ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS RESOURCES

ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS
AN OVERVIEW
KINDERGARTEN

During the kindergarten year, students need to experience the enjoyment of reading while they learn the foundational strategies and skills that will enable them to read independently. Students learn these enabling skills of phonemic awareness, letter names, soundletter correspondences, decoding skills, high frequency vocabulary, and comprehension skills as they listen and respond to a variety of texts.They enjoy listening to stories, relating characters and events to their own life experiences, dramatizing stories, and responding to stories through art and writing activities.They can extend their oral language skills when given opportunities to express themselves, and they can learn how oral language is recorded to convey experiences and ideas as they observe their experiences and ideas being written. Kindergarten students will:

• Engage in word play.
• Listen and respond to children's literature.
• Build reading and writing concepts, skills, and strategies.

Strands: Oral Language, Written Language, and Other Media/Technology

WORD RECOGNITION/VOCABULARY

COMPETENCY GOAL 1

The learner will develop and apply enabling strategies and skills to read and write.

Objectives

1.01 Develop book and print awareness:

• identify the parts of books and the function of each part.
• demonstrate an understanding of directionality and voice-print match by following print word for word when listening to familiar text read aloud.
• demonstrate an understanding of letters, words, sentence, and story.
• identify the title, the name of the author, and the name of the illustrator.

1.02 Develop phonemic awareness and knowledge of alphabetic principle:

• demonstrate understanding that spoken language is a sequence of identifiable speech sounds.
• demonstrate understanding that the sequence of letters in the written word represents the sequence of sounds in the spoken word.
• demonstrate understanding of the sounds of letters and understanding that words begin and end alike (onsets and rimes).

1.03 Demonstrate decoding and word recognition strategies and skills:

• recognize and name upper and lower case letters of the alphabet.
• recognize some words by sight, including a few common words, own name, and environmental print such as signs, labels, and trademarks.
• recognize most beginning consonant letter-sound associations in one-syllable words.

1.04 Read or begin to read:

• read or attempt to read own dictated story.
• attempt to read/reads simple patterned text, decodable text, and/or predictable texts using letter-sound knowledge and pictures to construct meaning.

1.05 Interact for at least 10 minutes daily with self-selected texts that are consistent with the student's independent reading level.

COMPREHENSION

COMPETENCY GOAL 2

The learner will apply strategies and skills to comprehend text that is read, heard, and viewed.

Objectives

2.01 Demonstrate sense of story (e.g., beginning, middle, end, characters, details, setting).

2.02 Demonstrate familiarity with a variety of types of books and selections (e.g., picture books, caption books, short informational texts, nursery rhymes, word plays/finger plays, puppet plays, reenactments of familiar stories).

2.03 Use preparation strategies to activate prior knowledge and experience before and during the reading of a text.

2.04 Formulate questions that a text might answer before beginning to read (e.g., what will happen in this story, who might this be, where do you think this happens).

2.05 Predict possible events in texts before and during reading.

2.06 Understand and follow oral-graphic directions.

2.07 Demonstrate understanding of literary language (e.g., "once upon a time") and other vocabulary specific to a genre.

2.08 Distinguish fantasy from reality when reading text.

2.09 Identify the sequence of events in a story.

CONNECTIONS

COMPETENCY GOAL 3

The learner will make connections through the use of oral language, written language, and media and technology.

Objectives

3.01 Connect information and events in text to experience.

3.02 Discuss concepts and information in a text to clarify and extend knowledge.

3.03 Associate target words with prior knowledge and explore an author's choice of words.

3.04 Use speaking and listening skills and media to connect experiences and text by:

• listening to and re-visiting stories.
• discussing, illustrating, and dramatizing stories.
• discovering relationships.

PRODUCTS

COMPETENCY GOAL 4

The learner will apply strategies and skills to create oral, written, and visual texts.

Objectives

4.01 Use new vocabulary in own speech and writing.

4.02 Use words that name and words that tell action in a variety of simple texts (e.g., oral retelling, written stories, lists, journal entries of personal experiences).

4.03 Use words that describe color, size, and location in a variety of texts (e.g., oral retelling, written stories, lists, journal entries of personal experiences).

4.04 Maintain conversation and discussions by:

• attending to oral presentations.
• taking turns expressing ideas and asking questions.

4.05 Use a variety of sentence patterns such as interrogative requests (e.g., Can you go with me?) and sentence fragments that convey emotion (e.g., Me, too!).

• write from left to right and from top to bottom.
• write most letters and some words when dictated.

4.06 Write and/or participate in writing behaviors by using authors' models of language.

GRAMMAR & LANGUAGE CONVENTIONS

COMPETENCY GOAL 5

The learner will apply grammar and language conventions to communicate effectively.

Objectives

5.01 Develop spelling strategies and skills by:

• representing spoken language with temporary and/or conventional spelling.
• writing most letters of the alphabet.
• analyzing sounds in a word and writing dominant consonant letters.

5.02 Use capital letters to write the word I and the first letter in own name.

5.03 Use legible manuscript handwriting.

Composition Products

These composition products represent a basic list of text types. Teachers may want to focus instruction on these text types, but are encouraged to expose students to additional types of writing.

GRADE K
Participate in writing behaviors by using authors' models of language. Write by using models.

FIRST GRADE
Stories, journal entries, letters, response logs, simple poems, oral retellings

SECOND GRADE
Personal narratives, creative stories, skits (familiar stories/experiences), structured, informative presentations and narratives

THIRD GRADE
Simple narratives, short reports, friendly letters, directions, instructions, poems, learning logs, notes

FOURTH GRADE
Personal narratives, imaginative narratives, research reports, logs, diaries, journals, rules, instructions, letters-of-request, letters-of-complaint

FIFTH GRADE
Research reports, news articles, business letters, letters-to-the-editor, poetry, essays, feature stories

TEXTS IN GENRE

PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

International Reading Association (IRA)
800.336.READ; www.reading.org

North Carolina Reading Association (NCRA)
www.ncreading.org

National Council of the Teachers of English (NCTE) (Elementary Section)
800.369.6283; www.ncte.org

North Carolina Association for the Education of Young Children (NCAEYC)
800.982.4406; www.ncaeyc.org

National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)
800.424.2460; www.naeyc.org

North Carolina Association of Elementary Educators (NCAEE)
Under Construction

SERVE
800.755.3277; www.serve.org

English Language Arts/Social Studies/Student Services Section
PreK-Elementary Division :: NC Department of Public Instruction :: 919.807.3931

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