HOW PHONICS, READING, AND ME TM

ALIGNS TO THE SCIENCE OF READING

Connected Text
Phonics, Reading, and Me™ helps
students acquire letter-sound Every print book and digital text meets the same principles for
skills application.
correspondences and language
awareness to achieve reading • 80% decodable; cumulative review.
• Up to 30% of words focus on the primary skill;
proficiency. opportunities to apply new phonics skill.
• Texts include examples of secondary skill.
This program is guided by the latest insights from researchers • Shared vocabulary with knowledge-building words per
and practitioners, and by decades of research focused on interconnected skills practice.
proficient reading and writing development.
Multimodal Practice
Phonics, Reading, and Me uses a systematic approach,
moving sequentially from the most high-utility, simple-to- • Extensive, varied practice cements skills in
complex skills as students also grow in reading comprehension working memory.
(Lyon, 1998; Seidenberg, 2017). Explicit instruction in each • Differentiated supports ensure all students grasp the skill.
lesson efficiently integrates skills and gives students extensive • Modes of reading: digital, familiar reading with mini
practice in phonics or morphology, phonemic awareness and books, responsive writing with Reading Response Journal,
fluency, decoding, spelling, and responsive writing. spelling, and word study with manipulatives.

Highly decodable text sets include print books and digital Interconnected Skills
texts, each closely tied to a lesson’s primary skill. The texts
in each set and unit are all topically tied to build knowledge The program offers a base of skills that lead to
(Wexler, 2020). They give students practice using prior skills comprehension.
and high-frequency words.

Systematic, Explicit Instruction

READING
Before Reading (3–5 minutes)
Comprehension
------------------------------------------------------
Warm Up with Phonemic Awareness ---------------------------------------- its sounds, and then blend into
the word. Guide children to segment the word
Phoneme Segmenting and Blending: Say

• Scope and sequence from Set A

those sounds together to say the whole word.

week /w/ /ē/ /k/ beach /b/ /ē/ /ch/

seat /s/ /ē/ /t/

Fluency
please /p/ /l/ /ē/ /z/ sweet /s/ /w/ /ē/ /t/
cheek /ch/ /ē/ /k/

Introduce Phonics Focus: Long ee, ea

to Set D builds from simple to complex.

Long e IF NEEDED ---------------------------------------------
e–e ee ea
other
• Introduce the skill by using the chant and
e
-ey -y ie Blending Support
prompts on the Long e Sound-Spelling card. For groups who need extra practice, select
• Say: The letters ee together and ea together and write these words on a whiteboard:
bet, beat, feed, fed, leaf, heat. If children
both stand for the long e sound.
bee are having difficulty reading the words,
• Write the vowel teams ea and ee on a model stretching out any sounds that are
whiteboard, as well as sheep and beach.
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© 2022 Learning

continuous (e.g., m, f, sh) to model how

Say the words aloud together as you

• Every lesson gives teachers language

sheep beach to smoothly blend the sounds together
underline ee and ea.
(e.g., /lll/ /ēēē/ /f).

-------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Prepare to Read ---------------------------------------- Consider the oral
of the book to anticipate children’s challenges.
Review words, concepts, and other text complexities
and decoding skills of each small group.
language proficiency, background knowledge,

to explicitly communicate and model Morphology

WORDS TO WATCH IN THE STUDENT BOOK IF NEEDED ------------------------

Word Study
beep Articulation Support
Primary Skill Words ee: whee, need, green, see, sheep, feet, meet,
ea: neat, beach, please, sea, bleat Support phoneme articulation
ey: key by addressing how your
Secondary Skill Words
use, at, not, lips and tongue are used to
High-Frequency Words Regular: this, is, I, it, that, a, can, see, will, produce the sound. With
with, no, on, get, in, with, we
of the long e sound, your
Irregular: what, for, the, do, to, have, you, my,
mouth forms the widest smile

the skill.
Story Words (not decodable) group, belong compared to all other vowel
bleat: a sound that sheep and goats make
sounds.
Knowledge Building Words that are
group: a number of things, people, or animals
together
of hair) on
sheep: animals that have a lot of wool (a kind
their bodies

• A skill is introduced by the teacher,

WHAT MAKES THE STUDENT BOOK RICH
children when they need it.
Get to know the book so you’re ready to support
LANGUAGE PRINT & TEXT STRUCTURE
BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE
• Speech bubbles are used to show when
• Sheep is a word that is both singular
• Sheep often need to have their wool each character is talking.
(one sheep) and plural (three sheep).
sheared. Having their hair taken off • Words for sounds (beep and bleat)

means they don’t get too hot in
the summer.
• Inflatable inner tubes are water toys.
PHONICS
• The word whee can be said when
appear on the page, outside of the body
someone sees or does something fun.
text.
• In this story, belong means something

a small group applies the skills to

is in the right place, like children belong
• Sand can be very hot at a beach in
at school.
summer or at a tropical location.
• “This is neat!” means that someone really
likes something. Neat also means clean.

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supported reading of decodable text,

and then students practice in pairs or Alphabet Phonemic Word
triads and on their own.
Knowledge Awareness Recognition

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 Phonemic Awareness
emoh 
 • Phonemic awareness is taught specifically and explicitly
(Kilpatrick, 2016).
• Warm up in every lesson in Sets A and B prime phonics skills.
• Lessons include articulation support—instruction on how
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• Focused on orthographic mapping—mapping sounds to letter

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phonics (decoding) and spelling (encoding) (Moats, 2005).

Morphology

• Inflectional endings
• Base words and related words
• Roots – Latin and Greek
• Prefixes and suffixes
• Attaching meaning to word parts after students have
Strateies for learned how to decode
Readin Hard Words
Readin Words
Find It Blend It Flex It Strategies for Reading Words
Look for Blend each sound Try saying it one
letter-sound to say the word. way. Is it a word
patterns you
know.
you know? If not,
try another way.
• Students learn “graphophonological-semantic cognitive
aw hawk flexibility” (Duke & Cartwright, 2021): the ability to actively
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Readin Lon Words
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switch between using knowledge of letter sounds and
Find the Break Look for Blend
Vowels Syllables Word Parts Sounds
and
meaning features of words.
Syllables
Underline the
vowels and vowel
Draw a line
between each
Circle prefixes.
Draw a box Decode the vowel
• Students learn tools for reading complex and long words,
teams. Count the syllable. around suffixes. sounds and then
syllables. blend each syllable. and apply strategies to read connected text: e.g. find letters
helmet hel met renewa ble renewa ble
and word parts they know, blend the sounds and parts, and
PRMSP | © 2023 Learning Without Tears
flex to try another way until the word sounds like one they
know from their oral language (Kearns, 2015).

References
Duke, N. K., & Cartwright, K. B. (2021). The science of reading progresses: Communicating advances beyond the simple view of reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56, S25-S44. doi:10.1002/rrq.411
Ehri, L. C. (2020). The science of learning to read words: A case for systematic phonics instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 55, S45-S60.
Kearns, D. M. (2015). How elementary-age children read polysyllabic polymorphemic words. Journal of Educational Psychology, 107(2), 364–390.
Kilpatrick, D A., Ph.D. (2016) Equipped for Reading Success: A Comprehensive, Step-By-Step Program for Developing Phoneme Awareness and Fluent Word Recognition. Casey & Kirsch Publishers.
Lyon, G. R. (1998). Why reading is not a natural process. Educational Leadership, 55(6), 14-18.
Moats, L. C. (2005). How spelling supports reading. American Educator, 6(12–22), 42.
Seidenberg, M. (2017). Language at the speed of sight: How we read, why so many can’t, and what can be done about it. New York, NY: Basic.
Wexler, N. (2020). The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America’s Broken Education System--And How to Fix It. Avery.

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