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Differentiation

Use picture books with large, clear text, and engaging illustrations for ELs.

Provide books with tactile features or visual clues like color-coded punctuation or spaces for students with dyslexia.

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Concept of print helps children understand how books and written language work, like knowing that text is read from left to right and that spaces separate words.

Age/ Grade Range:

Pre-K to Kindergarten (ages 3-6)

Milestones:

Knows the front and back of a book (3-4 yrs)

Follows text left to right, top to bottom (by 4-5 yrs)

Matches spoken word to printed words (kindergarten)

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Assessment Tools and Instructional Strategy

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Assessment Tools and Instructional Strategy

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Concept of Print Assessment (Clay,2013):

Checks for understanding of book orientations, directionality, and awareness of words and letters.

Observation During Read Aloud:

Assesses behaviors such as book concepts, tracking print, recognizing words, and punctuation (Concepts of Print Assessment| Reading Rockets, 2025).

Instructional Strategy

An effective way to teach print concepts is through the use of Big Books during shared reading. The teacher models directionality by pointing to each word as it is read, highlighting reading from left to right and top to bottom. Students will be asked to identify parts of the book such as the title, cover, and where reading begins. This strategy helps children understand how print works and how to handle books.

The National Early Literacy Panel (2008) highlights that directly modeling print concepts in read alouds helps build the foundational skills children need for reading.

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Phonological awareness is all about hearing and playing with the sounds of language. It includes skills like rhyming, syllables, alliterations and hearing individual sounds in words. (Chard & Dickson, 1999).

Milestones:

Recognizes rhyming words (around age 4)

Claps and counts syllables (4-5 yrs)

Can tell beginning or ending sounds in words (Kindergarten)

Age/Grade Range:

Ages 4-7, (PreK to 1st grade)

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Assessment Tools and Instructional Strategy

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Assessment Tools and Instructional Strategy

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PALS (Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening):

Assesses rhyming, syllables, and sound identification. (Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening (PALS), n.d.)

Sorting Games:

Use picture cards to match rhyming words.

Research Based Instructional Strategies

Rhyming:

Changing sounds in songs or rhymes is a simple way to build phonological awareness. This helps kids get ready for phonics, spelling, and reading. By taking popular rhymes and changing the beginning sound, kids learn to play with sound and hear how words are made up of different parts.

"Row, row, row your boat
gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily;
Life is but a dream

Bow, bow, bow your boat
bently bown the beam.
Berrily, berrily, berrily, berrily;
Bife is but a beam.

Sow, sow, sow your soat
sently sown the seam.
Serrily, serrily, serrily, serrily;
Sife is sut a seam."

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Englich Learners:

Using picture bingo cards to help students build phonological awareness by matching rhyming words on their Bingo card. This helps EL students connect the word they hear with a visual which helps them grasp the rhyme and remember the vocabulary.

Students with Dyslexia

Using multisensory tools such as blocks, chips, or sticks so students can physically move something for each syllable or sound they hear.

Using the word sunshine would result in two chips or blocks being pushed forward, one for "sun" and the other for "shine". This approach helps them internalize how words are made up of different parts.

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Phonemic awareness is a more focused piece of phonological awareness. It's about hearing and working with the smallest parts of words, individual sounds, phenomes. This includes blending, segmenting, and changing sounds.

Milestones

Isolates beginning or ending sounds (by age 5)

Blends and segments simple CVC words (Kindergarten)

Can erase or swap sounds in words (Kindergarten to 1st grade)

Age/Grade Range:

4-7 yrs (Kindergarten to 1st grade)

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Assessment Tools and Instructional Strategy 

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Assessment Tools and Instructional Strategy 

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DIBELs PSF (Phoneme Segmentation Fluency)

A timed test that measures how many individual sounds (phenomes) a student can correctly segment from spoken words in one minute. (University of Oregon, n.d.)

Elkonin Boxes

Students listen to a word and push a token into a box for each sound they hear. This helps the teacher see if the student can accurately isolate and segment phenomes. (Armbruster & Osborn, 2005)

Research Based Instructional Strategies

The "Say It, Move It" strategy can be used to help students with segmenting words into sounds. Using the word "cat", they move one chip for each sound- /c/, /a/, /t/. It is a hands-on and effective strategy, especially for those who need extra support with hearing individual sounds.

Ehri et al. (2001) founds that activities like "Say It, Move It" really help students develop a strong phonemic awareness.

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English Learners:

EL students do best with visual supports and repetitive, predictable text to help them understand how books and print work. Books with strong pictures and routines like pointing to each word during shared reading make it easier for them to connect spoken and written language (National Institute for Literacy, 2008)

Students with Dyslexia

Elkonin boxes with blocks or colored token can be greatly effective in helping students with dyslexia see and feel each individual sound in a word. It is great for segmenting, blending, and manipulating phenomes (Moats, 2020)

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Letter naming knowledge means recognizing and naming the letter of the alphabet, both lower and upper case. This skill splays a huge role in early reading success and helps students begin connecting letters to sound, an essential part of phonics and decoding.

According to Adams (1990), strong letter recognition is one of the best predictors of how well a child will learn to read.

Milestones:

Recognizes at least 10 letters by age 4 (NELP, 2008)

Can name all uppercase letters and most lowercase by the end of kindergarten

Matches letters to the beginning sounds of familiar words, "D" for "dog" (Adams, 1990).

Age/ Grade Range:

Pre-K through Kindergarten (ages 4-6)

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Assessment Tools and Instructional Strategy:

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Assessment Tools and Instructional Strategy:

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DIBELS Letter Naming Fluency (LNF):

A 1-minute timed test where students name as many letters as they can. It's great for tracking fluency and progress (Good & Kaminski, 2002).

Alphabet Arc Activity:

Helps assess student knowledge of letter order and recognition by having them fill in missing letters in order.

Flashcard Check:

Students are shown letters and asked to say the name, simple and effective.

Research Based Instructional Strategies:

To help students build better letter naming knowledge, it's helpful to use song, visuals, and hands-on activities. Connecting each letter to a picture or key word, like "m" for monkey, makes it easier for children to remember both the letter's name and what it looks like. Fun activities like tracing letters in the sand, using magnetic letters, or singing alphabet songs give students many ways to practice and make the letter names stick.

Adams (19190) and Echevarria et al. (2017) both highlight how the use of visuals, music, and movement can really strengthen letter recognition.

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English Learners

Use alphabet charts with clear visuals and culturally familiar examples. Songs and gestures help make letters more engaging and easier to remember. Connecting letters to meaningful words in their vocabulary boosts both language and literacy (Echevarria et al, 2017).

Students with Dyslexia

Use multisensory activities like tracing letters in sand, using textured cards, or building letters with playdough. These methods activate more areas of the brain and help with memory and letter confusion (Moats,2020).

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Adams, M. J. (1990). Beginning to read: thinking and learning about print. Mit Press.

Armbruster, & Osborn, F. (2005). Elkonin Boxes: A Multisensory Technique for Teaching Literacy Skills Written By: Laura Beller, Curriculum and Instruction Specialist. https://content.schoolinsites.com/api/documents/933d4c911b744b09a04fe8f894e13c81.pdf

Chard, D. J., & Dickson, S. V. (1999). Phonological Awareness. Intervention in School and Clinic, 34(5), 261–270. https://doi.org/10.1177/105345129903400502

Concepts of Print Assessment | Reading Rockets. (2025). Www.readingrockets.org. https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/assessment-and-evaluation/articles/concepts-print-assessment

Echevarría, J., Vogt, M., & Short, D. (2017). Making content comprehensible for english learners: The SIOP model (5th ed.). Pearson.

Ehri, L. C., Nunes, S. R., Willows, D. M., Schuster, B. V., Yaghoub-Zadeh, Z., & Shanahan, T. (2001). Phonemic Awareness Instruction Helps Children Learn to Read: Evidence From the National Reading Panel’s Meta-Analysis. Reading Research Quarterly, 36(3), 250–287. https://doi.org/10.1598/RRQ.36.3.2

Kosanovich, M., Phillips, B., & Willis, K. (2024, August 12). 6.4: Print Referencing. Social Sci LibreTexts. https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Courses/Northeast_Wisconsin_Technical_College/Early_Language_and_Literacy_%28NWTC%29/06%3A_Concepts_of_Print/6.04%3A_Print_Referencing

Moats, L. C. (2020). Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers. (3rd ed.). Brookes Publishing Co.

National Institute for Literacy. (2008). Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel. https://lincs.ed.gov/publications/pdf/NELPReport09.pdf

Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening (PALS). (n.d.). Charts.intensiveintervention.org. https://charts.intensiveintervention.org/screening/tool/?id=88889f2c3498bf22