Reading instruction in kindergarten: A look at some issues through the lens of new basal reader materials

Abstract

An earlier classroom-observation study of 42 kindergartens revealed that teachers equated readiness and beginning reading instruction with teaching phonics. Basal readiness workbooks determined both the letter-sound correspondences taught as well as the sequence for teaching them. The need to cover all the sounds with everyone was explained with a reference to the dependence of first grade basal readers on children's knowledge of the sounds. In turn, the need to know all the sounds was cited as a reason for using whole class instruction to teach phonics even when differences in children's abilities were too obvious for anyone to miss. Because of these findings, six basal series with 1989 copyright dates were examined in order to learn if the new kindergarten ( K) manuals do anything to facilitate matching instruction with abilities, whether phonics or something else is being taught. The various analyses suggested that whole class instruction was taken for granted by those who prepared the manuals. The same six series were also examined to determine whether the phonics taught in pre-first grade materials, which are expanded in the new series to include both K and R (readiness) levels, is a prerequisite for using preprimers. The latter are customarily thought of as beginning first grade materials. This analysis showed, first, that authors of preprimer materials assume that children know the letter-sound correspondences covered earlier; however, the expectation was met by the R manuals, which teach less phonics than K manuals. This was unexpected, because publishers state that K level is intended for use in kindergarten, whereas recommendations for using the R level are either absent, ambiguous, or unrealistic. Implications of the various findings are discussed.