Print Awareness & Kindergarten Readiness

Video Transcript

" Hi! My name is Ann, and I am going to talk to you about an important concept that you will need to go over prior to beginning kindergarten. It is something that teachers look for in the beginning of the year, many a time school districts will test for these concepts and knowledge in a placement exam. Here for example, we are going to talk about self-awareness. I have brought here a book and when you are reading to your child or to the students in your group, you need to look to the book and point out the following features. The front of the book, the back of the book, the spine of the book, you go over and you mention the tittle, the name of the book for example this one is “My Very First Mother Goose”. You have your child point and say oh! here is the tittle of the book. Very important. You then go and talk about the author, who is the person, who writes the book and again you have your child look at the book and point to where he or she believes the author would be and here for example is the name of the author for this book. Another point to consider is the person who does illustrations. You go over the concept of an illustrator, someone who draws pictures for book or could also be photographs within the book, something to go over with your student. When you are doing and reading a book, you want to always show them from left to right to point what is the first word in the sentence, what is the last word in the sentence. Always explain that there are punctuation marks to look for, for example period. Usually in kindergarten we are just focusing it on period, go crazy there, where again you are reading your book, you are talking about awareness, you are talking about author, tittle, illustrator, where it is located within the book, point with your finger to the various words, what is the beginning of the word, the end of the word and those kinds of skills again are important for the success in kindergarten."