Can you imagine trying to become fluent in reading and comprehend literature without having any phonological awareness? Imagine frustration overwhelming you each day and reading becoming an adverse task. My dream is to avoid this and turn the frustration into success for all!
We are a low income rural school that has been in existence for almost 100 years!
I serve kids in grades K-8 as the reading specialist and SPED teacher. Students come from homes in which some children do not have access to books and the only place in which they get to experience rich and diverse text is at school. Thus creating a gap in their phonological awareness. Reading aloud to young children is the single most effective thing parents can do to help prepare their children to succeed in school. Unfortunately, fewer than half of U.S. children ages 5 and under are read to every day, placing them at risk for reading delays and school failure. I would like to close this achievement gap for all of our students. By providing engaging read-alouds I am giving students a stepping stone in the development of reading proficiency.
My Project
In order to keep kids interested in reading they must feel successful. They feel most successful when they are given the appropriate books for their reading level and ability. Research shows that phonological awareness is the number one greatest predictor of future reading success and includes many pre-reading skills. Traditionally, phonological awareness was taught through rhyming games, nursery rhymes, word play and finger plays. However, this is happening less and less in our standard curriculum and without explicit instruction in this area, it has little connection to children, thus leading to a shaky or non-existent foundation in reading. The books that I am requesting go hand and hand with the phonological awareness curriculum. For 10-15 minutes each day, we will use these popular read-aloud books that are appropriate for the reading levels of kinder and first graders. Through listening games and a concise sequence of activities, as a class/group we will develop and/or create the foundation these students currently lack in order to bridge the gap for their success.
What we need are these specific read-alouds that correlate to the Two Peas in a Pod Phonological Awareness curriculum.
The curriculum that I purchased, does not come with the accompanying texts. However, it is imperative to have these specific read-alouds because they are high interest and targeted to the phonological skills they need to develop. Being able to provide appropriate books for my students on a daily basis is the key to their success in reading. This further creates a positive outlook on their abilities as readers, creating a love of reading that will last a lifetime.
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