progress

We have been in school for 10 weeks now and progress is being made. In preparation for parent teacher conferences I have been wrapping up quarterly progress reports on foundational skills. My students are making headway on learning their letter names and sounds. Some have made the jump from zero letters recognized in a minute to fourteen, which is really incredible when they entered school not knowing letters from numbers. Others, that entered school with basic letter knowledge are now approaching sixty letters in a minute. Progress!

While these numbers are fantastic, the thing that has really gotten me excited is seeing actual progress in my students' reading abilities. Today, I had each of my independent readers (13 of 18 in my class) read a new text to me. The story included high frequency words that we have been working on all year along with some new CVC words (words made up of consonant-vowel-consonant combinations) that were composed of letter sounds that we have been working on, such as cap. 

One of my students, one that struggled quite a bit at the beginning of the school year, blew me away today. He nailed his sight words and then successfully sounded out each of his new CVC words. He was a rock star. He read the story from beginning to end and was even able to tell me the main idea of the story. As I said, I was blown away. 

I love that progress is so noticeable in kindergarten. I love my job.