Learning Sounds and Letters in Kinder is the GATEWAY to Reading!

Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month

This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.

I am a current kindergarten teacher in LAUSD. I teach in South Los Angeles; my school and the greater community are predominantly recent immigrants and are from lower socio-economic households. This will be my first year teaching kindergarten, but I already have experience in the classroom teaching first grade and fifth grade. Now, as far apart as these grade levels are, I am truly blessed to have been given the opportunity to teach each age group. The blessing I speak of is that I have gained this perspective of learning what experiences students go through in first and fifth grade, and most especially, how the upper grades rely on a deep literacy foundation developed in the earlier grades. So in first grade, I witnessed firsthand what phonics and literacy instruction look like. I then related back to my experiences in fifth grade to remember how many of my students were struggling readers - some could not even read. Their reading struggles were primarily due to the fact that they did not have those basic literacy skills they should have attained in first grade. With all of these thoughts circulating through my mind, I now have to plan for my kindergarten class. And now, more than ever, do I realize what a significant grade kindergarten is as well. In this grade level, they start developing their phonemic awareness and their understanding of sounds and letters, of which will prepare them to read in first grade. And like I mentioned before, how these earlier years will help them in their upper grades. I am asking funding for a literacy listening center that will assist my students to gain those necessary sound and letter recognition skills they need to start reading. Unfortunately, my school is unable to help fund for this necessary center due to the budget being allocated to other pertinent school supplies. However, I cannot stress enough how this center will help my children to read. The center is equipped with CDs and whiteboards; my children can listen to the sounds and practice matching the sounds to their letters. I truly feel that this listening center will allow my children to reinforce the sounds and letters they will learn in the classroom. I plan on using this center to the max! I want my class to be exposed to the sounds as much as possible so they will have that foundation of sounds and letter recognition that will help them become excellent and lifelong readers.