Building Blocks
 
 
 

What are the Building Blocks?

Recent findings from emergent literacy research have demonstrated that children who easily learn to read and write have a variety of experiences with reading and writing that enable them to profit from school literacy experiences (Cunningham & Allington, 1999). In kindergarten classrooms teachers can provide a variety of reading and writing experiences from which all children develop these six critical understandings, which are the "building blocks" of their success.

  • Children learn that reading provides both enjoyment and information, and they develop a desire to learn to read and write.
  • Students also learn many new concepts and add words and meaning to their speaking vocabularies.
  • Children learn print concepts, including how to read from left to write, how to read from top to bottom, etc.
  • Children develop phonemic awareness, including the concept to rhyme.
  • Students learn to read and write some interesting-to-them words, such as
    “Pizza Hut,” “cat,” and “bear.”
  • Students learn some letters and sounds---usually connected to the interesting
    words they have learned.

 
 

What activities build these blocks?

Children who come to school reading, or ready to read, have had some reading and writing experiences that help them profit from school instruction. Some children come to school lacking the skills and understanding that lead to success in beginning reading instruction. What can we do to help these children? Kindergarten teachers can provide the necessary experiences for all their students by:

  • Reading to children – both fiction and nonfiction
    		 
    		 
  • Reading with children – shared reading of predictable books and interactive charts
     

    		 
  • Providing opportunities for children to read by themselves
  • Writing for children – a morning message at the start of the day
  • Learning the jargon of school by counting the sentences; then the words and letters in each sentence. Later finding words they know when you ask, “What do you notice?
  • Writing with children –predictable chart and interactive morning messages.
     

    		 

     
  • Providing opportunities for children to write by themselves


     
  • Developing phonemic awareness (the oral)
     

    		 

    		 
  • Working with letters and sounds or phonics (the written)
     

    		 
  • Learning some “interesting-to-them” words (names, environmental print, etc)
     

    		 
 
These activities are the basis of the Building Blocks program. (See Month By Month Reading and Writing in Kindergarten by Hall and Cunningham and The Teacher’s Guide to Building Blocks by Hall and Williams for a detailed description of Building
Blocks.)