Word Study in Kindergarten

Word Study in kindergarten is daily in my classroom.  I devote my small group time when half of the class attends spanish to word study.  Word Study in kindergarten covers phonemic awareness, letter-sound work, spelling patterns, sight words, strategies for problem solving words, and vocabulary.  I use my spelling BPST assessment to group my students and plan instruction.  I use this data to drive my instruction beginning with a quick mini lesson and then providing independent work time for my small groups.  This chart helps me differentiate my instruction.  I bought all these materials called Guided Reading RTI by Tara West.

     Working with my lowest readers our focus right now is one-to-one correspondence.  I am working with Ezra to touch each colored dot as he reads the picture/word.  Before starting to read, I have Ezra count each picture/word, for example, "You counted 4 words so how many times will you tap this page, 4 times."

Hands on letter work has a major effect with learning letters!  I supply my students with magnetic letters to match pictures.  My kiddos work on finding the missing letter or matching letters to pictures.

Using magnetic letters for beginning sounds.

I use sound boxes during this small group time.  Sound boxes allow my students to picture the parts of the word as they stretch out the sound, and push up the sound into each box.  Students can do 1 of 4 things:  Build word with magnetic letters, push up sounds with counters, write sounds with dry erase markers, or push up toy cars with each sound.

Phoneme segmentation onset and rime cards are used as a building block to my phoneme segmentation cards.  My kiddos state the onset and rime and then blend the word back together.  

I use phoneme segmentation stretchers for kiddos to practice touching one black dot per sound in the word.  

Sorting supports spelling pattern study.  Every student has a word work journal they keep for sorting.  In this journal you can find rhyming sorts, beginning and ending sound sorts, and syllable sorts.  We use our word work journals at the end of the session to summarize what we learned that morning.  

My super readers have a set of tools in their book boxes that helps them navigate those tricky words, sight words, fluency, blends, one to one correspondence, and looking closely at pictures.  Each kiddo has a handy pencil case that carries their tools in their book box.  Just when the novelty begins to wear off, I introduce another tool to build back up the excitement in reading.  Coming in the near future for non-fiction reading is microphones for becoming a news anchor, and eye rings to closely at non-fiction pictures!