Mastering common words
About half of all Kindergarten reading texts are made up of the same 100 words! Even more remarkable about these wonder words: most kindergartners will know all of them by the end of the year. We call these high-frequency words Pop Corn words because they keep popping up in our books. Your child will also learn sight words - words that can't be easily sounded out or illustrated with a text (e.g. good, out). When it comes to sight words, memorization is key, since using phonics or decoding skills don't often work for these short, common, but often oddly spelled words. We practice these words daily at school. Tip: Word lists are perfect for the refrigerator, where you can playfully quiz your kindergartner before dinnertime. If your child is having difficulty with them work on three at a time and then add one at a time. We usually work on three new words a week. The words we are working on this cycle are:
look, am, have, can, at, they, and, want, you
Word sense and rhymes
Phonological awareness. It sounds important, but what does it really mean? A predictor of later reading ability, phonological awareness is an understanding of what's referred to as the sound structure of spoken words. While this may sound like pretty dry stuff, it's actually where a lot of the fun in learning to read comes in. Either consciously or not, grown-ups help new readers master this serious skill with silly word play — like Mother Goose rhymes (e.g. Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle…) or Dr. Seuss classics like The Cat in the Hat.
This kind of word play, including tongue twisters, helps a kindergartner understand how words are broken into individual syllables (e.g. Sim-ple Si-mon) and how words with similar endings rhyme (e.g. me, he, she; splat, cat, rat). The more exposure kindergartners get to how syllables and words work together in spoken and written language, the more they'll build their word knowledge. They’ll be able to ask and answer questions about unknown words, or presto!, figure them out from the context.
In our Kindergarten Class we do phonemic awareness drills daily. We call it "Fun with Words". It actually is the Heggerty Program which is a researched based system of word drills. We add sounds or omitt sounds, break up compound words, build compound words. In this program we flip sounds, substitute sounds
Start with the basics
Left to right, up to down, front to back it all seems so obvious by the time you've learned to read, but to a new reader, some of the most basic reading rules — starting at the top of the page and going downwards, reading from left to right, and page by page — require explicit instructions and explanations.
Kindergartners even need to realize that words are separated by spaces. By the end of the year, students also need to become familiar with parts of a book, such as the front cover, the back cover, and the title page. Under the Common Core, this knowledge of book components gradually increases with each grade.
While you are you are reading to your child ask him/her to point out the title, the author (what does she do?), where to start reading, count how many words are on line, and ask what is the dot at the end of the sentence. Ask questions to engage your child in the reading process and the world of print. Remember this is the year we are going to teach them to love reading and love books!
About half of all Kindergarten reading texts are made up of the same 100 words! Even more remarkable about these wonder words: most kindergartners will know all of them by the end of the year. We call these high-frequency words Pop Corn words because they keep popping up in our books. Your child will also learn sight words - words that can't be easily sounded out or illustrated with a text (e.g. good, out). When it comes to sight words, memorization is key, since using phonics or decoding skills don't often work for these short, common, but often oddly spelled words. We practice these words daily at school. Tip: Word lists are perfect for the refrigerator, where you can playfully quiz your kindergartner before dinnertime. If your child is having difficulty with them work on three at a time and then add one at a time. We usually work on three new words a week. The words we are working on this cycle are:
look, am, have, can, at, they, and, want, you
Word sense and rhymes
Phonological awareness. It sounds important, but what does it really mean? A predictor of later reading ability, phonological awareness is an understanding of what's referred to as the sound structure of spoken words. While this may sound like pretty dry stuff, it's actually where a lot of the fun in learning to read comes in. Either consciously or not, grown-ups help new readers master this serious skill with silly word play — like Mother Goose rhymes (e.g. Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle…) or Dr. Seuss classics like The Cat in the Hat.
This kind of word play, including tongue twisters, helps a kindergartner understand how words are broken into individual syllables (e.g. Sim-ple Si-mon) and how words with similar endings rhyme (e.g. me, he, she; splat, cat, rat). The more exposure kindergartners get to how syllables and words work together in spoken and written language, the more they'll build their word knowledge. They’ll be able to ask and answer questions about unknown words, or presto!, figure them out from the context.
In our Kindergarten Class we do phonemic awareness drills daily. We call it "Fun with Words". It actually is the Heggerty Program which is a researched based system of word drills. We add sounds or omitt sounds, break up compound words, build compound words. In this program we flip sounds, substitute sounds
Start with the basics
Left to right, up to down, front to back it all seems so obvious by the time you've learned to read, but to a new reader, some of the most basic reading rules — starting at the top of the page and going downwards, reading from left to right, and page by page — require explicit instructions and explanations.
Kindergartners even need to realize that words are separated by spaces. By the end of the year, students also need to become familiar with parts of a book, such as the front cover, the back cover, and the title page. Under the Common Core, this knowledge of book components gradually increases with each grade.
While you are you are reading to your child ask him/her to point out the title, the author (what does she do?), where to start reading, count how many words are on line, and ask what is the dot at the end of the sentence. Ask questions to engage your child in the reading process and the world of print. Remember this is the year we are going to teach them to love reading and love books!