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Knowledge and Skills Statement

Developing and sustaining foundational language skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking--beginning reading and writing. The student develops word structure knowledge through phonological awareness, print concepts, phonics, and morphology to communicate, decode, and spell.

As students are in learning centers, join in the activity and ask them about letters with which they are interacting (e.g., Can you tell me what letter this is?).

A checklist can be used to keep track of the letters that each student can identify (upper and lowercase).

Notes:

  • It will be important to have print and writing materials in every center to allow for this authentic assessment to take place.
  • This is an assessment that should be completed over time using the checklist. A teacher should not assess all the uppercase and lowercase letters in one sitting.
Print awareness is the understanding of the characteristics and uses of print including the following print concepts: Printed text conveys meaning, sentences are comprised of words separated by spaces, and texts have unique print features that influence meaning.

Research

Zucker, T. A., Ward, A. E., & Justice, L. M. (2009). Print referencing during read-alouds: a technique for increasing emergent readers' print knowledge. The Reading Teacher, 63(1), 62–72. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/40347652

Summary: Daily classroom read-alouds provide an important context for supporting children's emergent literacy skills. Utilizing print referencing during read-alouds can foster the development of print knowledge in children.