IntroductI on

[Pages:5]Introduction

First grade is an exciting and important year for students. As a 1st grader, your child will transition into a more formal classroom setting than he or she experienced in kindergarten. And your child's primary focus in this new setting will be learning to read.

First graders can have a wide range of reading ability. Some kids this age are working hard to sound out each word one letter at a time while others are able to read several pages with confidence. Regardless of where your child is starting out, in the coming year he or she will develop the skills necessary to start reading independently and spend a substantial amount of time practicing these skills.

Having a positive experience with reading in 1st grade is really important. Learning to read is hard work, and when kids feel successful they are much more likely to continue working hard at it.

In 1st grade, your child will primarily read Easy Reader books. These books are written specifically for kids who are learning to read. They have relatively simple stories, and a high percentage of decodable words ? words that beginning readers are able to sound out. As your child's skills grow over the course of 1st grade, he or she will transition to longer Easy Readers that have more text on each page as well as more challenging words.

Having a positive experience with reading in first grade is really important. Learning to read is hard work, and when kids feel successful they are much more likely to continue working hard at it. This guide will walk you through the key components of 1st grade reading ? what you can expect your child to learn and experience in the coming year when it comes to phonics, sight words, and comprehension skills.

PHONICS SKILLS

Phonics instruction teaches kids the relationship between letters and the sounds they stand for. Developing strong phonics skills is at the heart of how 1st graders learn to read. In the coming year, your child will focus on blending sounds together in order to read words. Developing experience and confidence with this skill is how your child will become a successful reader.

By the end of kindergarten, most kids know the basic building blocks of phonics ? they recognize the letters of the alphabet and can match each letter with its sound. They can also use this knowledge to sound out simple words such as cat or bed.

Developing strong phonics skills is at the heart of how 1st graders learn to read.

In 1st grade, your child will continue applying the phonics he or she learned last year, beginning with a review and reinforcement of consonants and short vowels (for example, the short o sound in dog). Your child will build on these skills, moving on to phonics instruction including:

? Words with a silent e, such as bite and cake

? Consonant blends, such as gr at the beginning of grass or st at the end of best

? Consonant digraphs (two consonants that stand for one sound), such as ch in much

? Vowel teams such ai in rain or ea in seat

Students also learn other basic decoding skills, such as recognizing easy prefixes and suffixes (like un- and -ing) and contractions (such as didn't).

Using phonics skills can be hard work at first, and you will likely see your child put a lot of effort into sounding out words in the coming year. It's also normal for kids this age to make mistakes as they read. They may have to try multiple sounds or rely on context in order to figure out what a word says.

Keep in mind that there's an important payoff for doing this hard work ? your child will feel a real sense of accomplishment each time he or she figures out a word or reads a page or two. And when kids have that feeling of success over and over again, with one word after another, they gain the confidence to tackle even more words.

As your child continues to apply phonics skills, the process of sounding out words will start to become easier and more automatic. For some kids, this shift will happen earlier than for others, since every child learns at his or her own pace. But with practice, every child will learn to read words with confidence and ease.

SIGHT WORDS

High frequency sight words are the most common words kids encounter when reading. These are words like there, was, and do, and they represent a really high percentage of the words your child will read. In fact, just 25 of the most common sight words make up a third of all words in books for first graders and beyond.

Kids learn to read these high frequency words as

whole words, rather than sounding them out. This

means, for example, that when your child encounters

the word is, he or she will learn to recognize it

automatically rather

The more sight words your child

than trying to use phonics to sound it out. This is important for two reasons. First, learning to recognize these words by sight is much faster than sounding them out. And second, many sight words have irregular

knows, the fewer words he or she

spelling patterns that you can't sound out, while others require phonics knowledge that your 1st grader doesn't yet have.

will have to sound out. That means learning to read

Because these words are so common, learning to recognize them takes away a lot of the work of reading a book. The more sight words your child knows, the fewer words he or she will have to sound out. That means learning to read will be much faster and much easier.

will be much faster and much

Most kids learn some of the simplest and most common sight words ? words like is, has and the ? in kindergarten. In 1st grade, your child

easier.

will learn many more sight words, such as said and about.

The best way for kids to learn these words is through repetition ? the more times your child encounters a word, the more likely he or she is to recognize it down the road. And the more of these words your child learns to recognize by sight, the more confident and successful a reader he or she will become.

COMPREHENSION

While kids this age are primarily focused on learning and practicing the mechanics of reading, your child will also start to build comprehension skills in the coming year. This will happen in two ways: by talking about the stories he or she reads, and by listening to books being read aloud.

Because 1st graders devote most of their attention to sounding out individual words, it can be easy for them to lose sight of the bigger picture as they read. Taking a few moments to talk about what's happening in a book or to imagine what a character might do next provides a quick break from the hard work of reading and reconnects kids to the story.

Beginning readers also really benefit from listening to books read aloud. When 1st graders listen to a

story and look at the pictures, they can put their entire focus on the story itself. They can easily follow

what's happening in the story and think about the story's meaning. They

Visualizing and identifying with

expand their vocabulary, learning new words that they can't yet read on their own. The gains children make in listening comprehension will transfer to the independent reading they do as their skills continue to

characters is

develop.

a big part of

So what does strong comprehension look like? Readers with good

comprehension ? and part of what makes

comprehension create pictures of the story in their heads. They "hear" and "see" what the characters are doing and saying. Often, they even feel what the characters are feeling. Visualizing and identifying with characters in this way is a big part of comprehension. It's also a big part

reading fun.

of what makes reading fun. In the coming year, your child will learn to pay attention to and talk about the elements that stories are made up of:

? Story structure: 1st graders learn to be aware of what part of the story they are reading ? is it the beginning, the middle, or the end? They learn to follow a plot and pay attention to the sequence of events. For example, your child might be asked to put the events of a story in the correct order.

? Characters: Readers with good comprehension pay attention to what characters do and say, and to how they feel. They also think about characters' motivations ? why they do what they do. One of the easiest ways for your child to understand characters is to imagine that he or she is a particular character and to think about how he or she would feel in that situation.

? Meaning: In 1st grade, students start to make connections between stories and their own lives. For example, after reading a story about two friends, they might be asked to think about what qualities make a good friend or to compare the characters from the story to their own friends.

a Love of Reading

In addition to building comprehension, reading aloud to your 1st grader is important for another reason: it allows him or her to enjoy the best part of reading ? engaging with a good story ? without having to work at decoding. And it's important for kids to experience this side of books ? it's what helps them stick with the hard work of learning to read.

The more positive experiences children have with books, both being read to and reading on their own, the more they will want to read. And the more a child reads, the stronger and more successful a reader he or she becomes.

Being a stronger reader, in turn, will get your child even more excited about books. It's a positive cycle that feeds itself, and one that will set your child up to fall in love with reading.

Once children start to see themselves as readers, they are likely to develop the lifelong habit of reading for pleasure, and will experience all of the benefits, both personal and academic, that come with it.

Preparing for 1st grade Reading

So what can you, as a parent, do to set your child up for this kind of successful experience? The summer before 1st grade is the most important time to get ready for the year ahead. Kids who don't read or practice skills they've already learned can lose up to three months of progress during the summer months. That means making sure your child keeps his or her reading skills fresh is key. Our summer reading programs are designed to meet this need and get students prepared for the coming year. In our program for entering 1st graders, your child will: ? Learn phonics and sight words. Your child will get a jump start on 1st grade phonics and learn to recognize the words that appear most frequently in books kids read in 1st grade and beyond. ? Build comprehension. Your child will learn to recognize simple story structure and identify with characters through discussions and fun book activities. ? Learn to read independently. Your child will read some of the best books for beginning readers and receive the support necessary to experience success in these books. ? Develop a love of books and reading. Your child will hear wonderful books read aloud and participate in fun class activities. These activities, along with experiencing success with independent reading, will deepen your child's love of books and enthusiasm for learning to read. We hope to see your child in our program for entering 1st graders and look forward to helping your child feel confident and motivated as a reader in the coming year.

1-800-978-3532

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