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Kindergarten Reading

Course Description

Reading is a meaning-making process that requires the synthesis of skills to effectively communicate. Students are immersed in daily opportunities to explore, inquire, practice and apply reading strategies and skills in a variety of genres to advance toward grade level reading in addition to becoming self-motivated readers. They will learn how to effectively use before, during, and after reading strategies, build vocabulary, improve fluency, and select their own independent reading texts in order to become more informed citizens. Students will independently use their learning to grapple with increasingly complex texts from a variety of genres and time periods to gain a reservoir of literary and cultural knowledge.

In kindergarten, students begin to establish their identities as readers while they build the foundational skills for reading. In the first unit, We Are Readers, children develop concepts of print, phonemic awareness, phonics, and the knowledge necessary to use story language to support their approximations of reading. The second unit, Super Powers: Reading with Print Strategies and Sight Word Power, glories in children’s love of play as they learn “super power” strategies that help them work on fluency. In the third unit, Bigger Books, Bigger Reading Muscles, children attempt more difficult books with greater independence and use reading strategies to read with more accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. The last kindergarten unit, Becoming Avid Readers, helps youngsters role-play their way into being the readers you want them to become. They pay close attention to characters, setting, and plot while reading fictional stories, become experts in nonfiction topics as they read together in clubs, and play with rhyme and rhythm while reading poetry

Grade Level(s): Kindergarten

Related Priority Standards (State &/or National):  K-5 Missouri Learning Standards & ELA Priority Standards

Essential Questions

  • How do I know when I am stuck?
  • How do I figure out why I am stuck?
  • How do I purposefully apply effective strategies to help comprehend?
  • How do I motivate myself to read complex text?
  • Why am I reading? For what purpose?
  • How has my thinking changed?
  • How can I transfer the strategies to real life experiences?

Enduring Understandings/Big Ideas

Students will understand that:

  • Reading is a meaning making process that requires application of self-monitoring strategies to deepen the level of comprehension.
  • Self-directed reading leads to character and knowledge development.
  • Reading helps a reader extend and deepen their knowledge.
  • Reading develops critical thinking skills to evaluate reasoning.
  • Reading provides insights into the human condition.

Course-Level Scope & Sequence (Units &/or Skills)

  • Unit 1: Establish the Reading Workshop
  • Unit 2: Decodable Super Powers
  • Unit 3: Reading More with Decoding
  • Unit 4: Exploring Genres

* The above adjustments to scope and sequence are pending Board approval on August 22, 2022.

Course Resources & Materials

Date Last Revised/Approved: 2014