Kindergarten · English Language Arts · Unit 7 of 12
Book Detectives
Letters, words and books
What your child practices
How print works: telling letters, numbers, words and sentences apart, reading left to right and top to bottom, counting words, and what authors and illustrators do.
Alaska content standards learning standard: RF.K.1; RI.K.5 · how print and books are organized, from the cover to the title page
How we explain it
Children can open this short lesson before they practice.
- A letter is one mark, like N.
- A word is a group of letters. Spaces go between words.
- We read a book from the front, top to bottom, left to right.
Example: How many words are in “I see a cat”? Count the words: I, see, a, cat. Four words. Answer: 4
Book Detectives in Alaska
In the Alaska content standards, this is unit 7 of 12 in Kindergarten English Language Arts, after Story Order and before Picture Clues.
Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.
- Kindergarten guide for Alaska parents
- Printable Kindergarten English Language Arts sheet
- Alaska report cards explained
Source: Alaska Department of Education and Early Development
Sample questions
A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.
Question 1
At the end of a line, where do we read next?
- ↙️The next line down
- ⬆️Back to the top
- ⬅️The same line again
↙️ The next line down
Hint: Sweep back to the left and go down to the next line.
Question 2
Which word comes last?
Look at the moon.
- Look
- moon
- the
moon
Hint: The last word is at the end of the sentence, on the right.
Question 3
How many words are in this sentence?
My hat is red.
- 3
- 4
- 5
4
Hint: Point to each word as you read. The spaces show where one word ends.
Question 4
Which one is a word?
- mom
- 7
- H
mom
Hint: A word is a group of letters that means something, like dog.
Question 5
Which one is a number?
- M
- big
- 4
4
Hint: A number tells how many, like 3 or 7.
Question 6
In English, which way do we read?
- ⬅️Right to left
- ➡️Left to right
- ⬆️Bottom to top
➡️ Left to right
Hint: In English, we start on the left and move our finger to the right.