Reading
In Kindergarten at Holy Family we use SRA’s Open
Court Reading Program. The program is written by the Harcourt Brace
Publishing Company. It is a very comprehensive program, which incorporates
phonics, guided reading, language arts, and writing.
In addition to this program I do "Letter of the
Week" activities with my Kindergartners. Each week of the school year the
students take home a Homework sheet to prepare them for the letter of the
alphabet, which will be covered the following week. The Homework
sheet contains a list of 4 or 5 activities involving the "Letter of the Week."
The students, together with their parents, choose one of the activities to
do at home over the weekend. The students bring their completed homework
assignments to school on Monday to present to their classmates during the
course of the week.
The Open Court Reading Program uses a series of
pre-decodable books to introduce the children to 33 basic sight words.
The pre-decodable books combine the basic sight words with picture clues to
form stories that the children learn to read at school. The books are
then taken home so the children can practice reading the stories to their
families. There are 15 titles in the pre-decodable series. The
students typically bring one book home each week.
Once the children become successful with letters
and sounds and the 33 basic sight words, the Open Court Program provides a
series of 20 decodable books for the children to progress through. To
read these books the children need to put their phonics instruction to work
to be able to sound out or decode the words contained in the books.
By the end of Kindergarten the students will have
a very solid foundation in phonics and they will also be proficient, independent
readers. They leave Kindergarten well prepared to meet the challenges
of first grade.
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Page last updated on April 3, 2012
