By the end of the school year, all
students should be able to:
■ Engage in
pre-reading and reading activities to make predictions, retell a story in
sequence, and make connections between the events in a story and the events in
their own lives.
■ Track print
by pointing to written words when texts are read aloud by self or others.
■ Create a
story with a beginning, middle, and end using pictures and some words.
■ Know the
difference between real stories (nonfiction text, such as ”all about” books)
and imaginary stories (fictional text, such as fairy tales).
■ Identify
and use spoken words that rhyme, recognize the same sounds in different words,
and know that letters have individual sounds.
■ Read
automatically a small set of high-frequency sight words (for example, “a,”
“the,” “my,” “is,” “are”).
■ Write,
using letters and drawings, to label and communicate for different purposes
(such as to tell stories, communicate feelings, and provide information).
■ Use the
basic conventions of reading: left-to-right; top-to-bottom; know the difference
between letters and words; know the difference between print and pictures.
■ Talk for a
variety of purposes: explain and discuss new information; ask questions;
express ideas, thoughts, and feelings; and engage in imaginative dialogues and
social interaction.
■ Learn and
use new words in context.
Learning at Home
The following
strategies can be done in the families’ native languages as well as in English.
Read to
your children every day. Children also can hear and read books online in
English, French, or Spanish at the New York Public Library’s site, “On-Lion”
for Kids. Go to kids.nypl.org and click “TumbleBooks.”
Have a
Letter of the Day. Each day, pick a different letter of the alphabet.
Ask your child to find all the things in your home or neighborhood that start
with that letter. Have your child trace the letter as you say the word.
Visit the
Web site www.colorin colorado.org/guides/readingtips, which provides
reading strategies for parents in 10 different languages.
Take your
child to the local library. Any child who can write his or her own name will be
issued a library card.