Best practices in emergent literacy

Abstract

A unique aspect of kindergarten is that it is often a child's first experience with formal education. Because of this, students come to kindergarten with a huge range of experiences and abilities. Teachers of other grade levels have the benefit of knowing what instruction students have been exposed to, but the kindergarten teacher has the difficult task of differentiating instruction to meet the needs of children with vastly different home lives and educational experiences. I have written a yearlong kindergarten literacy curriculum to use in my school district. There is a real need in my district for a literacy curriculum at the kindergarten level. The district kindergarten teachers have very different expectations for what their students should know by the end of the year. These inconsistent expectations lead to very inconsistent kindergarten programs from one classroom to the next. I found myself wondering - If there are such inconsistencies within a small district, how different are kindergarten programs within the region, state, and country as a whole? As I read professional literature, I found a wide variation of expectations for what children should know and be able to accomplish in the areas of reading and writing