Boost Kindergarten Foundational Literacy Skills: Targeted Small Group Routines for Phonemic Awareness and Phonics Fluency
Kindergarten foundational literacy skills are literally the groundwork for successful reading. That’s why Kindergarten Literacy Routines are here for you and your little learners!
Teaching reading to kindergarteners is so hard! I’ve been there, and I’m right in the trenches with you now.
There are a ton of skills that are taught in kindergarten: concepts of print, phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, phonics, comprehension, vocabulary, and then those little ones also have to be fluent in all of those areas!
This is exactly why I needed to create a resource that would encompass the most essential foundational literacy skills that can be taught and practiced in an intensive and targeted way yet be incredibly quick.
In this post:
- Why routines are important and effective
- The purpose of the Kindergarten Literacy Routines
- How to implement these foundational literacy skills routines
- How to get your hands on this powerful resource
Why routines are important and effective in teaching foundational literacy skills
This is super basic: routines create HABITS!
Teachers need routines to create habits
In the chaos of a typical kindergarten learning day, it is nearly impossible to remember all of the little things that must be completed, taught, and practiced.
Let alone remembering all of the details of how little Peyton is getting home today, or that you need to watch the way Casey sits because he is in physical therapy.
In order to teach effectively, we NEED routines. Our routines are built into our schedule, at a certain time, and we know exactly how to do them.
It is so easy to go through an entire school day and realize, “Oops! I forgot to do that beginning sounds activity today.”
Routines create habits, and then we don’t have to worry about remembering.
I have an amazing routine for number identification here, so be sure to grab that too!
Our students need routines to create habits, too!
If students do not practice their foundational literacy skills every day, those skills will not become automatic, and children will not habitually execute those skills independently.
Rhyming needs to become a habit; to become automatic so our students can understand the parts and sound of words.
Identifying letter sounds must become a habit so kids can decode words, and eventually be fluent readers.
Children know exactly what to expect when they get started with a routine, and they feel completely successful and confident!
Routines foster the automaticity of these foundational literacy skills.
Working on rhyming? Check out this post!
The Kindergarten Literacy Routines were created with the intention of building automaticity of foundational reading skills.
The Kindergarten Literacy Routines are fast-paced, simple to implement, and require NO PREP!
The routines are absolutely PACKED with foundational literacy skills that can be targeted in about 5 minutes with your small groups.
The attention of my students was lost every single day during lengthy skills lessons, and I needed a way to keep them engaged and truly pack a punch of effective skills building.
Like I said before, this is why I created the Kindergarten Literacy Routines- to give my students what they need to hone into their phonemic awareness and phonics skills.
You can get 5 weeks of the Kindergarten Literacy Routines for FREE here!
The Kindergarten Literacy Routines are aligned with the Science of Reading
It is imperative that what we teach matches current educational and brain research.
The Kindergarten Literacy Routines are developed in a way that specifically align with the Science of Reading which is one of the most current and powerful theories on how children learn to read.
My district uses CKLA Skills for our core reading curriculum. CKLA is based on the Science of Reading.
Furthermore, foundational literacy skills that are assessed in common universal assessments, such as the FAST Bridge Early Literacy Assessment, are included in the Kindergarten Literacy Routines.
When my students come to their small reading groups:
- they know the routine and what is expected of them
- they get fast-paced practice in a short amount of time
- they work on fluency of 5 or more skills in less time than it takes to watch a Jack Hartmann video
- they know they belong and feel incredibly SUCCESSFUL
- they understand that their teacher gives them individualized attention and does whatever is needed to help them learn
These Kindergarten Literacy Routines make all of that possible!
The implementation of these foundational literacy skills routines is incredibly simple!
You do not need to spend multiple planning periods preparing for the implementation of the Kindergarten Literacy Routines.
Kindergarten Literacy Routines prep:
Just get your hands on the routines here and print a copy of the Teacher’s Guide pages for yourself, and about 6 copies of the student pages to use in your small groups.
If you want to get fancy, you can use a 3-hole punch and put your newly punched routines in a binder.
Also, printing them on cardstock and laminating makes them last longer, but is totally unnecessary in order to get started.
Administering the routines in small groups:
It’s seriously so simple.
Set out the student pages on the table in front of each child’s chair and call your group to the small group table.
Follow the directions given in the Teacher’s Guide pages. I’ve included exact examples of what to say and have listed the names of all of the clipart pictures on the student pages.
You will stick with the same page for an entire week so students can become totally fluent in the content included for that week.
I had 2 purposes in mind with these routines for foundational literacy skills
- To be remediation and intervention activities with struggling learners.
- To be fluency practice for students who are on track in picking up the skills.
You need to get your hands on this POWERFUL resource now!
There are a few different ways to grab the Kindergarten Literacy Routines.
Otherwise, you can go to Teachers Pay Teachers using the following links to get:
Kindergarten Literacy Routines Weeks 1-5 (paid, so why wouldn’t you get it for FREE by signing up above!)
Kindergarten Literacy Routines Weeks 6-10
Or, you can get a bundle of the first 10 weeks of Kindergarten Literacy Routines HERE.
Get the resource that is aligned with the Science of Reading and many universal screening assessments today!
I will continually add weeks to these foundational literacy routines to last an entire school year. The skills included build upon themselves and get more advanced each week, matching what is being taught through your core curriculum and what your students will be assessed on with common universal screeners.
