Rhyming is an important Phonemic Awareness skill. You may want to click on the rhyming website with your child to see if they understand rhyming words.
Phonics: If we think of phonemic awareness as the ability to hear different sounds, then phonics is being able to write a letter or letters that represent these different sounds.
Word Families is one major part of the phonics program in my class.
Phonics plays an important part in learning to read, but sometimes it is over emphasized by well meaning parents. The English language has many words that simply do not follow phonetic rules. Asking a child to sound out "go, no, so" is fine but what happens when they encounter "do!" We can not always just say... Sound it out! These kind of words are taught to be recognized immediately and are called
sight words. Other examples of sight words are . . . "they, are, come".
Vocabulary: There have been many studies done to find the most common words in the English language. These are the words that children will encounter the most when reading. Our class will concentrate on learning the most common words. We will start with the easiest words. . . "a, the, I " and work through a set of word lists.
The children work on a particular list until learned and then move on to the next list. Some words are also placed due to the stories that your child will encounter. Each new list (up to 215 words) will include all previously introduced words for review.
All new words will be bolded. Click here for a complete list of the
vocabulary words. Parents interested in becoming involved in their child's reading can really help in this area. After practicing the new vocabulary words at home, just sign the list and have the child return the list and he/she will be tested immediately. If the student passes the vocabulary word list, a new list will be sent home. This gives parents the opportunity to help accelerate their child.
Comprehension: Is understanding and remembering what we read.
This is an area that many emerging or beginning readers have great difficulty with due to the fact that all their efforts are on trying to figure out the words, that they can't possibly remember what they just read. As students build vocabulary, and become better readers we will hopefully see improvement in this area. We will use the computer program
Accelerated Reader (AR) to practice our comprehension skills.
Fluency: Is the ability to read smoothly. Fluency goes hand in hand with all four other components. As readers improve their ability to decode words, increase speed and gain confidence they usually will read more fluently.
As with any class, it is essential that we assess how well the students are progressing. One way to monitor reading progress is
DIBELS testing. These are short assessments given throughout the year to measure reading growth.
Hopefully, as a parent, you now have a better understanding of how reading works in our class.
Helpful Hints for Parents
Vocabulary Words from List 1 (3 words) to List 13 (180 words)
Vocabulary Words- List 14 (200 words)
Word Families
AR Club