Literacy

Our goal as a district is to help the children become literate.  They are taught that reading is pleasurable and meaningful.  Good literature and language are introduced to the children through Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Into Reading. Skills that are taught during this time are:

• letter-sound association

• letter names

• directional conventions

• prediction

• sight vocabulary 

• punctuation

• intonation patterns

Phonological and phonemic awareness are words that we often hear in relation to reading instruction.  Surprisingly, neither refers directly to reading.  Both terms relate to how we hear words.  However, research shows that these factors are critical to reading success.  Phonological awareness is the understanding that the sounds we speak have structure.  

Phonological skills include:

• understand of the concept of rhyming

• awareness that words can be divided into “chunks” (syllables)

• awareness that phonemes are sound units within syllables and words

• awareness that sentences are composed of separate words

Phonemic awareness is a type of phonological awareness.  It means understanding that the words we hear are composed of individual sounds within the word. Phonemic awareness skills include:

• Discrimination (Do wish and fish begin the same?)

• Isolation (Tell me the first, middle and last sound you hear in fish.)

• Blending (Put these parts together to form a word:  sun – shine,  b – ig, c – a – t.)

• Segmentation (The word sunset has more than one part, clap once for each part.  The word mat has three sounds, finger tap each sound.)

• Deletion (Say boat, say boat again without the /b/.)

• Substitution (Say boat, say it again, but instead of a /b/ say /g/.)

As parents, you may often wonder what you can do at home to encourage the development of the skills needed by children to be good readers.  Linguistic awareness is promoted as children are engaged in various informal activities.  Some activities are: reciting nursery rhymes, singing songs, listening to stories with lots of repetition, working with rhythm such as pat-a-cake, playing rhyming games, playing alphabet games, talking about the sounds in words, and any other informal verbal activities.  

Above all, remember to read. Talk about what you read, share ideas about the story, point out words, point out letters and invite participation by your children:

• Encourage your child to answer “wonder” statements (“I wonder why…”).  

• Help your child expand his/her vocabulary by rephrasing.  [When your child says something such as “He’s scared,” you could say, “Yes, the dog barks because he is frightened, you are correct!”]

• Ask open-ended questions.  

• Limit the amount of TV. And solitary games

• Provide household props that encourage pretend play.

• Make books available for your children to explore and enjoy on their way to becoming lifelong readers.