Teaching Reading in Kindergarten
Teaching Reading in a Kindergarten Classroom
Diane Clark
Reading 5710
March 7, 2005
What an exciting time to be in the field of teaching! In my situation with the administration that is one hundred percent behind its teachers, I find myself in a very enjoyable as well as excellent situation. In the school where I am employed, if a teacher wants to investigate a new program, technique, or use a new strategy, all they have to do is ask. The principal is a firm believer that if you allow a teacher to do their job, they will do it. He has a wonderful instinct for hiring those that do just that. He allows teachers to be an integral part of how the school is run and continually wants feedback from them to insure the school environment is the best it can be and one that evokes the highest quality. I consider myself fortunate when I transferred into that school.
I am a Kindergarten teacher with approximately eleven and one half years experience teaching in the classroom. I’m a firm believer that there is no greater skill that can be taught to a child than Reading. It is an amazingly difficult and complex task which is embedded in every aspect of our society; it dictates how our society functions, which is why I take my job very seriously. I want to be able to provide a solid foundation in the area of Reading. I first want to set the tone for my Reading program that I have developed by establishing an environment that allows the children positions of leadership, ownership to tasks, some choice, and provide for a supportive and enjoyable introduction into the world of literacy. I have incorporated ideas that I get from reading programs that I use currently and those I have used in the past to create reading into a wonderful experience where children want to be involved. Some ideas come from workshops I have attended, other ideas from teachers, or sometimes even from the students; they have great ideas! They have wonderful little minds, and if they are thinking one way, perhaps another child may think that way too! I can try it, vary it or discard it depending on the workability of the idea. I try to create an atmosphere where the children are comfortable voicing their ideas. I realize that there are other elements that can foster the whole child, so I try to develop self-esteem, curiosity, and a natural purposefulness to reading. Ideally, I think the program that I have put together works! I try to stay abreast of new ideas, techniques or strategies that come into the field of reading. I’m also mindful that each classroom of children is different from the last group. What works in one group may or may not work with another, so I adjust what I do for the best results.
Assessment in the Kindergarten classroom
In my current teaching situation, our county has developed an assessment called the KELA, the Kindergarten Early Literacy Assessment, which is used to determine growth of the student throughout a given school year. I am not against assessment, and do feel that testing can be good, but I feel that I do teach to the document. The assessment covers what the state of North Carolina says we need to be teaching. This assessment is a document allows me to track my students. I believe that whatever a teacher decides to use, that information should be used to assess growth that the child makes between designated time periods. I use the assessment and keep anecdotal records to make sure each child is achieving and making growth. I generate checklists from state objectives and keep notations of who can and cannot do certain items as we cover them.
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My reading program is developed around this assessment, although I use many other ideas, strategies, techniques and ideas obtained from past and present reading programs; I have to teach to what will be covered on the test but if the class is ready to go beyond what is on the assessment, I will teach for learning. The assessment that is given covers alphabet recognition, phonological awareness, decoding, spelling and leveled readings to determine what level that a child reads.
The alphabet recognition portion covers four areas in that are tested four times a year. The testing is done in stages, where only certain areas are tested at a designated time of year. The four areas of alphabet recognition are: uppercase recognition, (being able to name uppercase letters), lowercase recognition, (being able to name lowercase letters), production, (being able to produce through writing the alphabet letters), and sound production, (being able to produce the sound of each letter of the alphabet). The phonological portion of the assessment encompasses several areas as well. The areas are: verbally stating how many words are in a sentence, being able to decipher how many syllables are in certain words, rhyming, deleting initial and final parts or sounds in words and distinguishing beginning and ending sounds of words. There is a decoding part of the test where the children are asked to call out words that they recognize. The spelling portion of the assessment is a portion of the test where the student writes down words that the teacher calls out. The last portion of the test deals with reading passages of leveled texts. The children begin at the Emergent level and read throughout the year at designated times, in our case, each nine weeks. The books, developed by the state are leveled, determined by the reading equation that was developed for each book or passage. As I stated above the KELA assessment plays a big part in how I teach reading. The scores are sent to the county level and then to the state level to be aware of the growth each student has made for the year.
Another area that I assess in my room is writing. In the Write From the Beginning program, a program the county adopted, the students are assessed three times during the school year. A rubric is used to determine growth. The students are given a prompt from which they will write a sentence. They are assessed on drawing, the formation of their letters, and if the sentence matches what they have drawn.
Materials used in the Kindergarten reading program
I use a variety of materials to ensure that objectives are being met satisfactorily by myself and by objectives set by the state. In the area of phonemic awareness I use materials from the reading program that I am currently using, Letterland reading program, integrating it with materials from an old Open Court series, (letter picture cards), a Saxon Phonics series that I taught from in the past, and an assortment of hands on materials that either the school purchased or I purchased to add variety to the program. I use mini Magna Doodles, chalkboards, white boards, magic slates, and rainbow boards, skywriting using their fingers, magic fingers, (hard plastic fingernails with red nail polish on them), Hulk hands, a giant college megaphone, a fireman’s megaphone for cheering words, a wacky stick, (child’s toy), a dog clicker, a magic wand, flashlight writing, textured writing boards, and a material clock to engage the children in texture with
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alphabet recognition. I also use games, for example, I made up the game, “Guess the Letter”. The children are contestants trying to guess the letter (those letters that they have been exposed to in the room) that another child picks from a stack of alphabet cards. They guess the letter from the clues that the audience gives (words that begin with that letter); it follows a Price is Right format. (Come on down, you’re the next contestant in Guess the Letter). I use many songs (Dr. Jean’s songs) and finger plays that allow the children exposure to the alphabet in an engaging way. I incorporate and utilize technology with different software and web sites that focuses on the alphabet in different ways, (phonemic awareness and phonological awareness), which allows the children in my room exploration using the alphabet. Some examples are the Letterland CD,
and Kinder Concepts. I have created my own web site for parents and the children in my room. It lists many web sites for alphabet practice and reading practice. The web site is: The web site includes a parent page as well as a student page. Other materials that I use are buckets that come from a company called Lake Shore. They have different objects in them that have the beginning sounds of words for the alphabet. I have developed them for many uses for my program. The use of instructional readers from the Wright Group Company is utilized in my room, along with big books, supplemental readers, sight word books, Creative Teaching Press books, and a program called Accelerated Reader. In the Writing portion of my reading program, I use Write From the Beginning and have developed a writer’s workshop utilizing journal writing.
The mini Magna Doodles, magic slates and rainbow boards, Hulk hands, flashlight writing, material clock, textured boards, and skywriting are used primarily for alphabet recognition. I will call out either a sound of a letter or the letter itself and the children write the letter or letter sound using one of the materials. I interchange each material so it is different each day for variety.
In the area of phonological awareness, I use the following materials: sentence strips for rhyming and scrambled sentences. (As the year progress’ we offer Partners In Print, a program for parents that allows them to be taught reading techniques. Scrambled sentences come from that program. I use sight words we have talked about and write a sentence on a sentence strip out of order. I cut up the sentence as it is on the strip and we put the words in order, then take out my giant magic finger, a squirt gun shaped like a hand with the pointing finger sticking out, and we read the sentence. The children chose different friends to come up and finger point as they read the sentence. I extended this lesson by giving the parents each sentence on a weekly sheet and they review it at home.) I also use Lake Shore alphabet buckets, Letterland materials, (cards, small reading books), old Open Court alphabet cards, an old Saxon Reading program, and Dr. Jean songs. I use a lot of hands on manipulatives, some examples are: white boards, chalk boards, magic slates, magic wands, a clicker to click out sounds of words, a wacky stick that makes noises, a giant college megaphone and a small fireman’s megaphone to give clues of words.
Decoding materials consist of: small sight word books, Creative Teaching Press books, Wright Group books, Letterland materials, big books white boards, chalk boards,
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Magna Doodles, the Hulk hands, Dr. Jean CD’s, sentence strips, and technology web sites.
I use the state recommended books for the leveled reading for the assessment, but I use the Creative Teaching Press books, the Letterland books, and the Wright Group books when I am teaching, and to determine levels for each child’s reading ability.
Types of reading instruction
As one walks in my room, the first thing that they would notice is that print is everywhere. The environment that I present is one that allows for literacy to be acknowledged in every area of the room, from the art center to the blocks center. I try to integrate as much literacy in every element of the kindergarten room as I can. As I stated above, reading is everywhere in our society. In our small schoolroom society, I want the children to see that indeed it is in every aspect of what we do to learn. I feel that they need exposure to lots of different types of instruction to develop into the best reader possible.
I use many types of reading instruction because in Kindergarten the children are just being introduced to reading at a very basic level. I use systematic phonics teaching and multi-sensory approach with my reading program. I have found that through research that systematic phonics instruction may be the best instruction leading to reading success. The National Reading Panel states “systematic phonics instruction makes a bigger contribution to children’s growth in reading than alternative programs providing unsystematic or no phonics instruction. Systematic phonics helps in preventing reading difficulties, word-reading skills are strongly enhanced by program that include systematic phonics, and that it contributed in helping Kindergartners and 1st graders apply their knowledge of the alphabetic system.” In my room we decode words by sounds, both consonant and vowel sounds. In reading an article by Stahl, Osborne and Lehr, (1990), I know they stated that “Insufficient familiarity with the spellings and spelling to sound correspondences of frequent words and syllables may be the single most common source of reading difficulties”, so I try to initiate as much sound correspondence to letters for recognition purposes as I can.
I have been trained in Orton-Gillinham and use some of those techniques within my phonics teachings. The phonics component includes a systematic and organized approach with direct instruction. It is sequenced with scaffolding, where one element may build upon another for maximum learning. Research tells us that an early and systematic emphasis on teaching children to decode words leads to better achievement than a later or more haphazard approach (Adams, 1990, Chall, 1989). The multi-sensory element includes VAKT, or, a visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile approach. The use of manipulatives allows the student to process from the abstract to concrete.
Thomas Gunning (1996), stated three principles in teaching phonics which I feel that I use within my program, they are: first, it must teach skills necessary for decoding words, second, it must be a skill that students do not already know, and third, the skills being taught should be related to reading tasks in which students are currently engaged or will soon be engaged. I use guided reading, shared reading, independent reading, read
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alouds, leveled reading and model reading. I teach reading in small groups, large groups,
provide individualized instruction when needed, provide tutoring by peers,
by assistants, and by trained parent volunteers. In teaching reading, I found the article by
Stahl, Hester and Stahl (1998), was an excellent resource for me to draw on as an
affirmation for what I do in Kindergarten. I believe that there are many elements in a phonics program, which I incorporate, that are included within that article. I particularly like what they stated would make a good phonics program. They state that a good phonics program should include:
*the development of the alphabetic principle,
*it should include instruction that develops phonological awareness,
* it should provide practice in reading words,
*it should lead to automatic word recognition
* it should be only one part of reading instruction
I believe that in my phonics program I do all of those things, and will elaborate on how it is done in my room. In the development of the alphabetic principle, they state that the key to learning to decode words is that letters can represent sounds. I feel that I do that every day using many different types of materials to include those already listed. Each day in my room we use a different type of material to reiterate that point. The instruction is teacher directed with ample amounts opportunities for students to participate. For example, we may be use the magic slates, chalkboards, white boards and Magna Doodles to write the alphabet as I produce the sound. After learning enough sounds to formulate words, the children can begin to make words using the same materials. We sound and blend to make words. According to Ehrl, (1995), in the full alphabetic stage, where children are using all the sounds and letters, they will read somewhat labored, relying on sounding out the words. It will eventually lead to some
automatic word recognition where they can read without thinking about the text, rather
think of the meaning of the text. (Chall, 1996) By the end of the year, we will use more complex orthographic elements such as the consonant blends, and consonant digraphs. Being able to develop words is necessary for children to become independent word learners and thus be able to develop as readers without teacher assistance. (Share, 1995) My hope is that by the end of the year they can read Emergent book, Pre-Primer books, and even Primer using skills taught.
In the development of phonological awareness, the awareness of sounds in spoken words, I do many strategies to ensure success for the children in my room. I use many of the tasks stated in Stahl’s article (1995), phonemic deletion, sound isolation, phoneme segmentation, phoneme counting, rhyming, (building words by adding rimes to onsets), word-to-word matching tasks, sound-to-word matching tasks, deletion of initial and final sounds in words, segmentation, blending and deletion manipulation. I also use journal writing where invented spelling takes place, as a component in stressing phonological awareness.