Beginning Readers for KIndergartners and 1st Grade
Young children begin the path to literacy long before they are able to “read” or “lift print” on their own. Before conventional reading and writing skills emerge, Emergent Readers demonstrate their knowledge of the alphabet, gain a sense of what words are, and a develop the concept that stories have beginnings, middles, and ends. They also hone their listening and retelling skills and phonemic awareness (the ability to hear and manipulate sounds in words). It’s a complex process but with the right tools Emergent readers’ vocabulary and language expression will grow rapidly.
Lots of Books at just the Right levels!
Beginning Readers progress at different rates. What does that then mean for teachers? It means they need a LOT of books at just the right levels for their students to read. These specially written books are usually not available at a library or bookstore. Occasionally a book club like Scholastic Books will offer a set that are at the right level but there is still a real need for more and more titles.
We experienced that need in our own K and 1st grade classrooms….JUST NOT ENOUGH BOOKS at the right levels! So….we set about writing our own! These books use High Frequency Words with natural language that are clearly supported by the illustrations. Wider spacing between words aids students as they successfully “finger match” on the words as they read. Some of our readers for the very beginning students have “dots” under each word where the student can touch as they read. Two of these sets with the supportive “dots” are shown below.
Fiction Beginning Readers
We started out by writing fiction sets of readers. They use cute graphics and clipart to illustrate the simple text. Most of the text is based on predictable patterned sentences focusing on High Frequency words. Two of our popular sets are these Dinosaur Readers.
Non-fiction Beginning Reader Sets
While we wrote several sets of fiction we wrote even more Non-fiction! We found that our students really gravitated to the Non-fiction books. Themes used in class like School, Farm Animals, Bats, Pirates, Penguins, Spiders, and Insects inspired us to write sets on these topics. Our Non-fiction Beginning Reader Sets come with a colored version that has actual photographs of penguins, bats, farm animals, insects, etc. Students LOVE studying the details in these photographs. Being conscious of the fact that teachers often (er, ALWAYS) have to print their own COLORED copies of things, we made BLACK & WHITE books with the same text but illustrated with realistic clipart. That way a teacher can print them on a school machine and every student can go home with their own copy. They love coloring the clipart and reading the books over and over again. Hey, that’s exactly what we want them to do…read and reread to develop fluency and see those High Frequency Words over and over and over again..and learn them! These Readers are great additions to your Guided Reading groups! We found they worked very well for our students.
Here is a picture of just a few of the Non-fiction sets we have written so far.
Click on a word to find each of these sets at our TPT store. BATS SPIDERS FARM
Here’s what one happy repeat customer said about our Readers, “I love ALL your sets for Kinders. I am excited to use these in class!”
Free Reading Book and Resource Pages
Want to “try out” one of our readers? This will give you an example of what comes with each reader. Click {HERE} to find a FREEBIE Reader at our TPT store. Click HERE to grab the COMPLETE Set of Farm Readers!
Click each of these words to link to these Readers at our TPT store.
We hope you find these resources just what you need to give your students plenty of experiences with “just the right” level of texts.
