Kinder-Rockets: Early Intervention for Emergent Readers
Kinder Rockets is a general education program that provides support to kindergarten students who may be in need of additional instruction in the foundational skills of reading. Students meet with the Reading Specialist in small groups (generally no more than 5 children) to receive extra support in the skills that will help them become confident, efficient readers who meet grade level benchmarks for reading.
Students are referred by their classroom teachers for participation in Kinder-Rockets. Students meet with me in the Learning Center for 30 minute sessions four times each week. Kinder-Rockets is a support program and does not replace reading instruction in the classroom. The time spent in Kinder-Rockets is in addition to the regular classroom Language Arts program and I meet with classroom teachers regularly to discuss student progress. Students exit the program when they've reached grade level benchmarks for reading.
Kinder Rockets is based on current best practices in literacy acquisition. Students will focus primarily on skills of phonological awareness, which are the building blocks of reading. Phonological awareness includes rhyme production, syllabication, awareness of initial/final sounds and the ability to tune into the individual sounds of language. Research shows that skills related to phonological awareness are necessary as children begin to decode words and gain proficiency as readers. Additionally, the children will engage in phonics and word work so they will firmly establish the letter/sound relationship necessary in learning to read.
The program we use is called Fountas & Pinnell Leveled Literacy Intervention and the books in the program are leveled in the same way as books used for instruction by classroom teachers, which provides consistency between the classroom and our Kinder-Rocket program. Additionally, we use The Sonday System, which focuses on alphabetic knowledge, phonemic awareness and phonics.