Frequently Asked Questions
by Connie Schroeder
September 22, 2009
F.A.Q. about our Kindergarten Program
What is Response to Intervention (RtI)?
Response to Intervention refers to a process that emphasizes how well students respond to changes in instruction. The essential elements of an RTI approach are: the provision of scientific, research-based instruction and interventions in general education; monitoring and measurement of student progress in response to the instruction and interventions; and use of these measures of student progress to shape instruction and make educational decisions.
What is Phonemic Awareness?
Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in spoken words. Before children learn to read print, they need to become more aware of how the sounds in words work. They must understand that words are made up of speech sounds, or phonemes. Phonemes are the smallest parts of sound in a spoken word that make a difference in a word's meaning. Early readers can show they have phonemic awareness in several ways, including recognizing which words in a set of words begin with the same sound, isolating and saying the first or last sound in a word, combining or blending the separate sounds in a word to say the word, and breaking or segmenting a word into its separate sounds.
What is Phonics?
Phonics involves the relationship between sounds and their spellings. The goal of phonics instruction is to teach students the most common sound-spelling relationships so that they can decode, or sound out, words. This decoding ability is a crucial element in reading success.
What is Everyday Mathematics?
Everyday Mathematics is a standards-based math curriculum that recognizes and builds on children's capabilities by expanding the range of their mathematics experiences and ideas. EDM uses games and exploration to introduce and reinforce math skills at the kindergarten level.
