Key Skills for English Language Arts in Kindergarten

Key Skills for English Language Arts in Kindergarten

In Kindergarten English language arts, children begin the journey of learning how to communicate clearly through the written word. A lot of their learning will be play based, with lots of activities like singing and storytelling helping to develop those all important language skills.

In kindergarten you can expect your child to learn:

Phonics and an Introduction to Reading

Depending on where and when you went to school, you may not have been taught phonics when you were in kindergarten. If that's the case, here's a quick catch up: 

Phonics is a way of teaching reading and spelling that breaks words down into their smallest sounds (phonemes) and matches each sound to a letter or group of letters - visit our phonics explainer for more.

As with much of the English language, lots of these "rules" are regularly broken, so kids will also learn "sight words". These are common words that don't follow the patterns kids are taught for decoding. They are often small words like "and", "of", or "the", which need to be learned by repetition. 

At home: the more times you can expose your children to sight words, the better they will sink into their long term memories. Try encouraging them to find a particular sight word when you're reading to them. Pick "of" one night and "so" the next, for example, and encourage your child to hunt for them on the page. 

Handwriting

In kindergarten, children start to consolidate their mark making skills into fully formed letter shapes. They will learn how to hold a pencil properly, and how to correctly position the paper they are writing on in front of them. 

Letters are all formed in a particular way with a defined start and end point, which children need to get to grips with to ensure easier and quicker handwriting as they move up the school. Click here for more information on how each letter should be formed.

Sentences

In kindergarten, children learn how to put several words together to make a sentence. They learn the features of sentences, including that they always 

  • start with a capital letter.
  • contain a verb. 
  • make sense. 

They learn that there is a space between each word to make it easy to see where they start and end.

At home: The first step to writing sentences is composing the sentence orally. Help your child when you are chatting by expanding on things they have said to make full sentences. If your child makes a mistake, repeat back to them the correct way to say it. This models the correct grammar or sentence structure without putting pressure on your child or turning it into a schooling session. For example, if they say, "The dog runned," say, "Yes, the dog ran."

Punctuation

Kindergarteners also learn about the punctuation features of sentences. For example, there is always a capital letter at the beginning and a period, exclamation, or question mark at the end. 

Visit our punctuation page for more info.

At home: Play a punctuation game where you take it in turns to say a sentence, question, or exclamation and your child has to decide which punctuation mark should go at the end. You can make it more fun by inventing hand gestures to match each end mark, for example, a forward punch for a period, or drawing the curved shape of a question mark in the air with your hand.

Syllables and rhyming

Learning about syllables and rhyming is part of learning to read and spell, because it helps children to figure out how sounds are put together to make words. This is a key part of good decoding skills. 

At home: Read books which have solid, basic rhymes, like The Gruffalo, or Aliens Love Underpants. You could even make up a song or silly poem with your child, where you have to end each line with a different rhyming word. Try to keep going until you run out! Don't worry if you're not creative - just make the story about someone with a bag who keeps pulling different (rhyming) things out of it. 

Vocabulary

As children start to grow their vocabulary in Kindergarten, they will learn what more words mean. They will learn about:

  • Categories of Words 

Kids learn to sort and classify words into different categories. It often comes in the form of exercises where they have to pick the odd one out. For example, which is the odd one of the following words? 

bear, lion, wolf, boat

Learning to sort and categorize helps kids describe things by their characteristics, which in turn helps with vocabulary development. 

  • Opposites 

Children are also taught about the concept of opposites. Understanding this concept helps children learn to compare and describe the world around them. In kindergarten, they'll mostly learn easily understood, short words that they are already familiar with, like:

stop / go

happy / sad

hot / cold

  • Multiple Meaning Words (homonyms)

Kindergarteners also learn that some words, which are spelled and pronounced the same, can mean different things. For example:

Verbs

In kindergarten, kids start to learn about different types of words, specifically "doing words," or "action words," otherwise known as verbs. They will learn that these are words we use to describe our actions, movements, or activities. To begin with, they'll learn the simpler action words, like run, jump, write, dance, or sing. 

At home: Draw attention to the "doing words" as you do them. Say, "I run in the garden," or "I wash my face." Make a game out of it by taking turns to call out a verb, and then imitating the action required. For example, if you call out "sleep", everyone lies down and pretends to be asleep, and if they call out "hop", everyone hops on one leg, etc. This helps kids recognise which words are specifically about actions.



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