Power Standards

• Demonstrate an understanding of print concepts, phonological awareness, and word analysis and decoding skills in order to read appropriate texts with purpose and understanding. (RF K.1, K.2, K.3, K.4)

Power Standards Critical Content

In the language of instruction, students will…

• Read words left to right, top to bottom, and page-by-page
• Recognize that letters are put together in a specific order to make words, and words make sentences
• Recognize that words are separated by spaces before and after them
• Recognize and name all of the capital letters and lower case letters in the alphabet
• Recognize words with the same end sound
• Rhyme one word with another
• Count, pronounce, blend and segment syllables in spoken words
• Blend and segment single syllable words
• Identify the beginning sound, vowel, sound, and end sound of words (three-phoneme words)
• Add or change beginning, middle, or end sounds to create new words
• See a consonant and know the sound it makes
• Say the long and short sounds of each vowel
• Recognize the common spelling of long and short vowel sounds
• Read sight words without having to sound them out
• Identify the letter sound that is different in words with similar spellings
• Retell stories orally
• Recognize and read text with common sight words

Additional Critical Content

• Read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding

Essential Understandings

• Understanding the features, structures, and characteristics of print can facilitate the reader’s ability to make meaning of the text.
• Fluency helps the reader process language for meaning and enjoyment.

Factual Guiding Questions

• What do good readers do?
• What do good writers do?
• How do sounds and letters create words?
• When a word doesn’t make sense, what can one do?

Conceptual Guiding Questions

• Why are sounds and letters important?
• How do good readers understand what they read?

Engaging/Debatable Guiding Questions

• How do reading and writing support each other?
• How does having a reading toolbox help you with reading comprehension? (e.g., pictures, cues, high frequency words, sight words, context clues, letter sound fluency, etc.)

Language General Transfer-Students must draw upon the following…

Reading as a process

• Lines or other spatial contrasts to writing
• Understanding speech print relationships
• Directional organization
• Figure ground awareness
• Visual discrimination (ability to match and distinguish similarities and differences in letters, words, objects, pictures, etc. saw vs. was; p//b//q//d)
• Visual sequencing (ability to correctly reprocess symbols and/or sequences of symbols previously seen)

Common among all languages

• Develop Oral Language
• Match speech to print
• Contextualized literacy instruction
• Meaningful
• Active
• Comparative
• Recurrent

English language specific

• Syllable patterns (CVC)
• Sight words
• Short and long vowels
• Word families (rhyming)
• Onset-rime
• Silent “e”
• Plurals (adding “s”)
• Digraphs/Blends
• Say the long and short sounds of each vowel
• Recognize the common spelling of long and short vowel sounds.
• Read sight words without having to sound them out.

Spanish language specific

• Distinguish between formal and informal style of speaking according to audience and purpose (Tú vs. Usted).
• Respect, honor and teach dialectical differences within culture and regions
• Syllable reading (CV) or (CVC)
• Diagraphs
• Diphthongs “B” and “V”
• Hard “C” “Q” “K”
• soft “c” and soft “g”
• “C” “S” “Z”
• Las letras mudas “H” “U”
• Dieresis
• “G” “J” “X”
• High frequency words
• Alphabet
• Cognates
• Punctuation
• Spacing

English language development

• Visual support-context using pictures
• Language scaffolding
• Use home language to support English language development
• Build upon background knowledge
• Cross-linguistic transfer for reading and instruction
  • Concept of the letters, sounds, syllables, words, sentences
• Meta-linguistic Awareness

Russian language specific

• Recognize and name upper and lower cases of the Cyrillic alphabet
• Syllabic reading (CV, CVCV, CVCVCV, etc.)
• Plurals (changing endings)
• Soft and Hard vowels
• Soft sign (making the consonant soft or not blending the vowel with the consonant)
• Hard sign (making a slight pause between syllables)
• How to break a word into multiple syllables
• Distinguish between formal and informal style speaking according to audience and purpose. (Pronoun-verb usage)
• Recognize and name vowels and consonants

Polish language specific

• Recognize and name all upper and lower cases of the Polish alphabet
• Recognize and name all vowels and consonants
• Syllabic reading (CV, CVCV)
• Plurals
• Gender agreement (feminine, masuline, and neutral)
• Soft and hard vowels
• Digraphs
• Distinguish between formal and informal style of speaking
• Syllables and accents
• Prefixes
• High frequency words

Informal Assessments are used during the process of brainstorming, drafting, revision and editing or class discussions.

In the language of instruction students will participate in…

• Turn pages in a book from front to back and read the left page before the right
• Recognize that words are separated by spaces before and after them
• Recognize the difference between upper and lowercase letters
• Name all uppercase and lowercase letters of the alphabet
• Rhyme one word with another
• Break words into syllables by clapping, snapping, or counting
• Say each syllable in a word
• Blend syllables to say a complete word
• Blend letter sounds to say a single-syllable word
• Add or change beginning, middle, or end sounds to create a new words
• Say the most common sound of each consonant
• Say the lon and short sounds for each vowel
• Read common words without having to sound them out
• Identify the letter sound that is different in words with similar spellings
• Read a text with common sight words
• Use picture cues in text to support comprehension
• Retell stories orally

Formal Assessments are used as a measure of student achievement towards mastery of a skill and Power Standard. Often a formal assessment will result in a grade.

In the language of instruction students will participate in…

• DRA2 (English) or EDL2 (Spanish)
• AIMSweb
• Read sight words without having to sound them out
• Formal anecdotal records