New Heights School K5 Reading Program

The goal of our reading program is to build a strong phonetic foundation for my students while instilling in them the love of reading.  The best way to do this is through implicit, individualized phonics instruction, developing phonemic awareness,  and immersing the children in quality literature and language experiences.

 

   

 

 

Phonemic Awareness

"Phonemic awareness refers to the ability to segment and manipulate the sounds of oral language. It is not the same as phonics, which involves knowing how written letters relate to spoken sounds. Activities that develop phonemic awareness in children provide practice with rhyme and with beginning sounds and syllables." - International Reading Association

 

The best predictor of reading difficulty in kindergarten or first grade is the inability to segment words and syllables into constituent sound units (phonemic awareness)" (Lyon, 1995; see References).

Phonemic Awareness Activities

These are some of the word building and phonemic activities we do in class.  You can work on these at home as well.  They are great to play in the car or when you have to wait somewhere.

 

1. Rhyming Words-Recognition (Do these words rhyme?)

fat-bat           happy-glad               sun-bun

2. Rhyming Words-Application (What word rhymes with ___?)

At first have your child give you a word (car) and you give them a word that rhymes with it (star).  When your child gets good at rhyming, you can give them a word and have them think of a word that rhymes (nonsense words are fine). 

3. Syllable Counting (How many syllables do you hear in the word____?)

Start with family and friend names

Jo     Su-zie     Al-i-son

4. Syllable Segmentation (I'll say a word, then you repeat it slowly.)

teacher (teach-er)    pencil (pen-cil)

*Try clapping to see how many syllables are in a word

5. Oral Synthesis - Blending Speech Sounds (Listen and tell me the word I said.)

Break the word into its individual sounds and see if your child can put the word together.  Leave about 1 second in-between sounds.  Start with three letter words and progress as it becomes easier for your child.

c-a-t      d-o-g     h-e-n      h-o-t      f-r-o-g   d-r-u-m   sh-i-p   d-u-ck

6. Phoneme Isolation - (What sound do you hear ______?)

Ask your child to tell you what they hear at the beginning and end of words.

7. Phoneme Deletion -( Say the word ____, but leave off the ______. )

ex. say the word mop but leave off the p

ex. say the word cat but leave off the c

8. Phoneme Substitution - (Replace the first sound in ____with _____. What is the new word?)

ex. cat, replace the c with b and what is the new word?

ex. man, replace the n with t and what is the new word?

Phonemic Awareness Links:

Activities from Madison School District

ERIC Digest Article

Phonemic Awareness Assessment Tools

 

 

 

 

       What is Balanced Literacy?

Balanced Literacy is a framework designed to help all students learn to read and write effectively.  Balanced Literacy integrates reading and writing with the goal that these will become enjoyable activities for the students. The teacher serves as a model and guides the students towards independence. The students will participate in shared and individual reading and writing activities each day.  These are described below:

READING


 Reading TO children:               
Read Alouds:  

Teacher is the model of good reading strategies

Attention spans and vocabulary are increased

Children naturally have questions that lead to class discussions

The teacher reads a variety of genres, including poems, fiction, non-fiction, magazines, etc.

Teachers verbally interact with students before, during, and after reading to increase comprehension

Children internalize sentence structure and "book language" concepts, develop a sense of story structure, and build prediction skills.

Children are motivated to read quality literature

 Reading WITH children:
 Shared Reading:
 

Shared Reading is an interactive reading experience.  An enlarged text that all children can see is used. Children join in the reading of a big book or other enlarged text such as songs, poems, charts, and lists created by the teacher. This reading allows less confident students to share in the reading experience through choral reading and teacher support. During the reading, the teacher involves the children in reading together by pointing to or sliding below each word in the text. Reading behaviors such as moving left to right, word-by-word matching, and other reading strategies are modeled.

Texts are usually read over a period of days. The first reading emphasizes reading for enjoyment. Subsequent readings aim to increase participation, teach about book and print characteristics, teach reading strategies, help develop a sight vocabulary of high frequency words, and teach phonics.

Poetry is used to focus on reading strategies, sight words, and rhyme.

       Reading BY children:     
Guided Reading:

Guided reading is an instructional reading strategy during which a teacher works with small groups of children who have similar reading processes and needs. The teacher selects and introduces new books carefully chosen to match the instructional levels of students and supports whole text reading.

Reading strategies are reinforced in the context of real reading.

Teacher introduces the story to promote effective use of cueing sources, prediction, monitoring, etc.

Teacher supports/prompts: print concepts, early reading strategies, monitoring and self-correction, good reader
strategies, and comprehension.   

Independent Reading:

Independent Reading is a time when students self-select and independently read appropriate books. 

Choosing their own books builds self-confidence and gives students ownership.

This allows students time to practice reading strategies that have been taught in class.

 

WRITING

Writing WITH children:
 Shared Writing  

Shared Writing is an approach to writing where the teacher and children work together to compose messages and stories. Children provide the ideas and the teacher supports the process as a scribe. The message is usually related to some individual or group experience.

  • models how phonics works,

  • models conventional spelling

  • models mechanics

  • aids in understanding the reciprocity of reading and writing

  • helps in hearing/sequencing sounds in words

Writing BY children:    
Independent Writing:  

Students are encouraged daily to be authors by expressing their thoughts in writing.  We study author’s craft, write in response to literature, and write in a variety of genres.

Students are encouraged to use phonetic spelling in their independent writing.  We will edit writing for display and publication.

Students gain confidence as writers                              

Students develop an understanding of uses of writing

Students gain practice in different types of writing: journal, response, letter, story, lists, poems, etc.                          

 

WORKING WITH WORDS

Students manipulate words (and parts of words) in meaningful and enjoyable activities and games.  Students develop the phonemic awareness necessary to decode words in reading.  The students are active problem solvers as they look for spelling patterns and segment and blend words.  In word study, students will experience with:

Letters and their corresponding sounds.

Components of words, such as roots, prefixes, and suffixes.

Patterns of how words are spelled, such as word families

Changing onsets and rimes to make new words
 

 

 

Our Sight Words

*Sight words are words that are difficult to read phonetically and occur with high frequency in the English language.

These are the words your child should know by the end of the year.

        a                                   I                                     my

        and                                in                                    see

       can                                 is                                    the

        go                                  it                                    to

        he                                 look                                 we

        will                                you                                 that

        at                                 had                                  little                              

       she                                make                               this

        come                             me                                   up

        did                                no                                   want

        do                                 his                                  what

        down                            play                                 went

        for                               they                                with

        green                            red                                 said

        like                               this                                 but

        some                             two                                 one

        has                                him                                have
 

Sight Word Games and Resources

 

Star Words on-line game

Dolch word games to print and play at home from the School Bell

Color Word Concentration

Sight Word game ideas

Sight Word games to print

Animal Eyes on-line game

Hangman on-line