Spelling List and Guide

Parents and guardians,

We are just starting to write our letters appropriately and learning letter sound relationships. I am pushing using correct capitalization, and some of the toughest lowercase letters are b,d,p, and q. What I use in class to help with b,d confusions is this:

  First, I tell them we read from left to right and run my finger across to the letter. Then I ask them, "which comes first, the Butterfinger or the donut?" This helps them put the correct sound to the letter when forming their lowercase letters. 

Also, if yur chiuld iz speleng lik thiz it is okay, and it is called inventive spelling. :) I am looking for it to make sense phonetically, and I am starting to look for vowels in each of their words. Feel free to show them the correct way to spell the words, and as the year progresses they will start learning patterns in words which will help improve their spelling along with spelling rules.

Additionally, please remind your child to make LOWERCASE letters unless it is the first letter of a sentence, a special name, or proper noun (we discuss these in class). 

Here are the Saxon Kindergarten spelling lists that are sent home with your child. The black words are the traditional spelling words that follow our skill, and the blue words are sight words. Feel free to work ahead, however, we learn spelling rules to help them spell. For example, the FLOSS rule we'll learn so they know that two f's, l's, and s's go after a short vowel in a one syllable word  (pass, bill, riff). This is your resource so you can come back and look even if you lose your spelling list that is sent home.

Thank you so much for reading this information and helping your child grow this year.

Saxon Phonics Survival Guide

Saxon Phonics is a proven program to help your child learn how to read and spell. It is a very detailed program with many rules, so to help you know how to help your child I have found a guide you can refer to. We will not learn all of this, but for what we do cover it is detailed in this guide. For example, we code short vowels with a breve, and we know the spelling rule that a vowel followed by a consonant will be short and coded with a breve. Please refer to this anytime work is sent home and you want to know more about a rule or why something is coded a certain way.

Saxon Coding Guide and Spelling Rules

We will not hit all of these skills in kindergarten this year, but this is great to know and have for the future.

I will post more information soon! Thank you again for all of your support this year!

Fluency

As you know, being able to read fluently helps you comprehend text. Fluency is BIG in first grade, so I'm just preparing our children as they are ready. We will be working in the classroom to help increase fluency as your child is ready, however, I know many of you would like to work on it at home. Here are some great activities you can do with your child to help increase their fluency. I will also keep updating this page as I find more resources.

FLUENCY PYRAMIDS

Click to enlarge. Have your child start at the top and read to the bottom. Set a goal and make a game out of it! I bought these off of TeachersPayTeachers.com from the creator Kristen Guyette.

FLUENCY STRIPS

Click to enlarge. I have uploaded all of our silent e skills for your child to practice. You have the option to time them, or you can just use them as practice. I bought these off of TeachersPayTeachers.com from the creator Kristen Guyette.

GAMES

Comic Strip Capers  

This is a game where you are interacting with the story. You must choose which word makes sense with the story. Some words can be tough, but they do define some of the words

Fractured Fairy Tales
In this game students can change a fairy tale. They may need help filling in the boxes. Once they are finished, read and reread with expression.

 LISTENING TO STORIES

Storyline Online

This is a great website where your child can choose a book and hear it read fluently. The only issue I have with this website is that is does not show you the text in the book. So, what you can do is click the "cc" subtitles button on the video. Now your child can hear a fluent reader and can read along!

Helping Your Child READ

As you know, I do believe reading out loud independently is the best way to practice and support reading growth (many ideas are in your homework folder). However, these are some fabulous FREE online resources to engage your child. I've posted before about ways to support reading at home with which level to start with (here is that link), here are the links in order by skill. My goal is for us to have crisp, solid vowel sounds and to be able to recognize blends. This list begins just with letters and sounds. Once your child has mastered sounds, move on to the next! Once your child masters word patterns, move on to the next! Once your child masters reading words and sight words in isolation and in sentences, move on to the next! Then your child is ready to work on reading bigger texts to work on fluency and comprehension.  In class we eventually will be working on "chunks"  for those that are ready so they can start seeing word patterns and actually start reading bigger words. 

Here is a Starfall game to help your child recognize letters and sounds (level 1):

https://www.starfall.com/h/abcs/?mg=m

Here is a fabulous Starfall page with fun games and stories with word patterns (level 2):

https://www.starfall.com/h/ltr-classic/

Here's a Starfall page for children ready to read more sentences with sight words with interactive games (level 3):

https://www.starfall.com/h/fun-to-read/

*includes rhyming, poetry, music, and riddles

Here is a Starfall page with stories to help boost your child's fluency and comprehension (level 4):

https://www.starfall.com/h/im-reading/

IF your child is ready to read multi-syllable words and recognize digraphs:

Here is a link to a Starfall video that shows how to break a word down into chunks:

http://www.starfall.com/n/skills/chunking/load.htm?f

*this is advances for many beginning Kindergarten readers

*Extra games for Kindergarten practice:

https://www.starfall.com/h/index-kindergarten.php

I will continue adding free online resources. If you know some please let me know!