Dear Parents,
OPEN COURT - PHONEMIC AWARENESS
The following is taken directly from the Teacher’s Edition of the SRA Open
Court Phonics Kit:
Laying the Foundation:
Before children can learn the sound/spelling relationship that constitute
written language, they need to understand how individual sounds, or phonemes,
work together to create spoken language. This awareness of how the system
works - phonemic awareness - is the first piece of the foundation children
need in order to go on to the next step - assigning written symbols to the
sounds.
Written language is not perfectly regular, but a more or less predictable
association exits between the sounds of the spoken language and the letters
in the written language. This alphabetic principle that translates spoken
sounds into written language permits us to represent thousands of words with
just a few symbols. Learning these sound/symbol relationships enables
children to decode most of the words in the English language instead of
learning each word individually.
Research shows that phonics instruction has to be systematic if it is to
work. It cannot start somewhere in the middle or be random or haphazard in
approach.
The goal of all the instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics is to
provide children with the tools they need to read with fluency. Phonics
skills enable children to get beyond the distractions and mechanics of
decoding words to focus on the goal of reading - comprehension.
The children will be bringing home many pre-decodable and later decodable
books throughout the year. Here is an explanation of their purpose...
Reading a Pre-Decodable Book: (taken from the manual)
The major purpose of the Pre-decodable Takehome Books is to familiarize
students with the printed form of a set of high-frequency words such as the,
and, see, here, said, was, and have that are a basic part of all meaningful
stories. Although most students have these words in their spoken vocabularies
already, learning to identify them in print quickly, accurately, and
effortlessly is critical to their development as fluent, indepentent readers.
The books serve other purposes as well. They are a place for students to
practice book handling and to demonstrate their awareness of book conventions
such as print directionality, book parts, and the relationships between
pictures and text. The books also are a place for students to apply their
increasing knowledge of the alphabet by identifying the names and shapes of
the letters that they are learning.
To make the stories coherent, books use rebuses, or little pictures, to
represent words that students cannot yet decode. These rebuses appear above
the words they represent, allowing students to connect the pictures to the
printed form of the words. To make the books engaging to student, the
stories also use repetitive text, allowing students many opportunities to see
and read the words.
The Kindergarten Team
