Kindergarten Q&A

Classroom Management

1. How do I know if my students are ready for The Superkids?

Children are ready for Level 1: Meet the Superkids if they have had some experience following oral directions, handling books, listening to stories read aloud, and tracking print. They should also be able to draw lines and circles with a pencil and use scissors to cut out simple shapes and along dotted lines.

Of course children will come to you with a wide range of skills and experience. That's why it's a good idea to identify children's instructional needs by assessing their skills at the beginning of the school year. Use the techniques you normally use, both informal and formal. For example, you can assess children's experiences with literacy by watching them handle books and observing their responses when you read aloud. To assess whether children are ready to learn to form letters, review their attempts to write their names. You can also use your district's kindergarten readiness test or the Readiness Test in the Meet the Superkids Assessment Book.

If most of your children lack the skills necessary to succeed with the beginning reading instruction in Meet the Superkids, start the year instead with Happily Ever After, the readiness level of the Rowland Reading Program.

2. How long should I spend each day teaching Meet the Superkids and Superkids' Club?

Meet the Superkids and Superkids' Club should take about 60 to 90 minutes each day. You don't have to teach all the activities in a lesson in one block of time, but do allow time throughout the day to teach them.

The pace at which your students learn the skills in the program depends on many factors. In a full-day kindergarten, the first seven Meet the Superkids Student Books usually take about a week and a half to complete. The other six books usually take about a week each. If children have not attended pre-kindergarten, the first books may take about two weeks each.

By the time you begin Superkids' Club, students will be familiar with learning letters and letter-sounds, so you can pick up the pace in this level. The five Student Books each introduce two or three letters and letter-sound correspondences. Each Student Book usually takes about two weeks to complete, but how much time you spend will depend on your schedule and students' needs.

Once you establish routines and children become immersed in the program, the pace will pick up. Above all, do not drag out the program. Maintain a comfortable, purposeful pace. Because each Student Book reviews previously taught letters and sounds, children need not master all the concepts in a book before proceeding to the next book.

3. Do I need to teach the lessons in order?

Yes. The skills and vocabulary are carefully sequenced. Each lesson reviews and builds on the skills and concepts taught in preceding lessons. This makes it important to teach the lessons in order. If lessons are taught out of order, children will have to read words containing sounds they have not learned. This will undermine children's developing decoding habit, which is essential for automaticity and fluency.

4. Should I do all of the activities in the Teacher's Guides?

In the Teacher's Guides, the core instruction consists of the Daily Routines, the steps in each lesson that are highlighted with yellow stars, and Lasting Lessons. It's important to teach all children the core instruction in all 146 lessons in Meet the Superkids and Superkids' Club. At the start of each day, use the three Daily Routines: phonemic awareness or blending, dictation, and handwriting. The activities provide auditory, visual, and kinesthetic reinforcement and give you a superb opportunity to assess children's understanding of previously taught skills. The steps highlighted with yellow stars explain how to teach the skills, concepts, and vocabulary that students need to become independent readers as well as competent users of other language skills—speaking, listening, and writing.

The Student Books are the focus of the core, teacher-led instruction. All new skills are introduced in the Student Books. The books also provide extensive practice and review with new and previously taught skills. Be sure to check each page with children after they complete it. This allows you to reinforce important concepts and immediately correct any misunderstandings.

5. Given all the differences among students, how do I organize the class for instruction?

In general, keep your class together when you introduce each new letter, letter sound, and Superkids character. Use small groups to address students' specific needs, as described in the answers to questions 6-8.

Starting in Meet the Superkids Unit 9, children read more substantial stories in the Student Books. You will probably want to teach the accompanying story lessons to small groups so you can give all students a chance to read aloud and give yourself the chance to assess students' skills and give feedback.

Throughout the year, use the Progress Tests and informal assessment opportunities to identify and monitor students' strengths and weaknesses and adjust instruction. See the Assessment Book for each level for more information about formal and informal assessment.

6. How can I help struggling students?

For children who need more support, provide additional guidance during lesson activities. Select from the Ten-Minute Tuck-Ins as necessary to reteach and reinforce skill instruction. Because of the extensive review built into the program, you can generally let a student having difficulty with a particular letter-sound correspondence move ahead to the next book with the rest of the class.

You can address the needs of children who lack readiness skills as you teach the whole class or in small groups directed by you or an aide. Here are a few ideas:

• Build book and print awareness. Read aloud to children every day. Model how to track print from left to right and top to bottom by sweeping your hand under the words as you read. Discuss the stories before, during, and after reading.
• Strengthen fine motor skills. Have children squeeze soft balls, string beads, open and close clothespins, and flip coins. It's especially important to strengthen the thumb and index finger to prepare for handwriting. Have children grasp a ball of clay in one hand and pinch and pull out part of the clay with the thumb and index finger of the other hand. Just five minutes of practice a day can make a big difference.
• Develop auditory discrimination skills. Set up activities in which children identify environmental sounds, distinguish between loud and soft sounds, identify rhymes, or identify same and different word sequences.

7. What should I do with advanced students?

Advanced children can work more independently. For example, they may be able to complete parts of or whole pages in the Student Books on their own. The formats used in the Student Books are intentionally repeated so that children can do them with increasing independence. Select from the Tuck-Ins and Project Corner activities for enrichment opportunities. More advanced children can also read the Library Books and work in centers or in other subject areas while you work with smaller groups or individuals who need more help.

Some children may start the school year already knowing letters and their sounds and even how to read. While Meet the Superkids will review skills for these students, still have them work with the rest of the class on the core instruction. Children who learn to read without formal instruction typically have gaps in their skill development that can cause reading problems later on. Meet the Superkids provides the necessary instruction to fill in any gaps in their decoding, spelling, handwriting, and other foundational skills.

8. How can I provide support for English-language learners?

The Superkids program contains a wealth of rich vocabulary-building activities for all students, and these opportunities are especially helpful to English-language learners. The illustrations in the Student Books, on Picture Cards, and in the Superkids' Chart/Super Scene support vocabulary development and ensure that ELL students understand the important concepts and words. Here are some other tips to help English language learners:

• Preview vocabulary and content. Discuss the pictures and concepts on Student Book pages with ELL students before whole-class instruction. If you have an aide or volunteer available, she can help with this.
• Model instructions. Demonstrate how to complete pages in the Student Book when you explain the directions to ELL students. If needed, simplify instructions or tasks.
• Point to pictures or give other visual clues as students listen to the CDs.
• Use the Picture Cards to provide additional practice with commonly used words. Have students use the cards to follow simple instructions, such as “Place the cat above the clock.” Or “Put your finger on the carrot.”
• Encourage students to act out scenes from the Student Books to reinforce vocabulary.
• Use the themes associated with each Superkid to develop additional content vocabulary—for example, words associated with cooking (Cass) or animals (Oswald).

9. How can I provide cross-curricular activities that relate to
The Superkids?

Acquiring language skills is the primary focus of the program, but the interests of the Superkids naturally lead students into other areas of the curriculum, such as music, art, math, social studies, science, and movement. For example, children learn about animals and habitats when they meet Oswald. Activities in Project Corners also involve children in cross-curricular work related to the Superkids' interests.