Topical Priorities for Reading (Kindergarten Level)

A. Phonemic Awareness
Students should demonstrate these Skills at the end of Kindergarten:
1. Sound and Word Discrimination
o Telling whether two words or sounds are the same or different
o Identifying which word is different from three given words
o Telling the difference between single speech sounds
2. Rhyming
o Identifying whether words rhyme (e.g., cat/mat; ring/sing).
o Producing a word that rhymes with another
3. Blending
o Orally blending syllables or onset-rimes into a whole word.
o Orally blending 2-3 separately spoken phonemes into one-syllable words
4. Segmentation
o Clapping or counting the words in a 3-5 word sentences
o Clapping or counting the syllables in 1-, 2-, and 3-syllable words.
o Saying each syllable in 2- and 3-syllable words
o Identifying the first sound in a one-syllable word
o Segmenting individual sounds in 2- and 3-phoneme, one-syllable words

Phonological Awareness
 25 first sounds per minute by mid-year
 35 sound segments per minute by the end of kindergarten.

B. Alphabetic Principle
Students should demonstrate these skills at the end of Kindergarten:
1. Letter-Sound Correspondence Knowledge
o Identifying the letter when someone produces the corresponding sound.
o Saying the most common sound associated with individual letters.
2. Decoding
o Blending the sounds of individual letters to read one-syllable, short-vowel, decodable words
3. Sight-Word Reading
o Recognizing some words by sight including a few common, high-frequency words.

C. Vocabulary
Focus 1: Concept Naming and Use
1a. Names pictures of common concepts
 1b. Uses words to describe location, size, color, and shape
1c. Uses names and labels of basic concepts

Focus 2: Categorization
2a. Identifies and sorts pictures of common words into basic categories

Focus 3: Vocabulary Development and Use

3a. Learns new vocabulary through stories and instruction
3b. Listens to new vocabulary in multiple contexts to understand its use.
3c. Uses newly learned vocabulary on multiple occasions to reinforce meaning.

D. Comprehension
Focus 1: Predicting
1a. Uses pictures and information about the story to predict what will happen next.

Focus 2: Identifying Information from Stories

2a. Answers who, where and what questions after listening to a sentence or short paragraph

Focus 3: Retelling and Summarizing

3a. Retells a familiar story with a book
3b. Retells a familiar story without a book including beginning, middle, and end
3c. Retells a story and includes characters, settings, and important events.
3d. Identifies the correct sequence of events in a story read orally by someone else.

Focus 4: Making Connections

4a. Connects events, characters, and actions in the story to specific life experiences.