Kindergarten English & Reading

Phonological instruction includes rhyme awareness, word awareness, syllabication, isolating, segmenting, adding, deleting, blending and substituting sounds. Students play games, use hand motions and movements to support recognition, production, isolation, segmenting, and blending.  Lessons occur in whole group and small group lessons.

Phonics instruction focuses on learning letter names,  letter sounds and print formations through play, games and multi sensory activities. Students receive explicit and multisensory phonics instruction, and are given a chance to apply this knowledge by writing and reading.In addition to applying letter-sound knowledge when decoding words, students are taught the spellings of irregular words. . Resources used include letter tiles, magnetic letters,  decodable texts, dry erase boards and visuals.

Vocabulary instruction is incorporated throughout the school day through high quality read-alouds, small groups, and high quality adult/child interactions. 

Fluency instruction occurs in whole group and small group lessons. It involves shared reading, music, poetry, decodable texts, repeated readings, partner reading and the reading of their own writing.

Comprehension instruction occurs as students listen and talk about texts. Teachers use a variety of texts across genres, cultures and perspectives to build students' background knowledge. Teachers use read-alouds to model how to make connections, how to make inferences and how to visualize stories. Teachers also use questioning, turn and talks as well as other strategies to support student comprehension. Instruction occurs in whole and small group lessons, partner reading and teacher/student conferring.

Writing across all grade levels involves explicit, direct, systematic instruction across genres. Composition evolves from oral expression, to illustrations followed by written expression through print. Students use letter sound knowledge to write words, so inventive spelling is appropriate at this age.