Late Stage 1: Mid-Grade One

Beginning Literacy moving into Fluency/Consolidation

 

Our students are primarily in the late stages of beginning literacy, stage 1. Many of them are starting to move into the beginnings of stage 2: fluency and consolidation. Therefore it is important for our program to support every student, giving extra help to those still struggling with stage 1 essential skills, and challenging the students who have mastered stage 1 skills. Both stages emphasize similar food groups. The main difference is that in stage 1, letter sounds and phonics are a large part of the pie, and there is some focus on phonemic awareness and oral language development. In stage two reading comprehension and writing processes and strategies are the two biggest pie pieces and students are introduced to reading fluency and expression. 

 

 

To make sure we are reaching every student our program includes reading and writing workshops every day. In reading we have been focusing on comprehension skills (for both fiction and non-fiction) with explicit modeling and guided practice.  Our writing workshop introduces students to the foundational text-structures and genres exploring fiction and non-fiction writing.  Every morning involves oral language development to give students who are struggling with reading and writing a chance to display their knowledge. We are starting to introduce activities that build fluency, and have students practice in large group and as pairs in our centres. For those students who are still in mid stage 1 we have phonics practice in our centres and instruction built into our lunch program. We put a high importance on making activities engaging and incorporating choice and challenge to motivate students. We create meaningful and authentic experiences for our students to practice their literacy skills.