Building Blocks Literacy Model

We have been using the Building Blocks Literacy Model for the past four years in our Kindergarten.  Building Blocks is a multi-method, multilevel literacy framework developed by Patricia Cunningham and Dottie Hall of Wake Forest University.  The overall goal of Building Blocks is to provide a developmentally appropriate kindergarten classroom which accepts all children where they are and takes them forward on their literacy journey.  Briefly these activities build the blocks.

Every day we...

Read to the children - both fiction and non-fiction.  We read aloud to the class several times throughout the day.

Read with the children - This is done during shared reading with big books.

Provide the opportunity for children to "read" by themselves during our "Quiet Reading" time.

Write for the children - We do this in morning message!

Write with the children - We do shared writing with predicable charts and when we model write before journal writing.

Provide the opportunity for children to write by themselves.  They do this during daily journal writing and in our "Letter Play" center.

Phonemic Awareness - The children develop an awareness of rhyme, word families, etc. by working with poems, nursery rhymes and songs.

Letters and Sounds - Letter and sound recognition, including beginning, ending and middle (vowel) sounds are explored daily through the Alphabet Chart games we play.

High Interest Words - These are introduced through name activities, environmental print and "popcorn" words (high frequency words that are used so often that they just "pop" into your head whenever you see them.)