1. CCSS Reading Foundational Skills

2. What are Foundational Skills?
Foundational Skills are directed toward fostering students understanding and working knowledge:
Concepts of print
Alphabetic principle
Other basic conventions of the English Writing system
Foundational Skills are:
Necessary and important component of a comprehensive reading program
Designed to develop proficient readers with the capacity to comprehend across a range of types and disciplines

3. Reading Foundational Skills: Instruction
Instruction should be differentiated
Good readers will need much less practice
Struggling readers will need more practice
Teach students what they need to learn and not what they already know.
Teachers need to know through informal/formal assessments which particular children need more or less attention with various foundational skills

4. Print Concepts KINDERGARTEN FIRST GRADE
CC.K.R.F.1 Print Concepts: Demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print.
Follow words from left to right, top to bottom, and page by page.
Recognize that spoken words are represented in written language by specific sequences of letters.
Understand that words are separated by spaces in print.
Recognize and name all upper- and lowercase letters of the alphabet.
FIRST GRADE
CC.1.R.F.1 Print Concepts: Demonstrate understanding of the organization and basic features of print.
Recognize the distinguishing features of a sentence (e.g., first word, capitalization, ending punctuation).

5. Phonological Awareness
CC.K.R.F.2 Phonological Awareness: Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes).
Count, pronounce, blend, and segment syllables in spoken words.
Blend and segment onsets and rimes of single-syllable spoken words.
Isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds (phonemes) in three-phoneme (consonant-vowel-consonant, or CVC) words.*(This does not include CVCs ending with /l/, /r/,or /x/.)
CC.1.R.F.2 Phonological Awareness: Demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes).
Distinguish long from short vowel sounds in spoken single-syllable words .
Orally produce single-syllable words by blending sounds (phonemes), including consonant blends.
Isolate and pronounce initial, medial vowel, and final sounds (phonemes) in spoken single-syllable words.
Segment spoken single-syllable words into their complete sequence of individual sounds (phonemes).

6. Phonics and Word Recognition
CC.K.R.F.3 Phonics and Word Recognition: Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
Demonstrate basic knowledge of letter-sound correspondences by producing the primary or most frequent sound for each consonant.
Associate the long and short sounds with the common spellings (graphemes) for the five major vowels.
Read common high-frequency words by sight. (e.g., the, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do, does).
Distinguish between similarly spelled words by identifying the sounds of the letters that differ.
CC.1.R.F.3 Phonics and Word Recognition: Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
Know the spelling-sound correspondences for common consonant digraphs (two letters that represent one sound).
Decode regularly spelled one-syllable words.
Know final -e and common vowel team conventions for representing long vowel sounds.
Use knowledge that every syllable must have a vowel sound to determine the number of syllables in a printed word.
Decode two-syllable words following basic patterns by breaking the words into syllables.
Read words with inflectional endings.
Recognize and read grade-appropriate irregularly spelled words.
CC.2.R.F.3 Phonics and Word Recognition: Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
Distinguish long and short vowels when reading regularly spelled one-syllable words.
Know spelling-sound correspondences for additional common vowel teams.
Decode regularly spelled two-syllable words with long vowels.
Decode words with common prefixes and suffixes.
Identify words with inconsistent but common spelling-sound correspondences.
Recognize and read grade-appropriate irregularly spelled words.
CC.3.R.F.3 Phonics and Word Recognition: Know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words.
Identify and know the meaning of the most common prefixes and derivational suffixes.
Decode words with common Latin suffixes.
Decode multisyllable words.
Read grade-appropriate irregularly spelled words.

7. Fluency
CC.1.R.F.4 Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.
Read grade-level text with purpose and understanding.
Read grade-level text orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression.
Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary.
CC.K.R.F.4 Read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding.
CC.2.R.F.4 Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.
Read grade-level text with purpose and understanding.
Read grade-level text orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression.
Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary.
CC.3.R.F.4 Fluency: Read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension.
Read grade-level text with purpose and understanding.
Read grade-level prose and poetry orally with accuracy, appropriate rate, and expression.
Use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary.

8. Differentiation Strategies: Examples
Intervene When: Despite whole group instruction and teacher modeling of this skill, the student is unable to identify and blend the letter-sound relationships in words.
Intervention Options:
Diagnostic Assessment: MSV Analysis of running record miscues (errors are mostly visual)
If the diagnostic assessment and/or observation show a weakness in phonological awareness, then try using:
Hand Spelling
Finger Spelling
Elkonin Boxes
If the diagnostic assessment and/or observation show a weakness in letter-sound correspondence, then try using:
Alphabet or Consonant Cluster Linking Charts
Making Words with Magnetic Letters or Letter Cards
Multi-Sensory Approach
Prompting Guide
If the diagnostic assessment and/or observation show a weakness in decoding, then try using:
Spot and Dot
CLOVER
Structural Analysis
Polysyllabic Words

9. Hand Spelling
Description: Hand spelling is a key technique for moving children from Phase 1 to Phase 2 for beginning reading. It helps students focus attention on the beginning sound such as /c/ in words like cat. (Taken from Breakthrough in Beginning Reading and Writing by Richard Gentry)
The reference made to the phases of spelling are based on Gentry’s work:
Phase 0 – No letters
Phase 1 – Letters without sound representation
Phase 2 – Beginning and ending sound represented
Phase 3 – Finger spelling/Representing a letter for a sound
Phase 4 – Spelling in chunks of phonics patterns
Procedure:
Introduce Hand Spelling with words that are easier to discriminate, such as rat, cat, fat and pat, featuring the thumb up with the /r/, /k/, /f/, and /p/, respectively.
Practice Hand Spelling with your students.
Once students get the hang of hand spelling, they can use the technique to focus attention and hear the beginning /h/ sound in words featured in a poem: house, hill, and hole.

10. Elkonin Boxes
Description: Elkonin boxes can be used to teach phonemic awareness by having students listen for individual sounds and marking where they hear them in the boxes. Each box in an Elkonin box represents one phoneme, or sound. So the word sheep, which is spelled with five letters, has only 3 phonemes: /sh/ /ee/ /p/. Segmenting words is one of the more difficult skills children acquire. It is also one of the best predictors of future success in reading. Elkonin boxes are a physical segmentation of words into phonemes.
Procedure:
Pronounce a target word slowly, stretching it out by sound.
Ask the child to repeat the word.
Draw "boxes" or squares on a piece of paper, chalkboard, or dry erase board with one box for each phoneme.
Have the child count the number of phonemes in the word, not the number of letters. For example, wish has three phonemes and will use three boxes. /w/, /i/, /sh/
Direct the child to slide one (1) colored chip, unifix cube, or other small token in each box of the Elkonin table as he/she repeats the word.
The example below shows an Elkonin Box for the word "sheep," which consists of three phonemes (sounds): /sh/ /ee/ /p/ sh ee p

11. Multi-Sensory Approach
Description: This approach teaches children to blend the sounds of the letter(s) to say the written word. As students learn a new letter or pattern (such as -sh-, -t-, -oy- or -tion-), they can carefully trace, copy, and write the letter(s) while saying the corresponding sound. The sound may be made by the teacher and the letter name(s) given by the student. Students then decode (and spell) words, phrases, and sentences using this new pattern and previously learned patterns. Teachers and their students rely on all three pathways for learning rather than focusing on a "sight-word" or memory method, a "tracing method," or a "phonetic method" alone.
Procedure:
Trace the letters and say the sounds. f i g
Underline the letters and say the sounds.
f i g
Put in caret marks and say the sounds.
f i g ^^^
Loop and say the sounds.
Example:
R oy al ly
^ ^ ^ ^

12. CLOVER
Description: This strategy focuses on teaching the reader the different syllable types found within words. The acronym CLOVER for remembering the six syllable types is: C
Closed cs
Syllable that ends with a VC pattern
Vowel usually has a short sound
cat
tur|nip L
Consonant le le
Syllable made up of a consonant + le
Makes a /l/ sound
cy|cle
ta|ble O
Open os
Syllable ends in a vowel Vowel usually has a long sound be
my|self V
Vowel Team vt
Syllable with two or three vowels that make one sound
buy
beau|ti|ful E
Final e (silent e) *e
Syllable that had a vce pattern
e is silent, making the vowel long
make
snake R
r- Controlled (bossy r) rc
Syllable that has v + r
r masks the sound of the vowel
air|plane
car

13. Structural Analysis
Description: Structural Analysis refers to using the larger ‘chunks’ within words that ‘carry meaning’ (morphemes) to help recognize (decode) words more quickly than sounding them out letter by letter. Structural analysis can be introduced as students are moving beyond the basic sound – letter relationships.
Procedure:
1. Teach student a few common prefixes and suffixes (If needed, introduce one affix at a time and proceed through steps before adding more or combining them.)
2. Show student how words can be made (and decoded) by spotting these chunks (Depending on age or need, use preprinted manipulatives to demonstrate how the words can be assembled and disassembled.)
3. Teach how affixes change the meaning of the root words.
Provide student with a brief text where they can find samples and practice decoding.
Prefixes
Meaning
Suffixes
un-
not, or opposite of
re-
again, back
in-, im-, ir-, il-
not
dis-
reverse of, apart from
en- em-
in, into
non-
in- , im-
more
-er
most
-est
able to, can
-able, -ible
full of
-ful
without
-less

14. Reading Foundational Skills Supplements: CCSS ELA Appendix A pgs. 17-22