Literacy Instruction


Early Reading Strategies


Reading Activities


Sight Words

Literacy Instruction takes place each day from approximately 9:00 - 11:00 am. This block contains many aspects of literacy including Independent Reading, Interactive Writing, Independent Writing, Making Words (spelling), and Guided Reading. Below you will find a brief description of each area in our comprehensive literacy approach.

  • Independent Reading
    The purpose is to build fluency in reading, to allow students to read and enjoy text that is appropriate and unique to their own independent reading levels, and to build confidence in students as readers.
  • Shared Reading
    The teacher shares text with students from a variety of genres, topics, and authers in an attempt to expose children to quality literature and to model appropriate reading strategies and behaviors.
  • Interactive Writing
    The teacher presents a mini-lesson in which real writing, skills and strategies are modeled. Skills include using the Word Wall, an Editor's Checklist, self-checking, peer revision, and editing as an ongoing process.
  • Independent Writing
    Students write on self-generated topics and are individually paced at various stages of the writing process. Students may work for several days on one piece and conference individually with the teacher on a regular basis.
  • Making Words
    Making Words is an interactive, hands-on manipulative acitivity in which children learn to look for patterns in words and learn how changing just one letter in a word can create a new word.
  • Guided Reading
    The purpose of Guided Reading is to build comprehension and fluency with reading, and to introduce students to a varity of literature, such as stories, informational text, and poetry. Guided Reading is conducted in a small group format in which children are matched to appropriate levels of text and are able to discuss key vocabulary in context, generate story predications, to make inferences, and to draw on their own background knowledge with the given text and topic.

Early Reading Strategies (adapted from REading with Strategies, Celebration Press)
  1. Look at the Picture Meaning is the ultimate goal of reading. Readers predict about words based on clues gained from the pictures.
  2. Does it make sense? Readers use the picture to determine if what they read makes sense.
  3. Get your mouth ready Picture cues alone will not provide enough detailed information. Readers initially concentrate on beginning letter(s) of unknown words.
  4. Does it look right? By looking through a word from left to right, readers check their predictions about the word. They confirm or reject predictions based on the sound-letter relationship.
  5. RereadChildren reread to use knowledge of oral language and check meaning.
  6. Does it sound right? Readers use their knowledge of both spoken and literary language to check if what they read can also be spoken.
  7. Look for Chunks Using onsets and rimes, readers make analogies to decode unfamiliar words.
The most fundamental concepts about print can be modeled with each strategy...
**Picture and Print: Print contains the message that there is a difference between reading the picture and reading the print.
**Point one-to-one: The word you are pointing under and the word you are looking at should match the word you are saying.
** Directionality: Reading always progresses from left to right with a return sweep and from top to bottom.

Reading Activities
Preschoolers
  • Read a bedtime story
  • Read the same books over and over.
  • Give your child markers or paper and pencils.
  • Give your child a chalk board and chalk.
  • Write messages to your child.
  • Label your child's possessions.
  • Put magnetic letters on the refrigerator.
Five and Six Year Olds
  • You read to me and I'll read to you.
  • Fill in the blanks. Read poetry and verse that rhymes and stop before the end of the line, having your child fill in the blank.
  • Play sound games. A simple starter is "Riddle, riddle, ree. I see something you don't see and it starts with T"
  • Create a newspaper.
  • Write a wish list.
  • Make a calendar
  • Write a fill-in-the-blank story.
  • Write a biography or autobiography.
  • Make a board game.
  • Start a memory box.
  • Cook from a book.
Seven and Eight Year Olds
  • Write a book about something real or imagined.
  • Keep a journal.
  • Write a thank-you letter.
  • Write your own cards.
  • Keep score at a sports event.
  • Start a scrapbook.
  • Explore your family letters and albums.
Nine and Ten Year Olds
  • Read riddles.
  • Play thinking games.
  • Work on projects.
  • Support scout activities.
  • Write fractured fairy tales.
  • Create a camera story.
  • Write a text for wordless books.
Eleven and Twelve Year Olds
  • Put a book in your child's room.
  • Tell about a book you enjoyed.
  • Start your child on a new series.

Sight Words