Reading While You Shop: Grades K-1 (Real-Life Reading Activities)

Children who are beginning to read often believe that they can only read their special "reading" materials at school. This unit is designed to dispel that belief and focus reading instruction on reading real things, such as labels and signage at the grocery store, toy store, or clothing store.

Students are surrounded by print in all types of stores and shopping facilities. This unit uses this environmental print as a focus point for beginning reading. Activities are provided that facilitate the development of oral language, phonemic awareness, print awareness, and syntactic awareness. Skills are integrated as students begin recognizing letters and words and forming letter/sound associations. The unit requires reading to, with, and by learners, with an emphasis on comprehension. As learners begins to read, they must also begin to write, so suggestions for real writing activities are included as well.

Teacher information pages and reproducible patterns and activity sheets help children begin to read words that they encounter at the grocery store, toy store, clothing store, and more.

Special Features: skills checklist, parent letter, bibliography, instructions and patterns for creating a "shopping center,", word and picture cards, make environmental-print books, original poems, games and more. Plus, "A Shopping Trip" board game - reproducible playing board and game pieces, and two reproducible beginning readers (What Did You Buy?, Shop) with teaching ideas and reproducible word cards. Pleasing, instructive line art illustrations throughout. All 64 pages perforated for easy removal.