Kindergarten literacy jargon?

[beetiger]

My son is talking to me about there being "pop-up" words in books, and telling me that "the" and "I" are some of them, but can't articulate to me what that actually means. Is this a term for early sight reading words or something?

It's very confusing. I have a son who is quite literate, but seems to be learning all these pre-literacy/early literacy learning methods, and is convinced he's learning something new and essential about text, like that vowels can be written in different colors and there are "pop-up" words.

I'm confused.

Comments

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see. That makes sense from a five-year-old's perspective. It makes sense to correct that impression as soon as possible, though. Popcorn words are simply the name teachers give to the words he's most likely to see and use.

[ladyperegrine.livejournal.com]

It sounds like he's almost treating it like we would want him to think of parts of speech or something. Maybe he's ready for a bit of grammar? Or would that only confuse the issue?

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

It might be a good opportunity to introduce parts of speech, with an emphasis on, "These words are all used the same way." You can then work on dividing up his popcorn words into categories based on parts of speech, and salvage a workable activity from something otherwise far below his level.

Just out of curiosity, has anyone mentioned a reading level to you - maybe they called it a DRA level? I would expect him to be around a 20, which I believe translates to an L in the letter version of the same scale. That would put his reading level in the mid-grade two range. I may be wrong on that, though, and I'd be interested to see if his teachers have bothered being that specific with him yet.

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

I actually tried that this afternoon, in the car. Told him that grownups didn't usually talk about popcorn words, once they learned how to read most words, but did he want to talk about whether a word was a noun, which was a naming word? He seemed pretty interested.

As far as reading level, they've been sending him home with "D" books, which is the most advanced they have in the classroom. The teacher tested him on them and supposedly he decoded them perfectly, but could not report the content well. (Of course, the problem is not that his comprehension is low, but that his attention is, but from their POV they feel he hasn't mastered them.) I've gotten them to at least send home non-fiction so there's content we can talk about even if the reading level is low. And he's taking books closer to his challenge reading level out of the library -- Rainbow Fairies and Geronimo Stilton, I think?

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

He's reading Geronimo Stilton and they have him pegged at a D? I revise my estimate - I'd ask them to talk to the grade three teachers and start testing him around a 24 (M or N, I believe - I'm not sure because most of my kids start higher than that.) If they pegged Elizabeth at a D, I'd believe them because it meshes with what I've seen of her reading, but in my professional opinion, Rhys' independent reading level is at least grade two and probably higher.

The kindergarten teachers may not know how to conduct the higher tests if they've never taught grade two or three, so push for them to have a spec. ed. teacher or one of the grade two classroom teachers do that testing. He'll need access to their classroom libraries, too.