Since returning from the March holiday, the children have demonstrated a new interest in reading the words in books. It seems that the work we have done throughout the year on developing concepts of print, establishing alphabet knowledge (sound-letter relationships) and using images to support our understandings are solidifying themselves as a solid foundation to support a next big step in emergent reading: decoding words. How exciting!
This week we focused on the 'Gingerbread Man' poem as a shared reading text. We hunted for the letters 'm' and 'r' (as well as 'b' as the children expressed some confusion between 'b' and 'd'), recognized rhymes, and practiced choral reading. The big book of an expanded version of the story was also available for independent reading in the classroom library.During their free play, Zoe, Violett, Lucy, and Ayesha selected the big book and tried to read it as a group, initially using the illustrations and their previous knowledge of the story to support 'pretend' and 'memorized reading'. Soon though, someone had the idea to unclip the poem from the board that we had been working on as a class. The girls put the poem on top of the book and started to match words from the poem with words in the book! Since they had the poem nearly memorized from repeated readings they were able to read many words from the book!
This is the kind of independent action in reading that I am noticing a lot in class and might also be observed at home. Keep supporting your child's emergent reading skills at home with sound and letter play, as well as lots of shared stories, pointing to the words as you read them. What an exciting stage in our development!
This week we focused on the 'Gingerbread Man' poem as a shared reading text. We hunted for the letters 'm' and 'r' (as well as 'b' as the children expressed some confusion between 'b' and 'd'), recognized rhymes, and practiced choral reading. The big book of an expanded version of the story was also available for independent reading in the classroom library.During their free play, Zoe, Violett, Lucy, and Ayesha selected the big book and tried to read it as a group, initially using the illustrations and their previous knowledge of the story to support 'pretend' and 'memorized reading'. Soon though, someone had the idea to unclip the poem from the board that we had been working on as a class. The girls put the poem on top of the book and started to match words from the poem with words in the book! Since they had the poem nearly memorized from repeated readings they were able to read many words from the book!
This is the kind of independent action in reading that I am noticing a lot in class and might also be observed at home. Keep supporting your child's emergent reading skills at home with sound and letter play, as well as lots of shared stories, pointing to the words as you read them. What an exciting stage in our development!