Tips For Parents:

Phonological Knowledge: 

-Encourage your child to write and share their stories with you
-Practice spelling words and sounding them out.
-Point out words that sound alike or look alike
-Talk about letter combinations that make a particular noise

Semantic Knowledge:

-Make a word web so they can see connections between words
– Review their spelling list, talk about what those words mean
– Use humor and puns as they start to give words multiple meanings

Syntactic Knowledge:

-Provide lots of opportunity for writing and encourage them to write in the past, present, and future.
-Aid them to begin using pronouns in their stories both written and oral

Morphemic Knowledge:

-Have children create a list of words in their past, present, and future tense
-Read their writing aloud to them and see if they think it makes sense
-Give positive feedback when they use correct grammar

Pragmatic Knowledge:

-Introduce them to a variety of written language genres: signs and labels, stories, directions, newspapers, cards, letters.
-Invoke social rules, and appropriate ways to express emotion
-Talk about how you use language, and tone differently at school, at home, on the playground, etc.

Books & Activities:

The Seven Silly Eaters: This is a more lengthy picture book for older students. There are many more words and more complex sentence structures. It’s a great read for primary age students.

Activities: Take a couple words from the text and create a synonym/antonym chart with your child. Talk about how the words are similar and different. Have them rephrase sentences to make them past tense. Make a list of the ingredients the children used to bake the cake.

Love That Dog: This book is written in a  free verse poetry style. It’s a great introduction into learning that not all poetry is the same and not every line has to rhyme. There are more words, but shorter sentences.

Activities: Have your child write their own poem. Talk about why they wrote it and the emotions behind their words.

Officer Buckle and Gloria: This book is full of humor. It’s plot is relatable for primary aged students and it’s language has many opportunities to talk about the different aspects.

Activity: Have your child point out pronouns, ask them which character the pronoun is representing. Create your own tips similar to officer buckle and gloria’s, as children can work on other genres of writing.