  • Nuclear energy

Heat

  • Heat and temperature
  • Conduction, convection, radiation

Physical Change: Energy Transfer

  • States of matter in terms of molecular motion
  • Most substances are solid at low temperatures, liquid at medium temperatures, and gaseous at high temperatures
  • A change of phase is physical change
  • Matter can be made to change phases by adding or removing energy
  • Expansion and contraction
  • Changing phases: condensation, freezing, melting, boiling
  • Distillation