kindergarten literacy resources
We have adopted the Superkids K-2 Reading Program for the 2016-2107 school year. Superkids is a comprehensive core
literacy curriculum just for Kindergarten through Second grade. It was developed by Pleasant Rowland, who is the founder of Rowland Reading Foundation and creator of American Girl. Here is what Superkids has to offer our little Kinders:
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phonemic awareness |
Kindergarten words |
Phonemic awareness is understanding sounds in words, rhyming, syllables, etc. Strong phonemic awareness is important to early reading skills.
A great way to practice phonemic awareness is to play word/sound games with your child. For example, you can play rhyming games by giving your child a word such as hat and ask your child to produce a new word that rhymes with hat. Continue taking turns until all words are exhausted (hat, bat, cat, fat, rat, sat, mat, splat). Many students have a difficult time rhyming and will give a new word with the same beginning sound. You can use the word family of the week as a starting place for rhymes each week. You can work on helping your child identify the beginning, middle, and ending sounds in words. You can give your child a word, or show them a picture and ask what is the beginning sound in the word. For example, say the word moon and ask “What is the beginning sound you hear in the word moon?” The correct response is the sound “m”. Notice the correct response is the sound “m” not the letter m. If your child says the letter m ask them to produce the sound. You can do the same for the sounds at the end and middle of words. You can also work on syllables by clapping out words. For example, the word elephant can be clapped out “el-e-phant”. Ask your child how many syllables are in the word elephant? “Three, the word elephant has three syllables” The one syllable words tend to be the trickiest of all. Students want to clap out each sound rather than each syllable. Lots of practice will help with the difference between sounds and syllables. You can work on blending by asking your child to guess the word you are saying as you say each sound one at a time (c-u-p). You can work on segmenting words by asking your child to tell you all of the sounds they hear in words. For example, in the word dog your child should say three separate sounds (d-o-g). When we do this in class we hold up a separate finger for each sound. This activity helps your child read unfamiliar words by blending the sounds together. It also helps your child spell unfamiliar words by listening to each sound. |
In the Superkids program, children should be able to read 66 Dolch words by the end of kindergarten. Some Dolch words, such as the, said, and of, are phonetically irregular. These words are taught as MEMORY words that children must memorize how to read and spell. Other Dolch words, such as fast, tell, and cut, are phonetically regular, and children can decode and encode these words once they learn the letter-sounds the words contain.
As a class, we will spell, say, read, find, sing, dance, and write the words! The list may look overwhelming, but let's trust in Superkids! Ways you can help at home are:
MEMORY wordsDOLCHE WORDS |
Additional literacy activities
There are many great websites to help your child with beginning literacy skills. Below is a link to a pdf that will bring you to many different sites. Your child can work on rhyming, beginning sounds, medial sounds, ending sounds, vowels, and even compound words!