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

[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.