Essential Literacy Concepts Every Kindergartner Should Know

Phonemic Awareness—kindergarten children are learning to:

Ø      Recognize pairs of rhyming words.

Ø      Produce rhyming words.

Ø      Identify initial consonant sounds in single-syllable words.

Ø      Identify onsets and rimes in single-syllable words.

Ø      Identify separate phonemes in words.

Letters and Sounds—kindergarten children are learning to:

Ø      Recognize and name letters.

Ø      Recognize and say the common sounds that are connected to letters.

Ø      Write letters to match spoken sounds.

Ø      Use their knowledge of sounds and letters to produce early approximate writing.

Reading Words—kindergarten children are learning to:

Ø      Read a core of high frequency words quickly and automatically.

Ø      Use letters and sounds to figure out a few simple, regularly spelled single-syllable words.

Ø      Recognize easy spelling patterns in words (we, me).

Early Reading Concepts—kindergarten children are learning to:

Ø      Use information from pictures to help them learn about the print.

Ø      Move left to right across print (within a word and across the lines of a text).

Ø      Return to the left margin to read the next line.

Ø      Match one spoken word to one word in print, as defined by space.

Ø      Notice and isolate words within a text.

Ø      Read simple one to three line texts using high frequency words and letter/sound relationships to monitor their reading and solve new words.

Ø      Have high expectations of print—that it will make sense and sound like the language.

Ø      Use their individual background experience to make sense of a text.

Ø      Build vocabulary by noticing new words, discussing word meaning and visual structure, and collecting the words they encounter in books.