Kindergarten · Reading · week 12

The Cat Sat: Your First Story

Read a very short decodable story built from cat, sat, and mat, and answer a simple question about it.

You can read three whole words now. That is enough to read a real story! Two little words help the story along: the and a. You will just know these two by looking at them for now.

Read slowly the first time. Read it again a second time. The second read almost always feels smoother than the first.

📋 For the teacher
Teach it (10–15 min):
  • Point out that the, a, and on are small helper words your child will just know by sight soon, no sounding out needed.
  • Read the whole short story once together, then let your child try the second read mostly alone.
  • Ask what happened at the end so reading connects to a real, simple idea, not only sounds.
  • Praise the whole story, not just single words. Your child just read connected text for the first time.
Talk about it:
  • What happened in this very first story?
  • Did the second reading feel smoother than the first?
  • Which word in the story did you feel the most proud to read?

Mastery looks like: They read the whole short story with good accuracy on a second try and can say what happened in it.

Common stumbles: Losing the story meaning while focused only on sounding out each word; guessing at the small helper words instead of learning to recognize them.

See it visually

Interactive, spoken-aloud tools that show this idea in motion.

Blending & SegmentingSlide sounds together to read a word — /s/ /u/ /n/ → “sun”.try →
Homework for this lessonType it, write it with a stylus, or print it for pencil & paper.open →
Records attendance + 15 min of Reading for this learner.
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