This Kindergarten Teacher's Guide provides information for kindergarten teachers on how to support families as they practice foundational reading skills at home. It serves as a companion to the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade. Both guides present four research-based recommendations and how-to steps: the WWC guide is for teaching children at school, and this guide is to help teachers support families in practicing foundational reading skills at home. The information in this Kindergarten Teacher's Guide is designed to assist teachers in supporting out-of-school literacy activities that are aligned to classroom instruction, informed by student need, grounded in evidence-based practices, and facilitated by ongoing parent-teacher communication. The Teacher's Guide provides a framework for literacy support activities presented during schools' family literacy nights and parent-teacher conferences.
This Teacher's Guide includes:
(1) Recommendation Reminders that provide a snapshot of each recommendation and how-to steps from the WWC guide;
(2) Teacher Scaffolds that model the language teachers can use with families to describe a specific skill, why it is important in learning to read, and how to support that skill;
(3) Family Resources that contain evidence-based literacy activities with easy-to-follow plans, and materials that teachers model and share with families; and
(4) Family Literacy Videos that show families engaging their child in activities related to the skills teachers modeled during family literacy nights or at parent-teacher conferences. [To view the companion "Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten through 3rd Grade," see ED566956.]
