Reading Readiness in Kindergarten

 

Summary of Reading in Kindergarten:

To be literate, a person must be able to decode the words on the page and then make sense of those words. The first task is made possible by decoding skills and the second by language comprehension ability. If a person cannot decode the words on the page, she will not be able to achieve literacy, no matter how much oral language and background knowledge she may have.

 

The Skills Strand of the Core Knowledge program teaches the mechanics of both reading and writing, i.e., .how to decode and encode written English. It is based on the most current research in cognitive science on reading and writing, Learning to read and write is neither natural nor easy. Young children are most successful in acquiring the necessary decoding and encoding skills when they are explicitly and systematically taught phonics.

 

Reading and writing are taught in tandem, since they are inverse processes. English writing involves making “pictures of sounds”, i.e., learning to write letters; reading involves translating those “pictures” back into sounds and blending the sounds to make words. Core Knowledge phonics focuses on sounds, or phonemes, as the primary organizing principle of the program, rather than letters.

(https://www.engageny.org/resource/kindergarten-ela-curriculum-map)

 

 

 

 

Coming into Kindergarten, students SHOULD be able to:

•  Demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print

  • Follow words from left to right, top to bottom, and page by page

  • Recognize that spoken words are represented in written language by specific sequences of letters

  • Understand that words are separated by spaces in print

  • Recognize and name all upper and lowercase letters of the alphabet

 

 

After a successful year of Kindergarten, students will be able to:

 

• recognize and read sight words such as - the, a, of, all, one, from, was, word, to, I, no, when, where, why, what, which, so, once, said, says, are, were, here, there, he, she, we, be, me, they, their, my, by, you, and your

 

• read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding

 

What can you do at home??

• studies show that if a home has more than 100 books, a child is more likely to become a "reader"

• set aside a reading time, make it a ritual that everyone looks forward to

• get a library card and go to the events they offer

• be a good role model, read directions, read a book for pleasure, read the newspaper or magazine

• when you don't know the answer to something, show your child that you need to "research" the answer, let them help

• read books that are repetitive so your child can feel successful and pretend to read

  • Goodnight Moon

  • Dr. Suess

  • The Very Hungry Caterpillar

• read poems and nursery rhymes and sing songs with rhyming words