Welcome to the Reading Center!
All grades K-5 are using Benchmark Advance, a core language arts program. Aligned with Science of Reading research, this program provides a cohesive structure for the development of literacy skills and content knowledge.
Normal phonics instruction is essential for early readers, but so are sight words. Sight words often don't follow phonics rules, which makes them necessary to memorize. They are high-frequency words, meaning that these are the words that appear in text more often. Please practice them daily at home and make it fun! If you scroll down on the right side of each grade level page, you will find flash cards you may print out to use at home. In addition, you can have the students find these words in magazines/books and/or kitchen items such as cereals and snack boxes. They can also create them with play-doh and sidewalk chalk. Hide the flash cards around a different room each day and have them read all the ones they find.
Following are the first 5 lists of sight words that students should be learning at the kindergarten (Pre-Primer/Primer), first grade (Primer, First Grade), and second grade (Second Grade) and third grade (Third Grade) level.
Based on Debbie Miller's book Reading with Meaning, good readers are active readers. These 6 steps are helpful strategies that provide the reader the opportunity to be active and engaged in the reading material.
Making Connections - sometimes teachers refer to this as using schema. Schema is our background knowledge or what we already know about a given topic. Students can make personal connections to what they are reading. They can also make connections by comparing the book to other sources of information they have read. Students can also make connections by connecting the book to what is happening in the world around them.
Questioning - good readers ask questions while they read. This keeps them actively engaged in the material.
Visualizing - readers who make mental pictures tend to remember more about the topic. Use your five senses to help you create your mental picture.
Inferring - authors don't always say exactly what they mean. They use clues to make us think and make predictions.
Determining Importance - readers must determine what is important and central to the reading. Graphic organizers are helpful in keeping track of main characters, settings, problems and solutions in stories.
Synthesizing - monitor your comprehension and ask if it makes sense. If it doesn't make sense then re-read, read it aloud, read more slowly, look at illustrations, and examine the confusing words.