Kindergarten students enter school with a wide variety of experiences. Most know some letters and sounds and can often write and recognize their names. The kindergarten year is spent building a solid foundation of skills for reading success. Kindergarten students will master phonics skills such as the alphabet and the sounds that are represented both by consonants and vowels. Kindergartners also learn phonological awareness which is understanding how sounds work. They will learn to discriminate and produce rhyming words. Additionally, students will learn to be able to hear the sounds in words, put them together, and take them apart. Phonological awareness is an essential skill that is developed and practiced throughout the year. (See Learn More About Phonological Awareness for more information.)
Another component to reading is developing concepts about print. This includes understanding that text is read left to right, top to bottom, and front to back. Sentences are made up of words with spacing and that the print contains meaning. Kindergartens will also connect pictures with written words.
Students begin to learn sight words to help bring automaticity when reading text.
Kindergartens spend time in shared reading, read aloud and independently engaged in books.
Students will be building their word knowledge as they are exposed to a variety of read alouds across different genres. They will discover new meaning for familiar words (ex. the word duck can be a bird or it can mean to duck your head). They will be increasing their knowledge of the world around them as they explore a wide variety of topics. All of this background knowledge will lead them to be successful readers as they continue to read new texts. They will be excited to talk about character’s and their actions in stories. They will be filled up with fun facts of new learning about animals and science and endless topics as they become experts when they read nonfiction. Students will learn how to ask and answer questions about details in their books and be able to tell how they know that information. By the end of kindergarten, most students have begun to read conventional text. Our reading expectation for the end of the Kindergarten year are levels C-E. Kindergarten students should be able to read independently for at least 10 minutes. Reading and being read to are an essential part of the Kindergarten year. A wide exposure to books broadens one’s experience and leads to building vocabulary and a deeper understanding of experiences.
Jessica Kelmon. "Your kindergartner’s reading under the Common Core Standards | Parenting." Parenting. n.d. Web. 27 Apr. 2018. <https://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/kindergarten-reading/>
Read digital texts. Your child has a district paid subscription to:
Pebble Go // Research tool for primary grades with a variety of nonfiction texts (not leveled, can be digitally read aloud); contact your child's teacher for login information