Reading Instruction in Kindergarten

1. Reading Instruction in Kindergarten Darrell Morris RE 3902 N.Vines

2. Vocabulary to Know • Alphabetic principle: the idea that letters, or groups of letters, represent phonemes. • Onsets: the beginning parts of words. • Phonemes: the individual sounds that make up spoken words. • Phonemic awareness: the awareness that spoken words are composed of individual sounds or phonemes. • Phonics: the relationship between sounds and letters in written language. • Phonological awareness: awareness of the sound structure of oral language. • Print awareness: children’s ability to recognize print and their knowledge of concepts of print. • Rimes: the ending parts of words.

3. The Kindergarten Teacher’s Role • “leveling the playing field”: What does this mean? • Provide ‘engaging, doable, reading-related tasks.’ Why? • Choose a curriculum/set of tasks that prepares children for success in a first grade reading program.

4. What the research tells us… • The “core” knowledge children need to become successful readers includes: oral language, phonological awareness, alphabet knowledge, and print awareness.

5. 4 Core Activities • READING ALOUD • GUIDED CONTEXTUAL READING • LETTER-SOUND STUDY • WRITING • How do these activities support the core knowledge our kinders need?

6. Reading Aloud to Children • What does reading aloud to a child offer? • This experience also allows for children to build images and glean meaning from those mental images within a sustained activity. • Children must “use words to create a world of meaning.” • Note the differences in contextualized and decontextualized language we discussed previously.

7. Reading Aloud Continued • Being read to is crucially important for ‘less fortunate’ children. Why? • Through daily read alouds teachers model reading with expression, fluency, how to think about the story as it is read, and the dialect of literature. What else is being modeled through the read aloud? What can teachers draw attention to as they read aloud? • How does this practice in kindergarten prepare students for grades beyond first.

8. Contextual Reading • ECHO READING: What is it? What are some strategies that incorporate echo reading? • Dictated Experience Stories. I refer to these as Shared Writing. This is also referred to as LEA or Language Experience Approach. • Play along with me and I will model the initial part of this. Pretend you are a class of kindergarteners… • See pages 12-13 in Every Child Reading for a sample of how to run your own Dictated Experience Story beyond what we did today. • What skills can be taught and reinforced using this strategy? • TTYP! Turn To Your Partner and briefly discuss ways you would use this in your classroom. • What are some modifications you thought of for this practice?

9. BIG BOOKS!! • Also referred to as the shared book-experience. • What characteristics do Big Books have? • Brown Bear, Brown Bear example • Why should we practice shared reading with our little ones? • You need a balance of shared and guided reading in the kindergarten classroom…

10. Dictated Stories vs. Big Books

11. Letter-Sound Study • Alphabet Knowledge: the ability to name and write the 26 letters of the alphabet. • Phoneme Awareness: the ability to attend to the individual sounds within a spoken word. • Letter-Sound Knowledge: knowledge of the conventional letter-sound pairings in written English.

12. Letter-Sound Study • Alphabet letters (graphemes) and the sounds they represent (phonemes) are typically taught together. • What are some ways this can be done? How would you teach letter sound relationship? • REVIEW IS IMPORTANT! Why?

13. Letter-Sound Study Continued • Strategies… • Picture Sorts (Handout) • Teacher dictates words for students to write initial consonant. • Depending on when the consonants are taught, the teacher may be able to complete the lesson and activities in one day. However, if the consonants have just been introduced the teacher may need to spend a week on the lesson and activities.

14. Continued • Once a child has initial consonant knowledge, they are able to more easily self correct when reading words in text. • Teachers can use the ‘mystery’ word game in familiar texts encouraging students to use context clues to guess the word. Once they see the initial consonant they can justify their guess. This can also be used to draw attention to final consonants when reading familiar texts. • These activities also aid in the development of phonemic awareness.

15. Phono What??? • These terms are easily confused! The big difference is phonological awareness refers broadly to sound in speech, phonemic awareness refers to the awareness that spoken words are made up of individual sounds or phonemes. Think of phonological awareness as an umbrella. Phonemic awareness is under the umbrella.

16. Continued • Phonemic Awareness can be taught explicitly independent of reading and writing activities. • Can also be taught through supported reading and writing activities. • What are some explicit strategies? Less direct strategies? • Remember to use BOTH methods and reinforce/review what is being taught through connecting texts and writing to what is being practiced.

17. In Developmental Sequence… • Phonological Awareness: This consists of rhyme, alliteration, word and syllable segmenting.

18. Phonemic Awareness • We can help children build on their phonological awareness foundation through direct instruction in phoneme awareness. • “The conscious awareness of phonemes sets the stage for children to discover the alphabetic principle; that there is a relationship between letters and sounds.” • Phoneme Isolation: What is it? How do we teach and practice this skill? • Phoneme Blending: Same???? • Phoneme Segmentation: Same??? • Phoneme Manipulation: Same???

19. Phonological Awareness Instruction vs. Phonics Instruction • Phonological Awareness Instruction can be done with your eyes closed, or in the dark, etc. It has to do with hearing. • Phonics Instruction involves print.

20. Alphabet Instruction • There are two sub skills of Alphabet Knowledge: Alphabet identification and naming. • How should alphabet instruction work in the early childhood classroom? • Examples of informal instruction? • Direct instruction?

21. Phonics Instruction • What is this again? • How do we teach phonics? • Where do we start? How do we progress? • What activities do we use? • Small group or whole group? • Why is direct phonics instruction so important?

22. Print Awareness • What does this refer to? • What are some strategies we discussed earlier in the course for teaching print awareness?

23. Writing • “…write first, read later (Chomsky 1971)” • What was her basis for this? • Instructionally…begin with group dictated experience story. We should know what this is! MODEL, MODEL, MODEL. I ascribe to the ‘I do, we do, you do’ method. • How do we support our kids in their writing efforts and practice? • What can their independent writing tell us about development?

24. Writing Continued • Please make sure you read back over and get to know these examples. They are typical and you will see them again and again from your kids. • We will revisit writing instruction and development along with our study of spelling development and instruction.

25. Assessments • BENCHMARKS… • Beginning of Year: Child writes her own name Child names upper and lower case letters of the alphabet • Mid Year: Child names and writes lower case letters of the alphabet Child finger-point read a 4 sentence story Child spells six words (back, feet, step, junk, road, dig)

26. Assessments Continued • End of Year: Child names upper and lower case letters, and writes lowercase letters to dictation. Child finger point reads a four sentence story. Spells six words (previously listed). Reads a list of 10 isolated words (is, me, cat, and, the, pin, lap, met, job, nut) • Please look over performance tables (pgs. 26-27) and the appendix for further information • What are 2 important purposes of these assessments? How should the Kindergarten teacher use them? First grade teacher?

27. Small Group Instruction • What is the purpose? Focus? • What should we reinforce, reteach, review? • We will continue discussing small group instruction and appropriate instructional strategies.

28. Think about it… • “Some will learn to decode on their own, without any instruction. Others will need some degree of instruction, ranging from pointing out of common spelling patterns to intense and systematic instruction.” -Stahl