Your First-Grader and Reading
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By the end of first grade you can expect your child to be able to do the following:
- Name and recognize all the letters of the alphabet in order
- Identify beginning, middle and ending sounds
- Use reading and writing strategies for various purposes on their own initiative such as rereading, predicting, questioning and making connections when comprehension breaks down
- Read and retell familiar stories
- Read orally with reasonable fluency
- Use letter-sound associations, word parts and context to identify new words
- Identify short vowel and long vowel sounds
- Match consonant sounds to their appropriate letters
- Recognize and produce rhyming words
- Read simple one- and two-syllable words such as cat
- Read high-frequency words such as was and the
- Recognize that words are separated by spaces
- Read aloud first-grade books with accuracy and understanding
- Begin to read aloud with expression and pausing at appropriate spots in the text
- Use two-letter consonant blends to decode and spell single-syllable words such as sh and bl
- Use word patterns to decode unfamiliar words
- Identify characters, setting and events of a story
What to Look for When You Visit
- Decodable books, which have the phonics elements and high-frequency words that your child has been taught in class
- Leveled books, which are books organized in levels of difficulty from the easy ones for a beginning reader to longer, more complex books for advanced readers. The leveling of texts allows teachers to match books with an individual student's reading ability.
- A reading area with a class library of books and a place for students to sit comfortably and read
- A listening center with a tape recorder, earphones, tapes of stories and multiple copies of the accompanying text. Listening to the tapes provides a model for fluent reading
- A word wall, which is a list of words displayed in alphabetical order on a bulletin board, used for reference and to reinforce vocabulary words
Reading specialist Jennifer Thompson recommends these books on reading:
Reading Magic: Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Their Lives Forever, by Mem Fox (Harvest Books, 2001).
The Read Aloud Handbook, by Jim Trelease (Penguin, 5th edition August, 2001).
Read to Me 2000: Raising Kids Who Love to Read, by Bernice E. Cullinan (Cartwheel, August, 2000).
