Foundation in Phonics and Early Reading Behaviors

Prerequesite:

Open to students entering grade(s): Reception 2 to Grade 1

Course Description:

Armed with new research around the science of reading and incorporating best practices from what we already know, this course will engage students in the FUNdamentals of phonemic awareness skills, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. These components play a critical role in developing strong and proficient reading skills. Students will practice solidifying their understanding of these concepts to read emergent texts with fluency and comprehension.

Learner Outcomes:

Students will:

• Build Phonemic Awareness Skills: the understanding that the language we speak and hear comprises small units of sound called phonemes. Children will be involved in activities that will develop the production of rhymes, segmenting and blending sounds, and identifying beginning, middle, and ending sounds in words.
• Build Phonics Skills: the process of connecting the sounds the children hear to the printed words they see. Children will be involved in the activities that include recognizing letters and the sounds they make, listening and writing down the sounds buried within words in the correct sequence, and developing strategies to “decode” words they know and 'nonsense words' that they don't know but appear within words. Practicing and developing fluency here is an essential precursor to reading and writing.
• Build Vocabulary Development: learning to use and understand many words and word families and correctly using them in sentences.
• Build Comprehension Strategies: the method by which children understand, remember, and communicate what they read. In small reading groups, students will learn to link their reading to what they already know and make new connections, predictions, and inferences. 

Methodology:

An email/newsletter will be sent home outlining the content covered by students during the week, but there will be no written report at the end of the session.