Updated January 16, 2024
Keep the Joy of Reading Alive in Kindergarten!
How do accomplished kindergarten teachers create a culture of book lovers and multiply their teaching effectiveness with Families as Partners? The science of reading and decades of best practices research support a comprehensive approach to reading. Here are 10 proven strategies that build a culture of book lovers!
Our goal is that students will develop vocabulary, comprehension, and oral language fluency, reach phonics proficiency, and not only learn to read and write but love to read and write! Now and forever.
Consider These 10 Best Practices That Develop an Attitude of “I Can Read!” and “I Love to Read!”
1. Give children “I Can Read!” experiences! Begin the year with “read-every-word” phonics books, and predictable books and rhymes that children “read-in-other-ways.” Build community and language fluency with well-loved Read and Sing Big Books™, and memorable songs, poems and rhymes.
2. Give children quality fiction and nonfiction studies to build language, vocabulary, comprehension, and a love of learning. Invite children into the world of story through open-ended questions, drama, movement, art, dance, sign language and mime. Teach reader respect, book care, how to put books back where they belong, and invite children to join the “Book Lovers Club.”
3. Create an “I Can Read” Poetry Notebook program of carefully selected songs, poems, and rhymes. Build oral language fluency, artistic expression, and an “I can do it” growth mindset. Send notebooks home for family literacy: additional time to provide practice memorizing, reciting, and performing language.
4. Build and organize an inviting class library with clearly-labeled books, bins, individual student book boxes, and cozy places to read. Talk about favorite books.
5. Honor the science of reading with a comprehensive reading curriculum. Use ABC Phonics: Sing, Sign, and Read! to build the reading brain. Give children books that celebrate our diversity. Provide intentional, systematic phonemic awareness and phonics instruction. Bob Books are our favorite “read-every-word” books.
6. Teach children to touch under words and read-to-self and buddy read, thus building independence and stamina! These strategies enhance any comprehensive reading program. Begin the year with writing-to-read strategies to build mastery of writing-to-read “heart word” sentences. Daily “kid writing” (encoding sounds to print) supports early phonics instruction.
7. Create simple and well-loved class-made books featuring the lives of your children. They learn “my life is worth reading and singing about.”
8. Develop a great collection of well-loved predictable books that every kindergartner can feel successful “reading.” We call them “E is for Everybody Books!” These are “read-in-other-ways” books that allow children to build oral language fluency and experience the joys of being a book lover!
9. Build kindergarten writers with an authentic, comprehensive writing curriculum that invites children to create their own books, becoming authors and illustrators. We begin the year building circles of writing mastery with high-frequency “heart word” sentences. This mastery gives students the memory space to do the hard work of encoding sounds to print with new words. Yes, kindergartners can learn to fearlessly tackle any new word!
10. Multiply your teaching effectiveness with Families as Partners. Create Family Read-at-Home Book Clubs for home-to-school literacy. Establish nightly family reading routines. Keep reading alive over the summer.
Check out our FREE eBooks: Joyful Accelerated Literacy!
