How much time is spent in kindergarten classrooms on certain reading activities and skills?

Reading was taught in practically all kindergarten classrooms (97 percent) in 1998–99 (Walston and West 2004). In terms of specific reading activities (e.g., learning phonics, learning vocabulary, reading books), teachers reported that kindergartners were more likely to spend time each day learning the names of letters or working on phonics than doing reading worksheets or reading from basal texts. Some differences in the time spent on various reading activities were found by program type. For example, full-day classes were more likely than half-day classes to work on phonics on a daily basis, discuss new vocabulary, read books chosen by the children, read aloud, read silently, work on a reading worksheet, or read from a basal text (figure 7) (Walston and West 2004).

In addition to the preceding reading activities, classroom time was also spent on certain reading skills (e.g., matching letters to sounds, conventions of print, making predictions based on text).⁷ Recognizing letters of the alphabet and matching letters to sounds were the two most common (i.e., daily) reading skills reported taught in the kindergarten classroom regardless of program type (Walston and West 2004). Although there was some consistency in the skills most commonly taught, differences existed. Full-day classrooms were more likely than half-day classrooms to spend time every day on the following skills: letter recognition, letter-sound match, conventions of print, vocabulary, making predictions based on text, using context clues for comprehension, rhyming words, reading aloud, reading multi-syllable words, and alphabetizing (Walston and West 2004).

⁷Information on how teachers spend their instructional time in reading was collected in the spring; however, this information is representative of instructional time across the entire 1998–99 school year. Similar information is available for mathematics.(back to text)