First Grade in January!

Happy New Year! January is a great time to do a quick check and see if your students are on track in their reading instruction. In December there are always a lot of special activities happening and now we are all back into the swing of school and the new calendar year. Below are some key skills your students should have mastered at this point in their academic year. Make sure you celebrate if they have but if they haven’t you may need to step in and provide some additional support that is not given in the curriculum. Below is a chart for Kindergarten and First Grade of key skills along with suggestions of activities you might implement into your instruction to help reinforce and get all your students to mastery. Yes the information is covered in the curriculum but quite often students needed additional reinforcement / reminders that the curriculum does not provide and we as teachers need to be pros at those 1 minute reinforcement lessons.

Kindergarten

Rapid Reading - Colors - Shapes - Letters	Having students do this will train their brain in rapid memory recall which will help them to transition to reading words.	Print off sheets with rows of colors, shapes, or letters and have the students partner read in a small group activity.
Phonemic Awareness - Hears sounds in words and is able to segment them.	Being able to hear and distinguish sounds in words will lead to students having a better ability to decode larger words along with improve spelling.	When the students line up or move back to their seats have them give you the sounds in words. When they are walking out the door or you are walking down the hall with your class ask 4 or 5 students the sounds in one or two words.
Alphabetic Principle - able to match letter to sound.	Symbols and their meaning (sounds) are stored in different parts of the brain. Children need to learn to build that pathway for rapid recall.	In small groups you can have one student say the sound on a card and the other students write the letter. Then it’s the next students’ turn to say the sound. Put a sticky note on students’ desks who are struggling with this that has four or five letters. When you walk by ask them what sound each letter makes.
Know the CVC rule - vowel is always short in a cvc word.	This is the first rule of spelling. At this point students should know all the short vowel sounds. They can look to see if the word follows the CVC pattern and know the sound. Other words at this point are sight words. Once a new spelling rule is taught a word will become a decodable word.	Have some business card size word cards and when the students are in line or walking have them read a couple of words. Write three or so CVC words on a sticky note and paste it on students desks. When you walk by ask them to read a couple of words.

First Grade

Rapid Reading - Colors - Shapes - Letters	Having students do this will train their brain in rapid memory recall which will help them to transition to reading words.	Print off sheets with rows of colors, shapes, or letters and have the students partner read in a small group activity.
Phonemic Awareness - Hears sounds in words and is able to segment them.	Being able to hear and distinguish sounds in words will lead to students having a better ability to decode larger words along with improve spelling.	When the students line up or move back to their seats have them give you the sounds in words. When they are walking out the door or you are walking down the hall with your class ask 4 or 5 students the sounds in one or two words.
Alphabetic Principle - able to match letter to sound.	Symbols and their meaning (sounds) are stored in different parts of the brain. Children need to learn to build that pathway for rapid recall.	In small groups you can have one student say the sound on a card and the other students write the letter. Then it’s the next students’ turn to say the sound. Students you know who are struggling put a sticky note on their desk with four or five letters. When you walk by ask them what sound each letter makes.
Know the CVC rule - vowel is always short in a cvc word.	This is the first rule of spelling. At this point students should know all the short vowel sounds. They can look to see if the word follows the CVC pattern and know the sound. Other words at this point are sight words. Once a new spelling rule is taught a word will become a decodable word.	Have some business card size word cards and when the students are in line or walking have them read a couple of words. Write three or so CVC words on a sticky note and paste it on students desks. When you walk by ask them to read a couple of words.
Blends - You can hear each letter’s sound in the blend.  (br, gl, pl)	A blend in linguistics counts as one sound even though you hear both. So for blendVC words the vowel is short.	Short 1 minute reviews reading words with blends.(whole class and small group) Rapid reading chars.
Digraphs - a cluster of letters that, when together, create ONE sound (ph, th, sh, tch, ch, wh)	Like blends they count as one sound making the vowel still short.	Short 1 minute reviews reading words with digraphs.(whole class and small group) Rapid reading charts.
Introduction to long vowels	For a vowel to change its sound in linguistics something has to change in the word. If the vowel is open (not followed by a consonant) the vowel in most cases is long, adding another vowel in one syllable words will change the sound.	Short 1 minute reviews reading cvce words. (whole class and small group) Rapid reading chars. Mix cvc words and cvce words.