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Many of
our Language Arts experiences involve listening, speaking,
reading, writing, viewing and representing often connected to
our various themes and projects.
Story
Reading
Children need opportunities to hear good
stories and informational books read aloud daily. Listening to and talking about books on
a regular basis provides children with demonstrations of the benefits and pleasures of
reading. Story reading introduces children to new words, new sentences, new places, and
new ideas. They also hear the kinds of vocabulary, sentences, and text structures they
will find in their school books and be expected to read and understand. Reading aloud to
children every day, and talking about books and stories, supports and extends oral
language development and helps students connect oral to written language.
Alphabet
One
of the best foundations for early reading success is
familiarity with the letters of the alphabet.
Our
exploration of ALPHABET KNOWLEDGE includes ordering the
alphabet, identifying the letters and making letter/sound
connections. The children will continue to "experience" the
alphabet through our classroom Centers as well as other
hands-on activities.
Children
can learn alphabet songs, match pictures or objects with
initial letters, and play games with letters and sounds.
Many
children come knowing the sounds of many letters, particularly
the CONSONANTS. We review and extend this knowledge at the
beginning of grade one. We are also beginning to explore
VOWELS and WORD FAMILIES. The addition of vowels allows the
children to explore and expand on their spelling, writing and
reading skills through our daily reading and writing
activities.
Sight
Words
Learning
SIGHT WORDS (words that the children should be able to
identify and read by sight such as color words, number words,
and the other common words - the, it, me, ...) is also
a very important part of our learning week. The children
are introduced to these sight words and are given a variety of
opportunities to read, write, and use these words in our daily
classroom activities. You can support your child with this
area of his/her learning by practicing to write and read these
words. When practicing these words, it is important to keep in
mind that using the words in context is more valuable than
"studying" or "memorizing" these words in isolation.
Finding/identifying these sight words in a book/story or
having your child write sentences that use the words is more
valuable than memorizing lists of words.
Phonics
Beginning
reading programs are made up of many components that are
interrelated. Research calls for explicit, systematic
instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics along with early and continued exposure to
rich literature and writing opportunities. Teachers work with several components at one
time, and children are helped to see the importance of these relationships.
One of the most important foundations of
reading success is phonemic awareness. Phonemes are the basic speech sounds that are
represented by the letters of the alphabet, and phonemic awareness is the understanding
that words are sequences of phonemes. Phonemic awareness is demonstrated by the ability to
identify and manipulate sounds within spoken words. Children can learn to assemble
phonemes into words as well as break words into their phonemes even before they are
writing letters or words. Giving children experience with rhyming words in the preschool
years is an effective first step toward building phonemic awareness. Hearing rhymes, and
then producing rhymes for given words, requires children to focus on the sounds inside
words.
Rhyming activities initiate phonemic
awareness. The reading and rereading of books with clear, simple rhymes offer abundant and
fun opportunities for direct instruction in rhyming and the beginnings of phonemic
awareness.
Phonemic awareness is an insight about
oral language. There is evidence to suggest that the relation between phonemic awareness
and learning to read is reciprocal: phonemic awareness supports reading acquisition, and
reading instruction and experiences with print facilitate phonemic awareness development.
Young
children's awareness of onsets (the initial consonant of a word or syllable) and
rimes (everything after the initial consonant in a one-syllable word or in
syllables, traditionally referred to as phonograms or word families) is related
to success in beginning reading. Therefore children should be taught to identify
and manipulate these sound units.
Effective reading instruction helps
children learn to use phonics along with their prior knowledge and context, rather than in
isolation.
Reading
Activities
The
children are also involved in many daily READING activities in
the classroom. We are exploring a wide variety of reading
strategies, spelling patterns and "book knowledge" concepts
(tracking text, sounding words out, etc.) within the context
of books, stories, poems, and songs.
 
The
discovery that early readers read better in context informs us
that the most effective way to help children learn to
recognize a lot of print words is to help them read stories
with familiar language. One way to do this is through shared
reading with predictable, engaging stories. In shared reading,
the teacher reads a story first to and then with early readers
while pointing to the print. This both demonstrates the
reading process to the children and establishes a basis for
the phonics lessons to come, making the phonics lessons more
memorable and, hence, more effective. It also helps the
children see themselves as readers. Once the children can read
the story by themselves and have learned one-to-one matching
of spoken and print words, the teacher then shows the children
the parts of the whole print words.
Children
will begin reading with familiar pattern or predictable
stories. As children gain confidence and familiarity with
these type of books, they will begin to recognize letter
patterns, like dinosaur or kindergarten,
and will begin to read them in isolation (all by themselves
out of the story.) However, for the very earliest reading, we
encourage the children to learn how the story sounds, and then
repeat it successfully. It sounds like memorization, but it is
internalization of a literacy pattern. This is the foundation
layer on which we build other strategies and word recognition
skills throughout the year.
As children become fluent readers, they
read increasingly challenging literature, both fiction and nonfiction, of greater
complexity and difficulty. They read daily with partners, in groups, and independently at
school and at home.
For more
information on Predictable Stories
Writing
Activities
In
WRITING, the children are encouraged to record their personal
ideas as independently as possible. The children are given
many writing opportunities in order to phonetically apply
their understanding of consonants and vowels, use phonics and
visual memory for writing words, use simple word families, use
the alphabet as a reference and use personal word books to
engage in a variety of daily writing activities. Children
have the opportunity to experiment with and manipulate letters to make words and messages.
Invented spelling is a powerful means of leading students to internalize phonemic
awareness and the alphabetic principle.
 
Spelling
Teaching children strategies for
correcting their spelling is far more important that giving them the correct spelling of
any particular word. Such strategies include:
a. writing the word
two or three different ways and deciding which one looks right
b. locating the
spelling in a familiar text, on the Word Wall or in print displayed around the classroom
c. asking someone, consulting a dictionary, or using computer software
Discussing
spelling patterns and drawing spelling generalizations as a class will also help
children develop an every-growing repertoire of words they can spell correctly
in first drafts. Such interactive, thought-engaging lessons are likely to be
more productive than spelling lists and tests.
Children write using their knowledge of
printed letters and the sounds they represent. Because knowledge of letter-sound patterns
contributes to reading success, spelling instruction is coordinated with the programs of
reading instruction. Knowledge of and practice in correct spellings also contributes to
more effective writing.
Oral
Language
In recognition of the research into the
development of auditory awareness skills, teaching methods have changed from a phonics or
sound based approach to one that draws on the child's knowledge of oral language. This
includes the meanings of words and sentence patterns, which hand-in-hand support children
as they learn to "crack the code" of our printed language. Reading is a complex task that demands
that children have well developed spoken language skills.
What we know about the way children
learn to speak and understand language helps us to understand how printed language skills
are learned. Children first process language in chunks at the phrase or sentence level.
The language is then broken down to the word level, then syllables and finally to the
sound level. When children reach this end stage, we say they have achieved phonemic
awareness.
Students need a broad array of language
experiences. Oral language, vocabulary, and other language concepts are crucial
foundations for success in reading, especially reading comprehension. Children need to be
able to use language to describe their experiences, to predict what will happen in the
future, and to talk about events in the past. Programs can develop children's language by
giving them opportunities to discuss their experiences, make predictions, and discuss past
events in small groups.
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