Kindergarteners begin to read!

Now that we are in the third quarter of school, I have begun working with the kindergarten students on a variety of skills to guide them to be readers. For the students that are learning to recognize the names of letters, I work with them on the skills below which are skills you can also work with them on at home: -sing the alphabet song daily, pointing to the letters as you sing them -teach the child the letters of his/her name -match upper case to lower case letters using letters written on cards -hunt for letters in books-example: "can you point to all of the w's on this page?" For students who are learning to match letters to their sounds, I have found the following activities to be helpful: -read abc books, find pictures that correlate with each letter -make your own abc book. Find pictures in magazines that begin with each letter, cut them out, and have your child practice reading their book! -write letters on cards, hold the cards up and ask the child to make that letter's sound And finally, for those students ready to read, here are some strategies to encourage them to do just that! -read to your child! This will instill a love of reading, a model of fluent reading, and is great binding time! -ask questions to develop vocabulary and comprehension -look for letters on signs, in magazines, on cereal boxes...all around you! Ask your child to say the first sound in these words and then tell you what they think the signs might be telling you (for example: stop is telling you to stop) Overall, my focus for these wonderful Jefferson bears is to expose them at a variety of books and to teach them how exciting reading can be! If you have any questions or need any other tips on helping your child to further develop their reading skills, I'd be happy to help! :)