Kindergarten is an important year for learning to read. In kindergarten, children build foundational reading skills. If a child struggles with reading, he should receive an intervention right away. Early intervention ensures the child won’t have lasting reading problems. If you’re familiar with kindergarten phonics instruction, you can identify if your student needs an intervention.
Educators should make sure kindergartners master letter sounds. However, as far as I’ve seen, many people assume there’s no right or wrong way to teach letter sounds. In fact, there is a correct way to teach letter sounds and struggling and dyslexic readers depend on appropriate instruction to master the fundamentals. Thus, make sure you teach letter sounds the right way, the way that’ll make sure the dyslexic and struggling students will master them along with everyone else.
Introduce 2-4 letter sounds at a time.
Children should NOT master all of the letter sounds at once. Rather, they should learn them slowly over time. Introduce 2-4 letter sounds in one lesson. For example, you can say, “a says aaaaa as in apple. aaaa is in the word haaat and baaat.” Point to the symbol as you say the sound aaaa.
Use flashcards.
Use flashcards and mix them up so the child doesn’t memorize the order of the letter sounds. Each time you introduce a new phonics sound, create a flashcard with the new letter(s). Make sure the child gets 70% of the flashcards correct before introducing more letter sounds.
Have the child say the SOUND not the letter name.
Many dyslexic children struggle to learn letter sounds. Thus, there’s no time to waste. Letter names do not crack the code. The fact that the letter name of the symbol “t” is “tee” does not help the child read “top.” In fact, the letter name can cause the child to make reading errors, like reading “top” as “teeohpee.”
In contrast to letter names, letter sounds do crack the code. The fact that t says “t-” and o says short “ooo” does help the child read “top.” The neuroscientist Stanislaus Dehaene wrote:
“Sometimes the child knows the names of letters (ay, bee, see, dee…). Unfortunately, this knowledge, far from being helpful, may even delay the acquisition of reading. To know that “s” is pronounced ess, “k” kay, and “i” eye is useless when we try to read the word “ski.” Letter names cannot be assembled during reading—the hookup only concerns phonemes.” –Stanislas Dehaene (pp. 200) from Reading In The Brain, The New Science Of How We Read.
There’s a lot of debate on this topic. While the research does say that children who know letter names tend to learn letter sounds faster, in my opinion, this is just correlational. Of course children who pick up on a literacy skill quickly are going to learn another literacy skill quickly.
Children need to know letter sounds to crack the code and teaching them sounds first is efficient, allowing them to start reading in early kindergarten.
Our step-by-step phonics stories are available in our shop.
Say the sound once, just as we do in reading.
Show the flashcard and have the child say the sound once. For example, /b/ says b as in bat. Do not have the child say the sound multiple times in a row because we don’t do this while reading. For example, we don’t say “b-b-b-a-t.” Since b is a stop sound, the child must say it once and quickly as not to add an “uh.”
Make sure the child holds continuous sounds and clips stop sounds.
Have your kindergartener hold continuous sounds. This helps the child crack the code in the early stages of reading. Continuous sounds can be held for a long time without adding an “uh.” For example, “m” is a continuous sound. You can hold “m” for a long time-mmmmmmmmm- without any sound distortion. Make sure your child holds continuous sounds. For example, when your child sees the flashcard n, he should say “nnnnnn,” when he sees f, he should say “fffffff,” when he sees s, he should say “sssssss” and so forth. Continuous sounds will help your students unlock the code.
In contrast, your kindergartner should clip stop sounds. Stop sounds cannot be held for a long time. If you try to say a stop sound for a long time, you’ll inevitably add an “uh.” Thus, your student should say stop sounds quickly to avoid adding an “uh.” B, d, c, g, j, k, p, t, w, x, y are stop sounds.
Say the correct letter sound.
Letters make multiple sounds. Kindergartners should learn certain sounds first. For example, kindergartners should learn short vowels: a_ as in apple, e_ as in elephant, i_ as in itch, o_ as in octopus, u_ as in umbrella.
Many letters make multiple sounds, but you should teach only one sound at a time. For example, although the letter a can make multiple sounds (a as in ham, a as in bang, and a as in tall) the child should only learn one letter a sound first (a as in ham).
Here’s a complete list of the letter sounds kindergartners should learn:
a – apple
b – ball
c – cat
d – dog
e – elephant
f – fish
g – goat
h – hat
i – igloo
j – jam
k – kite
l – lion
m – monkey
n – nest
o – octopus
p – pencil
q – queen
r – rabbit
s – sun
t – tiger
u – umbrella
v – violin
w – whale
x – fox
y – yarn
z – zebra
A child can read short vowel words once he knows letter sounds.
The child can begin to read short vowel words and sentences, once he’s mastered some letter sounds. For example, a beginner can read the following text:
The hen sat in the pen. The hen had an egg. On the egg, the hen sat, sat, sat.
For short vowel printable books, enter our shop.
After letter sounds, teach consonant digraphs.
Here’s a list of the most common consonant digraphs:
sh as in ship
th as in math
th as in then
ch as in chop
_tch as in match
_ck as in back
_ng as in long
_ing as in king
_ang as in sang
wh_ as in when
_ink as in pink
_ank as in tank
qu as in quick
After the child masters consonant digraphs, he can read sentences like:
Shell went on a ship. On the ship, she had fish and chips.
For our consonant digraph books, enter our shop.
Next, teach consonant blends in your kindergarten phonics instruction lessons.
Kindergartners learn consonant blends like sp as in spell, tr as in track and sn as in snack. There are many consonant blends.
Here’s some consonant blends words:
ant, ask, clip, trip, rest, slap, desk, snap, bump, cross, stop, skill, drop, frog, jump, stuff, scab, class, dent, nest, trim, grip, flop, mend, silk, trust, stamp, end, slid, swim, club, last, rust, mask, send, smell, glad, flat, just, drum, press, ramp, pluck, plop, felt, stem, brim, swell, test, fast, gasp, slack, limp, left, spell, grill, twin
Once a kindergartner knows how to read consonant blend words, he can read sentences like the following:
Fran went to the pond. At the pond, there was a frog. The frog had a bug as a snack.
In the above sentence, the words Fran, went, pond, frog, and snack all have consonant blends. Some words in the above sentence are common sight words that a kindergartner should be able to read, like: to, the, there, and was.
Next, a kindergartner can learn silent e words.
These word types are also called bossy e and magic e words.
Here are some examples of silent e words:
a_e as in bake
e_e as in Pete
i_e as in bike
o_e as in hope
u_e as in cute
As a teacher, you can introduce the silent e sound pattern with a contrasting word list like the following:
After a kindergartner learns the silent e sound pattern, he can read text like the following:
Mike went up a hill on his bike. Mike rode next to a jade plant, five ducks, and a fox.
Once kindergartners know how to read silent e, they can begin to read silent e decodables.
For our printable silent e stories, enter our shop.
In kindergarten phonics instruction, kids also master the most common sight words.
As kindergartners master sound-by-sound reading, they can also learn to sound out and find the sound tweak in sight words. While sight words break the phonetic code in some way, they always have a phonetic component. For example, while the, where and there are irregular, the “th” in the, “wh” and “r” in where and the “th” and “r” in them are phonetic. Kids can learn to identify the phonetic components of sight words and work to identify the sound tweak.
While there are many sight words, some of the most common are:
a, the, there, were, was, from, where, many, some, would, could, said, have, you, do, what, their, come, of
By the end of kindergarten, a child should be able to read text that contains all of the above word types like the following:
Our printable phonics stories are designed to gradually help children learn to read one phonics sound at a time.
Leave a Reply