Skills in literacy are important for your child/children to have
because they are the foundation for reading and writing. The five components of literacy are fluency, comprehension, vocabulary, phonics and phonemic awareness. In this newsletter, you will find a description for each of the five components of literacy. Also included in this newsletter are different activities that you and your child can complete in order to work on their literacy skills. Some of the literacy activities can be found online and others can be completed without a computer. Please take some time to read over this newsletter and try out some of the included activities. Phonemic Awareness is the ability to hear, identify and manipulate individual sounds in words. There is also an understanding that spoken words are made up of individual sounds. For young children it can be hard for them to understand that words are made up of different sounds. Phonemic Awareness Activity 1: M&M Phonemes o Give your child a pile of M&Ms (or something to use as a replacement), then give you child words that follow the Consonant-Vowel-Consonant form for example BAT. o As your child identifies the different sound in the word, have them place an M&M into the line B A T
Phonemic Awareness Activity 2: Word World- Dogs Letter Pit o When prompted, children click on the letter that matches given sound to make words o http://pbskids.org/island/preview/gamepreview.html?ww-letterpit
Phonics is learning the relationship between letters and their sounds as well as remembering the letter patterns and sequencing for these sounds. In order for students to read both independently and be able to get meaning out of their reading, they need to know the relationships between 44 different speech sounds and the different spellings that represent these sounds. Phonics Activity 1: Name that Letter/Say that Sound o Make a card for each letter of the alphabet o Hold up a letter and have your child tell you what that letter is and the sound that the letter makes. Phonics Activity 2: A B C D Watermelon o Children click on the letter that comes next in the alphabet o http://pbskids.org/lions/games/abcd.html
Fluency is the accurate and rapid naming or reading of letters, sounds, words, sentences or passages. Fluency develops over time and begins with the early stages of reading. To become fluent students need to learn to decode words rapidly and accurately, in isolation as well as in connected text, and to increase reading speed while maintaining accuracy. Fluency Activity 1: Echo Reading o Read a section of a book out loud to your child, having them follow along o Have them read the passage you just read using the same pace that you used Fluency Activity 2: Super Why! SUPER WHYs READING CHALLENGE o Students read the given sentences and click on the sentence that matches what is happening in the picture o http://pbskids.org/island/preview/gamepreview.html?superwhy-challengewhy
Vocabulary helps students with their general reading comprehension. Oral vocabulary represents words that students learn to understand by listening to others speak and by using these words themselves. Reading vocabulary consists of the words that students understand when they read them in text. Vocabulary Activity 1: Elaborating Words o Give your child a sentence and under line a word like The dog chased the cat. o Have you child write at least one descriptive word for the underlined word. For example large Vocabulary Activity 2: Abbys Adventure Game o Children learn new vocabulary words by clicking on objects that match the sound Abby gives them o http://pbskids.org/sesame/games/abbys-adventure-game/
Comprehension: is the process of creating meaning from text that you read. Comprehension includes applying your knowledge and experiences to the text as well as drawing logical conclusions from the reading. Comprehension Activity 1: Making Predictions o Pick a book for your child to read. o Have them flip through the book before reading o Ask your child to make a prediction about what will happen in the book Comprehension Activity 2: Comprehension o Pick a story to read from the list o Read the story and answer the questions that follow o http://www.turtlediary.com/grade-1-games/ela-games/a-tigers-cub.html
References PBS kids. (1995). Retrieved from http://pbskids.org/ PBS kids island. (2014). Retrieved from http://pbskids.org/island/about/partners.html Turtle diary. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.turtlediary.com/ Vaughn, S., & Linan-Thompson, S. (2004). Research-based methods of reading instruction grades k-3. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.