Literacy
Our Vision of Literacy
Rockville Centre School District is committed to supporting our learners to develop as skilled and knowledgeable readers, writers, and communicators. Our Kindergarten through Fifth-grade teachers crafted a literacy vision for the district based on the Science of Learning:
We are all teachers of literacy. Our vision is to support learners in developing a passion for reading and writing by cultivating the skills and dispositions necessary to become effective listeners, speakers, readers, and writers. Our ultimate goal is to empower learners to become independent, productive problem solvers and lifelong learners who can successfully meet the challenges of an ever-changing diverse and global society.
We believe:
All children have the ability to learn,
Learning is a lifelong process,
Literacy is at the core of all learning and each component of literacy is equally important,
Literacy can empower our ability to communicate,
Differences and successes are celebrated,
Incorporating learners’ histories, experiences, and identities into reading and writing experiences is crucial,
Teachers and students together set attainable goals to become proficient, confident learners that perform to their fullest potential
Our Literacy Instruction
Literacy is essential for first graders because it forms the basis of effective communication and learning. Developing strong literacy skills at this stage enables them to understand and express ideas, comprehend instructions, and engage with the world around them. It sets the foundation for academic success across subjects, encourages critical thinking, and empowers children to access a wide range of information and opportunities as they grow.
Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic awareness instruction is a teaching approach that focuses on developing children's ability to recognize and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. It involves activities that help children identify and manipulate sounds, such as blending sounds together to form words, segmenting words into individual sounds, and manipulating sounds to create new words. Phonemic awareness instruction helps children develop strong phonological awareness, which is essential for reading and spelling.
Heggerty Scope and Sequence for Primary
Parent-Newsletters_English_Primary_Yellow.pdfPhonics
Phonics instruction in first grade is essential for early literacy education. It teaches children the relationship between letters and the sounds they represent, which is crucial for word decoding, spelling, and writing. Phonics also contributes to vocabulary growth and confidence building. Moreover, it enhances reading comprehension by helping children understand how words work together in sentences. First grade phonics instruction lays the groundwork for reading success, empowering children with lifelong literacy skills.
Fundations is a structured and systematic phonics program. Fundations incorporates multisensory techniques to help our learners build their phonics skills and develop a strong foundation in reading and spelling.
Fundations Scope and Sequence for First Grade
Home-School Connection
Level_1_Support_Pack.pdfShort and Vowel Sounds
Mark Up Words
Decodables
Decodable books are crucial for first graders learning to read because they contain words that follow consistent phonetic patterns. This helps children practice sounding out words, boosts their confidence, improves word recognition, and lays the foundation for fluent and independent reading. Decodables also enhance comprehension skills, bridge to more complex texts, and strengthen cognitive abilities essential for reading success.
Fluency
Developing fluency is crucial to a child's language development, acting as a bridge between decoding words and comprehending the text. Fluency entails reading or speaking effortlessly and accurately. When children achieve fluency as readers, they can better focus on understanding the content they encounter. As our children become more fluent readers, they can deeply engage with the text. One highly effective method to enhance a child's fluency is repeated oral reading, which includes echo reading, choral reading, and partner reading. Research indicates that combining this approach with a listening model of a fluent reader further amplifies its effectiveness (National Reading Panel, 2000).
Home-School Connection:
Read Aloud
Reading aloud exposes them to the sounds and rhythms of the language. Choose age-appropriate books with engaging stories and vivid illustrations to capture their interest.
Repeated Readings
Encourage your children to read the same book multiple times. Repeated readings help reinforce sight words, improve word recognition, and build confidence in reading.
Create a Reading Environment
Surround your child with reading materials. Have a diverse collection of books, magazines, and other reading resources accessible in the classroom and at home.
Model Reading
Be a role model by demonstrating your love for reading. Let your children see you reading books or stories.
An interactive reading program that provides hundreds of interactive, leveled books in school, at home or on the go.
An engaging and safe digital research tool that provides multimedia informational articles and ready-made literacy activities for all abilities.
An interactive online reading platform with over 40K children's books that will build curiosity and reading confidence by letting kids freely explore their reading interests.
Comprehension
Teaching our first graders comprehension involves various strategies to build their foundational reading skills, enhance fluency, and integrate linguistic and cognitive processes. By generating questions, monitoring understanding, summarizing, understanding inference and text structure, building background knowledge, targeting vocabulary, and promoting writing about reading, educators can effectively develop comprehension skills in young learners.
Encouraging children to write about what they read serves to deepen their understanding. This includes expressing personal reactions to the reading material, conducting analysis and interpretation, and creating summaries. Additionally, techniques like top-down topic webs, column notes, summarization, and answering questions further enhance children's comprehension skills.
These evidence-based methods are crucial in developing comprehension skills and cultivating confident readers.
Top-Down Topic Web and Two Column Notes
Top-down topic web and two-column notes are powerful tools for fostering comprehension skills. Our children are better equipped to process information by providing a visual overview and encouraging active note-taking.
Retell and Summarizing
Our children use retelling as a strategy to arrange and present information about a story's events. They also identify the main ideas and provide a basic story summary.
Generating Questions
Our children benefit from learning to ask their questions while reading. Answering questions helps learners stay focused and think actively while reading.
Vocabulary
Although teaching vocabulary may not be an immediate priority at the primary grade level, it is crucial to acknowledge that research strongly advocates exploring word meanings when learners are just starting to read. Early exposure to a diverse range of words helps learners develop a deeper word knowledge, ultimately leading to improved reading comprehension in later grades. Learners must be exposed to new words to enhance their vocabulary. Moreover, research indicates that repeated exposure to a word used in various contexts facilitates the transfer of that word into their active vocabulary.
Home School Connection:
Children's books are valuable for parents to cultivate language development, comprehension, and a love for reading at home. Read-aloud books that nurture language development, comprehension skills, and a passion for reading.
“You can make magic wherever you look.
Sit back and relax, all you need is a book.”
Dr. Suess