Tuesday, October 10, 2017

ESSA Kindergarten

In Q4 of 2016, our Congress rallied together an passed ESSA": Every Student Succeeds Act. It was an astonishingly sensible bipartisan step forward for education nationally.  If only the new Administration could just leave it alone and implement sensibly.

One great thing is the shift of educational resources down to the grades which matter the most for getting kids educated, the early grades of PreK, kindergarten, and first grade. So productive to spend time and energy and money on those grades! Tee legacy of NCLB was a shift in elementary schools to spend all the money and the best teachers on the grades that were being tested since sadly, this years test grades seemed so  important. Sad, really. sad.

In doing this, there's a focus on literacy in kindergarten and there are surely plenty of simple kindergarten lists of spelling words that help teachers structure and organize their lessons.

In first grade spelling word lists, the dolch and sight words are a little more complicated. Vowel and consonant combinations of many sorts are used.   By the next year, all of the phonics rules are in use as second grade spelling word lists are suppose to cover all the basics. And I quote:

Second grade spelling word lists include Dolch and Fry sight word lists and word structure lists (compound words). Second grade students can build sight word fluency and phonics mastery through the use of VocabularySpellingCity’s interactive online games. Second grade games feature both audio and visual elements, an effective learning tool for all maturing readers and writers, specifically English Language Learners (ELLs).

These progressions are consistent with the CCSS approach to learning and educaiton and really show the best practices for teaching literacy to the kids who most need a good structure.

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