The ability to listen, speak clearly, and read and write begins to develop before children go to school and continues throughout their school years.
Kindergarten reading instruction includes skillful, step by step instruction in the areas of comprehension, fluency, phonemic awareness, phonics, and vocabulary.
Children involved in hands on activities related to the stories they hear and read, have an enriched understanding and connect to the story characters.
- Listening and speaking
- Phonemic awareness and reading skills
- Writing skills
- Responding to literature
Kindergarten reading and writing, speaking and listening and responding to literature, come about as children are given opportunities to hear quality literature, to play with letters and words, to engage in activities and experiences about literature, and as they receive specific instruction that increases their awareness of language.
Giving kids plenty of time to investigate everyday things associated with the stories, will lead to more inquiry, knowledge building and provide a meaningful reason to share with drawings and writing.
Emergent Literacy - What is it?
Kindergarten and preschool literacy begins early. Children are said to be emergent readers and writers when they start to develop reading and writing skills.
Reading and writing begins when children begin to:
- pretend to read
- “write” with lines of scribble or letters
- point to words from left to right
- use vocabulary like “letter” and “words”
- recognize a few words and names
- start to understand what rhyming words are
- can name letters and beginning sounds of words
Reading Instruction
Children need instruction to:
- develop an awareness that letters and letter patterns represent the sounds of spoken language
- acquire reading comprehension strategies and apply them to the reading of text
- develop and maintain a love of reading during the learning process
Reading books on environmental print in the classroom will help you set up your classroom to best benefit your students’ reading progress.
Simple beginning assessment for kindergarten reading
Exposure to literature varies with families. Check children individually to evaluate if they:
- can recognize the front and the back of a book
- can identify - what is the title of a book
- can identify - what is a word
- can identify - what is a letter
- can identify where you begin reading on a page
- can identify where you finish reading on a page