Reading Curriculum for Kindergarten
What makes one phonics or Kindergarten reading curriculum different from another? Can reading curriculum for Kindergarten really be all that different?
Phonics is not new. You know that. It’s simply been packaged in a lot of ways. That’s why when you’re searching ‘reading curriculum for Kindergarten’, you get ‘curriculum overwhelm’!!
If you get a phonics manual and you sort of know what you’re doing-but-not-really [“Ouch!”], then read on!
Your phonics curriculum needs a SOUNDS DRILL.
Call it a super-hero-sounds drill for your child, and phonemic awareness drill for you. And you, mom friend, need to know HOW to lead your child through this simple drill.
YOU and your ability to lead your child through a simple sounds drill is the ONE thing that is going to support your child in the BEST way as a beginning reader and speller.
Yes, MOM, you are that important. You knew that, right?
Two reasons why a sounds drill needs to be in every single lesson in your phonics curriculum:
- If your child can blend sounds hears, /d/ – /r/ – /o/ – /p/, and quickly say the word ‘drop’, then seeing letters in a word, recalling the sounds those letters make (decoding), and quickly blending those sounds to read a whole word is going to be automatic.
If your child can decode to read a word, your child can read a sentence. It’s the same decoding skill repeated word after word.
BUT, it begins with hearing individual sounds, then blending the sounds we hear together to speak a word out loud before we add letter symbols.
Train your child in the SUPERHERO SOUNDS DRILL to blend individual sounds by hearing.
No pencil or paper yet.
Then, add letters.
/d/-/i/-/g/, ‘dig’
/p/-/l/-/o/-/t/, ‘plot’
/ch/-/i/-/n/, ‘chin’
/s/-/or/-/t/-/s/,‘sorts’
/s/-/t/-/ar/-/t/-/s/, ‘starts’
2. SOUNDS drills separate struggling spellers from confident spellers. Why?
Go back to Kindergarten or Grade 1 for a moment. I’ll be you spelled words by sounding them out, sound by sound.
This is called ‘ENCODING’. It is the BEST way for your son or daughter to spell his/her first CVC words.
/s/-/u/-/n/ – ‘sun’
As your child moves beyond CVC words, SOUNDS drills are going to make the difference for your child from being a struggling speller to a confident speller.
After learning the alphabet, your child will learn that the consonant digraph ‘ch’ spells /ch/ in ‘chips’. Chop the sounds apart /ch/-/i/-/p/-/s/.
Let’s encode the word ‘sixth’. How many sounds are there? /s/-/i/-/x/-/th/. Yes, 4 sounds.
How about the word ‘crunch’? Get your chopper hands ready to chop this word apart with me:
/c/ – /r/ – /u/ – /n/ – /ch/. 5 sounds. There is no letter in the alphabet that spells /ch/. You’ll teach your child that.
R-controlled vowels are next. ‘Ar’ spells /ar/ in ‘barn’ /b/ – /ar/ -/n/. No more spelling barn as brn. I see this so often as a teacher in K/1! Once your child learns r-controlled vowels, like ‘ar’ spells /ar/ in the middle of a word, then they uplevel their spelling.
Looking for a reading curriculum for Kindergarten with a SOUNDS DRILL in every single lesson (120 lessons), get it here!
Your phonics guide,
Melanie
