Standard 2: Reading Foundations

Students will develop foundational skills for future reading success by working with sounds, letters, and text.

PRINT CONCEPTS: Students will demonstrate their understanding of the organization and basic features of print, including book handling skills and the understanding that printed materials provide information and tell stories. 

Student Actions 

Teacher Actions 

• Students will begin to develop the ability to track print from left to right, top to bottom, and front to back.

• Teachers track print while reading aloud to students.

• Teachers use think alouds while reading or interacting with text to explain how to track print.  Example:  “There are no more words on this page, so I will move to the top of the next page to find out what happens next.”

• Teachers provide opportunities to work with students in small groups providing guidance and support for tracking print.

• Teachers monitor and provide opportunities for students to receive feedback when interacting with print.

Resources

Teacher Insights 

Balanced Literacy Diet:  Concepts of Print (webpage)

• Daily book-reading with guidance, instruction, and modeling helps students to understand concepts of print that are important to the development of reading and writing skills.

• Students can begin left to right tracking on alphabet strips, and /or shape or color recognition fluency charts.  This helps teach left to right tracking and directionality early.

• It also helps build the one-to-one correspondence of one spoken word to one written word.

• Pre-kindergarten teachers should model tracking words while reading as much as possible.

• Give students opportunities to track print on poem charts, sentence strips (sentence starters), and in small groups during individual instruction.

Due to recursive nature of the standards, it is essential that teachers are aware of how all objectives within and between strands work together for optimal instruction.