Reading Readiness Skills
Throughout the year your kindergartner is being introduced to reading-readiness skills that will prepare him to read. He is working with the letters of the alphabet, building his vocabulary and beginning to understand that reading is a way to derive meaning from print. He is immersed in a print-rich environment that will help him develop an awareness and understanding of spoken and written language.

Understanding Books and Print
Your child is learning how books are read from front cover to back cover, from the top of the page to the bottom of the page, and from left to right on the page. By the end of the year, she will recognize the parts of a book such as the cover, title page and table of contents.

Learning the Letter-Sound Relationship
Your kindergartner is learning the letter-sound relationship in written words to allow him to decode them. He should be getting repeated practice working with letters and their sounds, perhaps by sorting picture cards according to their beginning sounds. He practices blending sounds together to make words and breaking words down into separate sounds. He learns the building blocks of words by clapping out the syllables along with the teacher. Kindergartners begin to read easy books with the letter-sound relationship they are learning as well as frequently used words, such as the, that they have been taught.

Reading for Meaning
Your kindergartner is learning to derive meaning from what is read to her and what she reads. You can expect her to recognize the sequence of events in a story, and their cause and effect, as well as to anticipate the possible outcome. She learns to retell familiar stories summarizing the main ideas and plot, and identifying the characters, settings and important events. The class may act out a story with props to show that they understand the characters and plot.

Reading Aloud
Kindergarteners frequently listen to books read aloud. Listening to a teacher or parent provides a model of fluent reading and helps children develop a positive attitude toward books. It also helps your child understand vocabulary and language patterns in texts. Books read aloud are often discussed before, during and after the reading to increase involvement and understanding of the text. “This conversation is critical,” according to reading specialist Jennifer Thompson, “for it helps children build their background knowledge when adults model their thinking, experiences and images that come to mind as they read. Children can use this to connect what the author is saying, to what they already know.”

Shared Reading Experience
Your kindergartner may take part in shared reading, an interactive reading experience. During shared reading your child joins in the reading of a big book, one with enlarged text that the whole class can see, guided by his teacher. During the reading, children are actively involved. The teacher may pause to teach vocabulary, introduce a reading skill and encourage the students to predict what comes next. Your kindergartner should be able to follow along with the text and pictures while the book is being read. The book is typically read multiple times over several days. “Active involvement between student and teacher motivates interest, enhances comprehension of story and sense of story structure,” says reading specialist Jennifer Thompson.

By the end of kindergarten you can expect your child to:

• Recognize the shapes and names of all upper- and lower-case letters
• Identify beginning and ending sounds
• Identify short vowel sounds
• Match consonant sounds to their appropriate letters
• Recognize and produce rhyming words
• Read simple one-syllable words such as "cat"
• Read frequently seen words such as "you" and "the"
• Recognize that words are separated by spaces
• Read her own first and last name

For suggestions on how to successfully read with your child, read these GreatSchools articles:

Reading specialist Jennifer Thompson recommends the following books on reading:

To find out more about what your kindergartner should be learning this year, read:

March 2006