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Explore by Grade Level: PreK - K

• Are your students ready for phonological awareness instruction?

  Phonological awareness (PA) instruction requires some prerequisite skills about abstract concepts or academic language. For example, when you ask “What’s the beginning sound in the word ball?” and a student looks blankly at you, it’s hard to tell whether she doesn’t know what the word beginning means or she can’t do the phonemic isolation task. Some students who enter PreK or K with low oral language benefit from explicit instruction in these terms and concepts before launching into PA instruction. 
  
  Download a sample lesson to teach this concept.
  
  
  

• Are your students struggling with learning letter names?

  Kindergarten teachers know that students need to exit the year with solid letter naming skills. Are you looking for another technique to supplement, or add variety, to those you’re already using from your core program? 
  
  Download this Letter Naming Routine.
  
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• How automatic are your students in looking at a letter and saying the sound?

  Students who can automatically look at a letter and say the associated sound(s) are in a better position to learn to decode. There are many ways to practice letter-sound association, and having a deep toolkit with multiple strategies can make the frequent distributed practice more fun and keep students engaged. This skill should be mastered in K according to the Common Core ELA standards (FS.K.3a).
  
  Download this Letter Naming Routine.

• Are your students progressing with their sight word acquisition?

  Sight words. This term means different things to different people. Are we referring to the non-phonetic rule breakers, or high frequency words?
  
  If you’re looking for an idea about a strategy to teach them, download this Sight Word Fluency routine.

  
  
  

• Are your students struggling with phoneme segmentation?

  Helping your students segment all the sounds in words prepares them to learn phonics skills more easily. Here’s an extra strategy to add to the ones you already use. To teach this strategy you’ll need colored blocks, which you probably already have in your classroom.
  
  Download this Phoneme Segmentation Fluency routine.

  
  
  

• Are your students stuck on phoneme manipulation skills?

  Why should I spend my time teaching phoneme manipulation skills? Students who can manipulate phonemes can orally add, delete, and exchange sounds in words. Moving sounds in words lays a solid foundation for reading and spelling. Start with teaching your students to add one sound to others to make a new word. 
  
  Download this Phoneme Addition Routine.

  
  
  

• Are some of your students struggling to blend all the sounds in a consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) word?

  Some students look up at you with a blank face when you say “blend those sounds together”. They just can’t move from sound-by-sound to reading words blended.  We’ve developed a strategy that actually shows what blending a word looks like. It involves using chips on a mat to show a student the difference between reading with pauses between sounds and blending the word. 
  
  Download this blending strategy.