Make up for lost instructional time by focusing on the most critical reading and math skills at every grade level.
Focus Skills are—simply put—the building blocks of student learning. Based on extensive research into how learning progresses in reading and mathematics, Focus Skills provide a roadmap for closing learning gaps as you move every student toward greater mastery.
Focus Skills are fundamental to student understanding, involving concepts that students must master in order to advance to the next step.
Because Focus Skills are prerequisites for future learning, focusing instruction on these skills provides the greatest return in terms of student growth.
Focus Skills are identified through a detailed study of your state’s standards of learning—and reflect your state’s grade-level expectations.
The videos below will help you get the most out of Renaissance Focus Skills.
For more about the development of Focus Skills, view this page.
The graph below shows the number of Focus Skills or domain groups by grade for the selected subject and state. For more information about a grade’s Focus Skills, hover the mouse over the grade’s bar and then click or tap the bar. You’ll then see a summary of the Focus Skills for the domain you clicked or tapped. To view detailed information about all the Focus Skills for the grade, click the View Details link in the pop-up.
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Click your state—or use the dropdown menu—to access full lists of Focus Skills.
If learning is a staircase, then all steps are not created equal. In both reading and math, some skills are extraordinarily difficult for students to master. We call these skills Trip Steps because they can cause a stumble in learning. See lists of Trip Steps, which span kindergarten through high school.
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