In our more than 30 years of educating students, we have found a few benchmarks which help determine what will make a student successful in 1st grade. By Georgia law, 1st graders must be six by September 1st of the school year. Westminster requires that these children also score 6-6.5 developmental age on the Gesell Developmental Inventory.

This inventory, developed by the Gesell Institute very accurately measures a child's readiness for the academic and social challenges he or she will face in the coming year. By accurately placing a child in an appropriate developmental peer group, teachers and parents help ensure the child will be successful in school and enjoy the school experience.

Some of the benchmark requirements follow. Students must be able to listen and follow directions given to the individual child or the whole class, and be able to participate in whole-class activities. They must be able to move quietly from large-group to small-group activities. Students must be able to attend for at least 30-minute intervals during a lesson, activity, or group work. It is necessary to show proper respect and obedience to authority figures.

Students must be able to recognize and write numbers to 100. They must control scissors, glue and paste, catch and throw balls, and hop on one or both feet. These show the necessary fine-motor and eye-hand coordination to enable a child to read.

Children must be able to identify colors, shapes, position words, sequence simple pictures, and tell a story to assess critical thinking skills.

For reading readiness, children must be able to identify beginning and ending sounds in words, rhyme words, and sound out words during writing activities. Students must give opposites of words. They must be able to write letters of the alphabet when dictated, identify short and long vowels and all consonant sounds, and blend consonants and short vowels to form simple words. Children must write capital and lower case letters appropriately on lined paper.

Math readiness requires that students be able to count to 100 by 1's, 5's, 10's, and recognize numbers from 1-100. They also must understand the concepts of more, less, and equal, and construct and name simple patterns. Students must recognize numbers that come before and after numbers from 1-50.

For writing readiness, students must have had some exposure to writing and forming thoughts and sentences (journals and short stories are examples). They must identify sight word vocabulary and write in simple sentences, including capitalization and punctuation.

Children must be able to organize and maintain their own work space. Experience with homework responsibility is expected.