Building Blocks are used all through Kindergarten and the first, transitional month of First Grade.  

Note for First Grade Teachers: First grade, fist month should be a review and rebuilding of Kindergarten, so children get back what they had in at the end of Kindergarten.

Kids come into kindergarten with a wide variety of experiences.  Kids that have a great wealth of experiences have:

• Desire to Learn to Read and Write

• Language Concepts

•  Print Concepts – know that print goes from left to right, top to bottom.

• Phonemic Awareness – oral before written.  Letter sounds, play with words, rhymes

•  Interesting Words –  to connect concepts of sound and letter with

• Letter and Sound Recognition

By following the Building Blocks Framework teachers can provide the experiences listed above to all kindergarten children. This is made possible by:

• Reading to children

• Reading with children

• Reading by children

• Writing for children

• Writing with children

• Writing by children

• Developing phonemic awareness (the oral)

• Working with letters and sounds (the written)

• Learning interesting words

 Reading to Children 

When we read to children it builds experience and a desire by the child to want to read on their own.

We need to read about both fiction and non-fiction

Do all three types of reading for children –

1. Retelling
2. Reading the Picture
3. Read the words

Alphabet books and Rhyming books are excellent for developing and reviewing phonemic awareness.  Also make sure to use a wide variety of genre when reading to children.

 Reading with Children 

When reading with children use shared reading of big books which are predictable by picture and/or by print.

We want to imitate the on the lap experience so students can see and read the book.  A big book makes this possible.

Students eventually enjoy joining in, retelling and/or reading as a result of rereadings.

During rereadings children may be learning different things. Some will be learning tracking, some will identify individual words with help from the pattern, others will be develop print awareness, others are learning to cross check, others are learning to use picture as a clue.

When we want to teach from a big book we don’t want much print on the page.

There are a lot of predictable public domain things – Rollover, 5 Little Monkeys, Wheels on the Bus, etc. (These are easy to use for the creation of big and little books for children.)

Choral and Echo reading are excellent ways to include the students, especially after several reading

This shared reading of big books is developing foundation for the Guided Reading Block in future grades.

 Reading by Children 

Children should be provided with opportunities to read by themselves.

Make sure you include copies of everything you read.

Keep in mind the three ways that children read when selecting a book:

1. Retelling
2. Reading the Picture
3. Read the words

 Writing for Children 

Many children have no experience seeing people write

Morning Message and Class Journal are ways to create this experience

Count words and letters to develop print awareness of letters, words and sentences.

Ask "What do notice about this message?"

Make sure you think aloud as you write the message.

 Writing with Children 

Predictable charts are used to write with children.  Predictable charts allow children to be part of the activity because of the predictability. They also demonstrate that writing is telling something and that what is written can be read back.  (Dottie did some research and found that first person to write about these was Pat Cunningham in 1979. They were called Structured Language Experiences). 

Details about the creation of Predictable Charts and topic ideas are included on this website starting on the Predictable Charts page.

Put name at the end, so children can have that important ownership.

Predictable Chart Follow-up Activities:

1. Allow children to touch read their contribution to the chart. Develops tracking and word concepts.
2. Do three to five of the sentences in Sentence Builder activities. Sentence Builders are 3-5 of the Predictable Chart sentences copied on a sentence strip.  The sentence strip is cut up, handed out to children.  The children are told to be the sentence.  
3. Students then do sentence builder for their own sentence.
4. Finally have children glue sentence down on paper and illustrate. Combine these into a class book to be shared and placed in the Reading Center.

 Writing by Children 

Children in Kindergarten can write in many several ways.

• Students can copy related to class themes, words of the month, family words, etc.
• Pictures can be used to write and tell a story.  Children may use pictures only or a combination of pictures and words.
• Children can attempt to sound out the words just like they say them.  Developmentally they hear consonants first, then long vowels and then short vowels.
• Driting - Drawing and writng

Children should write on paper without lines for this stage.  Most students have not acquired the fine motor skills to write on lined paper.

During writing teacher need to sit down and help children with their writing.  Be a cheerleader, not an editor.

First stories will be non-fiction.

Classroom needs to be rich in print for students to refer to.

 A Word About Word Walls 

In First Grade the word wall is used to learn how to read and spell high frequency words.  

In Kindergarten the word wall is used to connect letters and sounds.  In Kindergarten we want children to make meaningful associations with words, letters, and sounds, not memorizations.

A Kindergarten Word Wall would consist of concrete words and pictures.  These will be unit or theme related.  Student names will also be posted on the Word Wall after the "Getting to Know You" activity at the beginning of the year (see Q & A - K page for more information).

 Connecting 

Children should be provided with many opportunities in Kindergarten to connect letter, sounds, words and experiences.  Some ways that Dottie discussed to help make connections were:

• Morning Messages
• Environmental Print
• Names activities
• Tongue Twisters

Dr. Seuss taught us a lot about building and connecting letter and sounds – rhymes, high frequency, repetition, playing with words (having fun).

 REMEMBER - In their minds, five year olds can do almost anything. 

(session notes submitted by Joe Fuhrmann and Keri Romanenghi)