How to Choose a Kindergarten Curriculum | Early/Emergent Readers
I called up a colleague and said, “Please tell me the best way to teach reading and what to look for in a reading curriculum!” Though I have taught reading, I’ve never taught a kiddo from scratch, let alone picked out a curriculum. Knowing phonics and phonemic awareness were most important, I wanted to know the best way to teach those skills. Soooo….here is what she told me. 😁
This is what you need to look for in your kindergarten reading curriculum.
PHONICS
You need a curriculum that is strong in phonics and provides lots of opportunities to practice phonics and phonemic awareness. Young readers need lots of practice blending sounds, segmenting sounds, and decoding.
EX: segmenting - If I say, “Tell me the sounds in ‘cat’.” The reader says, “/c/, /a/, /t/”
EX: blending - If I say, “/c/, /a/, /t/.” The reader says, “caaaat”. Word: CAT
ALPHABET OUT OF ORDER
Beginning readers should learn the easier sounds first so that they can start manipulating sounds into simple words to start reading. Look for a curriculum that does not teach the letters in ABC order. Some easy sounds are /s/, /a/, /t/, /i/, /m/, /b/ etc., which can then be read as sit, sat, mit, bit, bat.
DECODABLES
Decodables are books that readers can practice reading and also go along with sounds that are being taught in the lessons.
HIGH FREQUENCY WORDS
High frequency words are words that are used often in the English language–the, with, I etc. Sometimes they are decodable and sometimes they do not follow the rules (like the word ‘of’). High frequency words (and most words really) become sight words which are words you can read by sight. You know the word automatically so that you do not need to sound it out.
Other pieces of reading that should be sprinkled throughout your reading curriculum are skills such as rhyming words, retelling stories, answering comprehension questions orally, and making predictions.
And that, my friend, is the gist.
And in case you are wondering, we started with All About Reading Level 1.
xo L.
