This is done alongside developing vocabulary and language comprehension-both very important aspects in learning to read. In structured literacy, phonemic awareness (that is, working with the sounds of spoken words) is developed as a pre-reading skill, and phonics is taught explicitly and systematically, with much less focus on memorization of sight words and using clues other than the letters themselves to figure out the words when reading. Today, what’s called “structured literacy” is instead being promoted by experts in fields like linguistics and neuroscience as an effective way to teach all students, beginning in kindergarten, and as a must for struggling readers. #KINDERGARTEN 2 READING LESSONS FULL#The backstoryįor decades, education experts and educators have debated what works better for teaching kids to read: an instructional approach called “whole language,” where kids learn whole words as they appear in context, or phonics, a method where kids are explicitly taught letter/sound combinations.Īs more and more research supporting phonics instruction began to emerge throughout the ’80s and ’90s, many whole-language supporters, from teachers to college faculty to educational publishers, added some phonics to their existing programs, under the name “balanced literacy.” This approach was in full swing when I became a teacher in 2000 and is still extremely common today, despite all the issues I’ve uncovered. The ways I’ve been teaching reading are deeply ingrained in our schools and our curriculum. The strategies I was using aren’t just my strategies, though. I was shocked and mortified to find that a bunch of the things I was doing in my classroom are called out by researchers as scientifically unsupported no-nos. #KINDERGARTEN 2 READING LESSONS PROFESSIONAL#I was a veteran teacher with 20 years of experience, including five years as a kindergarten teacher, when I fell down the “science of reading” rabbit hole-first online, then from books and professional development sessions as I was drawn in further. When I tell parents, “They’re just not ready yet,” is it the truth? Will they catch up? And is there anything I could be doing differently to get them where they need to be?įeeling like something was missing from my literacy program, I threw myself into researching best practices for teaching early readers, and boy, was I embarrassed by some of my findings. But some kids just don’t seem to be able to grasp some of the basic skills, and it worries me. Others take longer, but I know they’re on their way when I send them to grade one. Some sail through and become masters before the year is over. They don’t know it, but this is the year they’ll start learning to read: learning the letter sounds, sounding out words and eventually reading sentences. Every September, my class of kindergarten kids look at me in excitement.
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