Dolch Word List
These are common words that children should learn how to read and write. From 50-75% of all words used in school books, library books, newspapers, and magazines are in the Dolch Basic Sight Vocabulary of 220 words (preschool thru Grade 3). The Dolch word list is made up of "service words" (pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and verbs)
http://www.kidzone.ws/dolch/kindergarten.htm
Oral Language
Language development is one of the main objectives for kindergarten students. At this early stage, language development involves speaking, listening and emergent reading and writing. Our classroom environment includes daily activities where students interact with the teacher and classmates. Formal reading instruction must include "read-alouds" conducted by the teacher and group activities like choral and repetitive reading. All these strategies build children's vocabularies and encourage their language development.
Literacy skills comprise the majority of our instructional day and provide many opportunities for language development. Students improve oral language as they learn how to sound out words, eventually reading simple sentences. They also listen to stories that teachers read aloud, which helps increase their vocabulary, giving them more words for interacting with classmates. Our classroom is a print-rich environment with grade-level books and word walls that children use daily.
Learning Centers
Oral, listening and written language development occurs during informal instruction. Learning centers are an integral part of our classroom. Our centers are usually based on thematic units in the kindergarten curriculum like community helpers, transportation or seasons. At learning centers, students work in small groups to complete cooperative activities. All major subject areas are covered in the center activities. For example, in our two-week unit on seasons, students may draw trees and flowers in full bloom to represent spring in the art center. They could plant seeds in the science center and compose a poem about trees in the writing center. The emphasis is not so much on the various activities, but on the improvement of social skills like conflict resolution and sharing of ideas which are conducive to language development
Examples of some literacy centres
1. Children matching their alphabets
Sharing Experiences
There are many ways to develop oral language skills. In our class, we ask students to talk briefly about a personal experience. Every Friday we have "show and tell". This allows the students to bring a toy from home, art work, photograph, favourite book that they want to share and talk about with the class. This is a great way to foster the children's oral language skills.
1. One of the first words a child learns is her own name. Children love playing games with their names and with the names of their friends, and they love putting their names in nonsense rhymes and their favorite poem or song whenever possible.. Research has shown that one of the first things children learn to read at school are their friends' names -- on name tags, on desks, on mailboxes and cubbies, and on papers and artwork hung up for display
2. What is Shared Reading?
Shared Reading is exactly what it sounds like - It is a time for sharing a story and reading together! Shared reading in our kindergarten classroom may include echo reading (students echoing the words after the teacher), choral reading (students reading at the same time as the teacher), or fill in the gap reading (teacher reading the majority of the text and then pausing for students to fill in and say rhyming words or other predictable words in the story). All of these ways of reading are ways to encourage early reading enjoyment and success with a high level of teacher support.
During shared reading, students focus on both the pictures and the text to make predictions and to generate meaning. Most shared readings begin with a 'picture walk' in which the teacher guides students through a preview of the story, asking questions to elicit words and phrases that are used in the text. The book is then read to students and predictions are checked against the text of the story. The book is revisited among several days. Further comprehension of the story takes place through questioning and discussion of each story (the author's choice of words and the illustrator's pictures), through acting out the story, making puppets and retelling boards, reviewing elements of the story (setting, characters, problem, solution), and putting pictures of events of the story in order.
Once students are familiar with the story, we also look more closely at the text. We mask certain letters and go on word hunts for small high frequency words such as I, the, to, etc. We also play with the sound of the text. Students might be asked to listen carefully to the story and be asked to round up all the rhyming words they hear or words that begin with a certain sound. We also frequently brainstorm other words that rhyme or begin with the same sound. They may be asked to determine the number of claps (syllables) in a word or the number of parts (sounds) in a word. Sometimes, students will need to listen carefully to a word that is stretched out and put it together to figure out the word from the story.
There are many learning opportunities during shared reading!
During Shared Reading students are learning to....
- track print from left to right and word by word
- predict and infer
- enjoy and participate in reading with a high level of support
- build a sense of story
- expand their vocabulary
- find letters and sounds in context
- attend to concepts of print (spacing, capitalization, punctuation)
- sequence the events of a story
- focus on story elements (characters, setting, beginning, middle, end).
The Morning Message
The morning message is a time for our class to think about what is going to be happening during the school day, to reflect on an important event from the day before, or to discuss a meaningful upcoming event. At the start of the school year, I model and write for the students. However, as the year progresses, the students begin to take more ownership of this time and write the message with me in a shared writing or interactive writing format.
Our message is very predictable and most students can quickly help say and/or write the first letters and high frequency or sight words such as 'is', 'the', and a student's name. Students get quite excited about being able to contribute!
An example of a morning message we may write on our dry erase board:
Today is (day of the week). The ABC helper is (student's name).
or Today is (day of the week). We will go to the farm tomorrow.
or Today is (day of the week). We will go to the farm tomorrow.
After agreeing upon what we should write, students help me say the whole message orally. Then I say the first word slowly (stressing especially the first letter early in the school year) and ask students to raise their hand if they know what letter 'Today" starts with. One child comes up and writes the first letter. As he/she gets ready to write, I ask the class or the child "Today – what letter do you think he/she is going to write? Will it be upper case or lowercase, etc." Often, the students also air write the letter as the one child is writing the same letter on the board. Depending on the time of the year, the abilities, and attention span of my students, I will either write the rest of the letters for the word "Today" or say the word again slowly and ask students what letters/sounds they hear next. If students do not hear the very next letter/sound, but hear a letter that is farther into the word, I will write the missing letters and then the letter that they state.
The class reads what we have so far and then we repeat what we want our entire message to say. Then I stress the next word – most of my kindergartners can write this two letter word by the end of the first semester, so when I call on a student I let him/her write the entire word. We continue in this manner until the entire message is written. Then we reread the entire message. It is usually left on our board until students go home. During free choice time I've spotted a few of my kindergartners going back and trying to point and reread the message.
On days that I know I will be needing a substitute or on days when our scheduled activities will be tight, I write a message ahead of time for the students to read together and discuss. This message is written in letter format such as below...
Dear Class,
Today is (day of the week). You will cook today.
Have fun!
Have fun!
Smiles,
Mrs. McKenzie
Mrs. McKenzie
Even though the message is already written on these days, students still have the opportunity to find letters and small words that they know.
By participating in the writing of our morning message, students learn...
- writing is speech written down
- proper letter formation
- upper and lower case letter recognition
- associating letters and sounds
- left to right progression
- differentiate between a letter, a word, and a sentence
- reading of common sight words
- spacing
- punctuation
- to look for patterns within words (word families)
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