Instructional Literacy Strategies In Kindergarten

Choral Reading
Earlier this week I was asked to share a strategy with my Kindergarten colleagues, that I use to teach fluency. I chose choral reading because it is the most effective strategy in my literacy toolbox. I know how important it is to teach interactively, use the guided release model and inject fun into my students learning. Choral reading enables me to do all three!
Choral reading always begins with an expressive read aloud the first day. On the second day I begin again with an expressive read aloud followed by the game Mirror. Another name for the game is My Turn, Your Turn. I read aloud the first sentence and all of the students echo. We continue through until the end of the passage.
On the third reading we echo read one line at a time but then do two lines together. If they are ready we read the passage together. The objective is for the students to read without teacher support. We continue to read the story each day following up with a mini-lesson with different focus' like letter hunts, small words, left to right tracking, return sweep, rhyming words, ...
When some of the students are ready to perform the rest of us enjoy their rendition. When the whole class is ready they read to me and then we invite guests into the classroom for a performance. If the passage is well loved then we may do a writing response, art project or mural.
I put a copy into our poetry/song journals, poetry book bin and make a mini emergent reader for their personal book bins. Eventually the books go home to be shared with family.
Here are a few photos of what it looks like in Kindergarten.

Repeated Read Aloud

Poems and mini emergent readers 3-6 lines

Interactive Writing
In this example we were
deciding on writing criteria

Morning Message
By using cloze you can chose the
focus of the hunt and then leave it up
all day for students to re-read

I also wanted to highlight other reasons to use this instructional strategy:

• it is well supported by research 
• it uses the guided release model
• it takes very little time to prepare once you have accumulated a list of books, poems and songs
• students are very proud of their success
• provides purpose to re-read which builds fluency
• includes a high level of teacher support
• students will read it when they play the teacher centre, read the room, while they are gathering on the carpet waiting for the rest of the class and even sing or chant as they walk out the door to go home.
• it is fun to use effective strategies
• it matches my beliefs about how children learn

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