What does a lesson look like?
Phonemic Awareness
Specific activities such as rhyming, sound segmenting, phoneme deletion, phoneme substitution, phoneme isolation, phoneme replacement, and others are designed to build phonemic awareness skills, which are the foundation of literacy.
Sound Card Drill
Each lesson has a rapid phonogram card review drill. The student says the letter’s name, keyword, and sound as they trace it with their fingers on a tactile surface.
Introduction or Review of the Concept
Videos and visuals are used to introduce and teach the new concept and review it until mastery is achieved.
Sweeping Drill
The student is given an opportunity to practice decoding and blending randomly generated words related to the new concept just taught.
Reading Words
Practice decoding and reading words is provided in an engaging game-based format. The words offer practice with all previously introduced concepts.
Word Inquiry
This section allows the student access to various comprehension activities. It introduces morphological units (prefixes, suffixes, and roots), analogies, synonyms, antonyms, grammar concepts, and more.
Phrase and Sentence Reading
In this section, the student reads decodable phrases and or sentences focused on the concept introduced in the lesson.
Decodable Stories and Comprehension
The student is provided with a short decodable story to read and then comprehension questions related to the story.
Red Words
Sight words are taught using specific sight word strategies and procedures to increase success.
What’s My Symbol?
For this activity, the student is asked what says a specific sound. The student then writes down everything that they have learned that makes that sound. Most lessons include 8 sounds. per lesson is typical.
Spell with Me
This is the student’s opportunity to practice spelling using their learned concepts. Students are provided with specific spelling procedures and encouraged from the first lesson to follow those procedures every time. Most lessons involve a combination of words for the current concept and words from previous lessons.
Sentence Dictation
The last section is sentence dictation. This section allows the students to apply the concepts they have learned in complete sentences. As a rule, dictated sentences will include both the current concept and previously learned concepts. This is also the students’ opportunity to begin taking ownership of and proofreading their writing. In this section, students will quickly begin to locate and self-correct their errors.