Utilizing essential questions for kindergarten phonics helps teachers plan, teach and assess.
Essential questions are guiding statements teacher utilize during planning and instruction. Essential questions, which are phrased from the student's point-of-view, outline the most important concepts -- or the big ideas -- within a subject area. Phonics is an integral unit within a kindergarten language arts curriculum. Although state and district standards ultimately drive a teacher's planning, kindergarten phonics can be described with several over-arching essential questions or ideas.
What Sounds Do the Letters Represent?
The purpose of phonics is to make connections between written letters, or graphemes, and sounds, or phonemes. Once kindergarten students recognize the alphabet in print, they are ready to pair the letters, or combinations of letters, with individual sounds. For example, kindergarten students learn that the letter s represents the /s/ sound. Rigorous and repetitive practice with identifying letter sounds helps develop mastery of basic phonics. As students become more accurate and fluent with identifying individual letter sounds, they will begin to use those sounds together to create words.
How Can Letters and Sounds Help Me Learn to Read?
Once kindergarten students associate letters with the individual sounds they represent, teachers must guide them to realize how these skills will help them while reading. Although this concept seems obvious, students need explicit instruction and practice with applying their new phonics knowledge. In kindergarten, students learn to decode short words -- usually consonant-vowel-consonant words. Teachers model produce each letter's sound and blend them together to create a word.
How Do I Use Letters and Sounds to Write?
Similar to reading, kindergarten students need explicit instruction on apply their phonics knowledge to writing. While teachers guide students to decode words using letter sounds in reading, they must model for students encode words in writing. Kindergarten students learn to sound-out words while writing. Teachers guide students to slowly say a word, separating it into individual phonemes. Students then write each letter they hear within the word. At the kindergarten level, teachers typically do not grade for conventional spelling, but encourage phonetic spelling according to what letters a child hears. For example, a kindergarten student may spell coat as kot.
What Letters Work Together to Make New Sounds?
Near the end of the kindergarten year, students may be ready to study digraphs -- two letters working together to create a unique sound. Digraphs, such as th, sh and ch, are more difficult for students to grasp, so they should be reserved for kindergarten students who have mastered individual letter sounds and basic decoding. As students become more aware of text and words while reading, they will naturally begin to notice these digraphs. Teachers can guide this curiosity to help students discover how letters work together to create new sounds.
