Foundational Reading Skill Worksheets for Kindergarten Readers

June 8, 2021 by admin

Students enter kindergarten with a wide range of abilities and varied life experiences. It is the time in their life where they begin transitioning from oral to written literacy. 

Throughout the kindergarten year, they begin their understanding of what print is! They begin to recognize the organizational features, track print, and distinguish words from pictures and then letters from words. As this new world of print opens up to them, they are able to comprehend, think critically, and connect what they have learned to the world around them.

Most of these basic concepts of print can be reinforced at home and at school and TheWorksheets.com provides many worksheets that can be used to grow their independence to manipulate text which will aid them across all disciplines.  

Foundational Skills for Creating a Fluent Kindergarten Reader

Many of the new ELA standards identify a set of skills students must master before they can become fluent readers. These skills include the alphabet, the concept of print, phonological awareness, phonics and high-frequency words/ word recognition, and fluency. These skills are imperative to a child’s success as a reader and teachers and parents can use worksheets provided by TheWorksheets.com to support their growth in reading. 

Print Concepts:

When teachers and parents introduce students to written language, the child must understand the organization of print: Words have meaning, left-to-right and top-to-bottom; the concept that letters create words and words create sentences; words are separated by spaces, and punctuation controls how we read what we are reading. They also need to understand that there are 26 letters in the English language, each letter associated with one or more sounds. They must be able to identify, name, and form these letters in order to both read and write. By getting your child engaging with books and passages, the skills are sure to follow. The following worksheets are a great starting point to grow these understandings:

Phonological Awareness:

This skill is all about recognizing the sounds of language. It begins with word awareness and the ability to understand that words make up a sentence. Further mastery of these skills include recognizing both rhyme and syllables. At the most advanced level, the phoneme level, students can figure out what sounds make up a word. These students can segment (or break apart) the sounds within a word, blend sounds together to make a word, and substitute sounds to make new words.

Phonics and Word Recognition:

Within phonics, a child must match a sound unit (phoneme) to the letter or letters that make up the given sound. Students must be able to recognize and read high-frequency words  (e.g., the, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do, does). Many of these words are not able to be decoded by looking at the word and its parts because they often “break” English rules. That is why high- frequency words are often referred to as “sight words” as they must be memorized and recognized by sight.

Fluency:

In order to be a fluent reader, a child must be able to read on-level text accurately, at the appropriate rate, with the correct expression, and be able to comprehend what they have read. This is best accomplished by repeated readings of text passages of increasing difficulty while keeping record of the reading rate and accuracy.

Conclusion

When picking worksheets for a child to build their foundational skills of reading, it is important to meet them where they are at. Start with concepts of print and see if your child or student can identify and sound out the letters of the alphabet. Use passages from the above worksheets to work on their mastery of determining what is a picture, letter, word, and sentence.

From there you can increase the complexity by focusing in on those letter sounds. Work on rhyming followed by syllables. If you see success there, move on to segmenting, then blending, and finally substituting sounds in basic CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) words as the worksheets above practice.

At this time your child/student can also be starting to learn some words by sight. Utilize those worksheets that layout high-frequency words in an order that makes sense to a child’s brain. Have them practice the flashcards that can be found here on TheWorksheets.com and have them identify those same words in the varied kindergarten-level passages that are linked above.

Once your child/student is having success with the basics of reading, start focusing on fluency. Ensure that your child is able to read accurately and with knowledge of what they read. Fluency readings can also be a great indicator of skills that can still be improved upon.

TheWorksheets.com is filled with valuable resources to help any child no matter where they are at in their reading journey. These resources have been gathered by educators and parents alike for the benefit of each new reader!

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