In kindergarten, teaching students to read is like laying the foundation for a house. Just as a strong foundation supports the entire structure, core foundational reading skills set the stage for reading success. To guide us in building this foundation, we can use two powerful frameworks: Scarborough’s Rope and the Simple View of Reading. Let’s explore how these frameworks connect to the skills assessed by Acadience for kindergarten and how you can ensure your students master these skills by mid-year (MOY).
Scarborough’s Rope and the Simple View of Reading
Scarborough’s Rope represents the intertwined components of skilled reading. It emphasizes two main strands:
- Word Recognition (the lower strand): includes phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition of familiar words.
- Language Comprehension (the upper strand): involves background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge.
These strands work together, becoming more tightly woven as students develop reading skills.
The Simple View of Reading simplifies the process into two components:
- Decoding (D): the ability to sound out and recognize words.
- Language Comprehension (C): the ability to understand the meaning of those words.
According to this model, reading comprehension is the product of both decoding and language comprehension (D x C = R). If one area is weak, reading comprehension will suffer.
Connecting Acadience MOY Skills
Acadience assesses key reading skills that directly align with the word recognition strand of Scarborough’s Rope and the decoding component of the Simple View of Reading. For kindergarten students, the MOY benchmark focuses on these critical skills:
- First Sound Fluency (FSF): recognizing and producing the initial sounds in words.
- Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF): breaking words into their individual sounds (e.g., the sounds in “cat” are /c/ /a/ /t/).
- Nonsense Word Fluency – Correct Letter Sounds (NWF-CLS): decoding simple, consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words, even if they are not real words.
What Core Foundational Skills Should Teachers Target?
To ensure mastery by MOY, focus on these core foundational skills:
- Phonological Awareness: Students need to hear, identify, and manipulate sounds in spoken words.
- Letter-Sound Knowledge: Students must know letter names and the sounds they represent.
- Decoding: Students should be able to blend sounds to read words and segment sounds to spell words.
Why Are These Skills So Important?
Phonological awareness, letter-sound knowledge, and decoding are the building blocks of reading. Without a strong grasp of these skills, students will struggle to recognize words, which in turn affects their ability to read fluently and comprehend text.
Phonological awareness helps students “hear” the structure of words, while decoding gives them the tools to translate written words into spoken language. Mastery of these skills sets students up for success as they move to higher-level reading tasks.
Teaching Core Foundational Skills to Mastery
1. Phonological Awareness Using Heggerty
Heggerty’s kindergarten phonological awareness program offers a daily structure to help students develop strong sound manipulation skills. To ensure lessons meet students’ needs:
- Assess regularly: Use quick assessments to check whether students can isolate and blend sounds. Adjust the pace or add repetition if needed.
- Incorporate movement: Try activities like “Hop the Sounds,” where students jump for each sound they hear. This physical engagement helps them grasp the concept.
- Model and practice: Model how to blend and segment sounds multiple times, then provide opportunities for students to practice with partners or small groups.
For example:
- In a whole group lesson, say the word “cat” and model how to break it into /c/ /a/ /t/. Ask students to clap for each sound they hear.
2. Decoding with NWF-CLS
For decoding, the focus is on helping students blend sounds to read CVC words:
- Sound-by-sound practice: Use Elkonin boxes to have students place a chip in a box for each sound they hear in a word (e.g., “map” becomes /m/ /a/ /p/).
- Nonsense word games: Turn NWF-CLS practice into a game. Use flashcards with nonsense words and let students decode them as part of a fun challenge.
For example:
- Show the word “mip” and ask students to sound it out. Then, have them race to read a series of similar nonsense words, encouraging quick and accurate decoding.
Supporting ELLs, MLLs, and Special Education Students
These students may need additional strategies to ensure they master the same skills. Here’s how you can adapt instruction to meet their needs:
- ELLs and MLLs: Provide extra support in understanding vocabulary by pairing phonological awareness activities with pictures and gestures. Use visuals to represent sounds and words, and encourage students to practice in their home language first before transitioning to English.
Example Activity: Create a “Sound Wall” with pictures representing words that start with different sounds. For the sound /s/, place a picture of a sun next to the letter “S.”
- Special Education Students: Break tasks into smaller, manageable chunks and provide immediate, specific feedback. Use multisensory strategies like having students trace letters in sand or use playdough to form letter shapes while saying the sounds aloud.
Example Strategy: For phoneme segmentation, have students use finger tapping to isolate each sound in a word. For “cat,” they would tap their thumb to each finger as they say /c/ /a/ /t/.
Why Are These Strategies Effective?
For ELLs and MLLs, pairing language with visual and sensory aids makes abstract sounds more concrete, aiding comprehension and retention. For special education students, breaking tasks into smaller steps and using multiple senses (sight, sound, touch) helps reinforce learning in a way that engages different parts of the brain.
Teaching to Mastery and Accelerating Achievement
To ensure mastery, provide daily, systematic practice and use explicit instruction. Scaffold lessons by starting with the simplest skills and gradually increasing the complexity as students demonstrate mastery.
For example, start with isolating initial sounds (FSF), move to segmenting entire words (PSF), and finally introduce blending and decoding CVC words (NWF-CLS).
Supplement Heggerty with other activities like:
- Sound sorting games: Give students picture cards and ask them to sort them by the initial sound (e.g., sun, sock, snake all start with /s/).
- Letter-Sound Bingo: Call out sounds and have students cover the corresponding letter on their bingo card.
By focusing on these key foundational skills—phonological awareness, letter-sound knowledge, and decoding—you’ll be laying the groundwork for your students’ reading success. Using targeted, engaging, and differentiated strategies will ensure that every student, regardless of their background or learning needs, can achieve mastery by the MOY Acadience assessment.
Remember: consistency, explicit instruction, and ongoing assessment are your best allies in helping your students thrive as readers.