Skill:

• The basic understanding that printed text has meaning and is useful

• Books are the best way to share stories.

• Includes knowing letters and words as part of the text

• Knowing how a book works and how to hold it.(Front to Back, Top to Bottom, and Left to Right)

• Knowing how to follow words on a page and that words have to be separated by blank white spaces.

  
  

Age/Grade Range:

Starts as early as a baby and goes onto Kindergarten.

• Babies start to understand how a book works by putting it in his or her mouth.

• Toddlers Read books that have a few simple words in large type.

• Preschoolers Point out the author and title of the book you are reading, and make up words that they draw.

According to Reading Rockets, "Most children become aware of print long before they enter school"( Reading Rockets, 2025). They see it everywhere in signs, billboards, books, labels, magazines, and newspapers. "Children from the ages of 3-5 rapidly develop print awareness when adults engage in activities to build their early literacy skills"(Justice & Sofka, 2025).

Assessment:

Evidence Based Assessments tools/ strategies that maybe used to assess the the skill.

• Reading Aloud to Children Regularly

One of the most effective ways to help them develop early readings is taking some time each day out of their day to read aloud to children. It not only introduces them to the basics and the mechanics of reading but it also helps them develop a love for books and reading(Moats, 2023).

• Play with Letters and Words

When we make learning feel like a game, and when students play with letters and words, they can have fun while also learning important skills that help them understand how print works. For example: any activities that involve magnetic letters, word games, and alphabet books.

Evidence Based Instruction:

When children learn through play it is a perfect evidence based instruction strategy because they are learning to develop their vocabulary and they can pretend to write a shopping list, draw a stop sign, write a letter, make a birthday card or recognize certain words.

Differentiation:

Two strategies that can be used when teaching the concept of print to engage and motivate all young learners especially ELs, and students with dyslexia.

1) Visual Cues and word wall from vocabulary from text books help people make sense of the information in print.

2) Use pictures and labels to help recognize the words and what the word means.

Both of these activities give explicit structured responses for ELs and students with learning disabilities especially dyslexia.

• Phonological awareness is the foundation for reading.

People can recognize and work with the sounds of spoken language which includes: 

• Picking out words that rhyme 

• Counting the number of syllables in a word

• Being able to notice sound repetition

• "Most kids pick up phonological awareness naturally"(Johnson, 2025).

Age/ Grade Range:

• 2-3 yrs. old rhyme awareness is developed.

• 3-4 yrs. old. the ability to produce rhymes

• 4-5 yrs. old Clapping/counting syllables in words

  Recognizes/produces words with the same beginning sound

  Segments/blends words by onset/rime OR given sounds, can blend them into a word

  Counts sounds in words

• 5-6 yrs. old are able to recognize words that rhyme and determine the odd word out

  Identifies the first sound in a word

  Identifies the last sound in a word

  Lists words that start with the same sound

  Tells which of three words is different

  Blends 3 - 4 sounds to make a word

  Segments sounds in words that have 3 - 4 sounds

• 6-7 yrs. old Delete syllables from words

  Substitute syllables in words Delete sounds from words

  Substitute sounds in words

• 7-8 yrs old Uses phonological awareness skills when spelling

  (KidSense, 2024)

Assessment:

"Assessments for phonological awareness generally serves as two purposes: identify students who appear to be at risk for difficulty in acquiring beginning reading skills and to regularly monitor the progress of students who are receiving instruction in phonological awareness"(Chard & Dickson, 2025)

When using screening measures, the teacher must establish decision rules for identifying students requiring phonological awareness instruction. "The Phoneme Segmentation Fluency, DIBELS (Kaminski & Good, 1996) is one of many segmenting measures. The measure has 18 alternate forms. Each form consists of 10 words, each with two or three phonemes, randomly selected from words in the pre-primer and primer levels of the Scribner basal reading series. The measure is administered individually and is timed, and Yopp-Singer Test. Both are used to monitor progress.

Evidence Based Instruction:

1)Guess -the- word game

Students will be able to blend and identify a word that is stretched out into its component sounds. They have to look at the pictures and guess the word you are saying. It is important to have the children guess the answer in their head so that everyone gets an opportunity to try it.

This type of instruction can be played in smaller groups or in a classroom with the whole class. When you use pictures of easily recognizable objects it gives a chance for everyone to figure out the sounds that relate to the picture.

Differentiation:

1) For ELs Students provide them with material in their native language such as their alphabet because the sounds are most likely different then ours.

2) For Dyslexic students section off their work and have a tape recorder so they can listen for the different sounds and they don't get overwhelmed.

Effective phonics instruction uses multisensory methods that involve students in different ways at the same time. Instead of focusing on individual learning styles, the aim is to build strong brain connections by giving students a variety of experiences with phonics. All learners benefit when they can see, hear, and physically interact with letters and sounds together.

AgeSkills:

• 3 yrs. old Begin to familiarize children with nursery rhymes and identify words that rhyme 

• 4 yrs old.   Children can begin to segment sentences into words and break down multi-syllabic words

• 5 yrs. old.  Blends sounds together

• 6 yrs old. Blends sounds together to create words segments,sounds to identify parts of words and creates multiple rhymes.

• 7 yrs old. Beginning to spell phonetically counts sounds in words

• 8 yrs. old·Moves sounds to create new words

Assessment:

• The Heggerty Phonemic Assessment

"The Heggerty phonemic awareness assessments allow teachers to gain information about a student’s progress with phoneme isolation, blending, segmenting, and manipulating phonemes"(Heggerty, 2023).

• The 95 PASI

"The 95 PASI helps you to understand where each child has skills they need to develop in phonemic awareness. It also follows the universal screening using a short ten minutes from to determine which skills students have mastered"(95 Percent Group, 2024).

Evidence Based Instruction

• Phonemic Awareness Strategy 1: Single Sound Discrimination Activities

Activities with Sound discrimination are very crucial in a phonemic awareness program. They are often the first step to teaching phonemic awareness in kindergarten. "Phonemic awareness activities should be designed to help your students develop the ability to distinguish and isolate different sounds in words"(McArdle, 2024).

• Phonemic Awareness Strategy 2: Blending Phonemes

  
  

Blending is a phonemic awareness strategy that directly relates to decoding. When they blend, students hear individual sounds spoken aloud, and they will blend the sounds together to make a word.

"When you are teaching this strategy, you will make the sounds, and your students need to blend them into a whole word"(McArdle, 2024).

Differentiation

1. Scaffold Instruction 

"When teaching phonics to multilingual learners, scaffolding is essential. Scaffolding involves breaking learning into smaller, more manageable chunks and providing support at each step(Learning Without Tears, 2024).

• Provide sentence frames or sentence starters when students are practicing new phonics skills in writing or speaking. 

2. Explicitly Teach Vocabulary 

Take time to explicitly teach new vocabulary words, using pictures, examples, and translations if necessary. 

For example, if the phonics lesson is focusing on a certain sound and the word shop is used, be sure to explain what a shop is, show a picture, and even connect it to a similar word in the student’s native language if appropriate. 

Alphabet knowledge is the ability to recognize and name uppercase and lowercase letters

• Recognize letter symbols in print

• Know that there are sounds associated with each letter.

• "Alphabet knowledge is a key Pre-literacy skill and lays the groundwork for future reading success"(Reading Rockets, 2025).

Age/Grade Range:

• For most children, alphabet knowledge begins to develop before they enter school. By the end of first grade, most children have mastered the alphabet"(Reading Rockets, 2025).

• Many students enter kindergarten with the ability to recognize letters. Fewer students recognize the letter sounds. Both are taught in kindergarten.

Assessment:

• Letter Identification and Sounds Assessment

This tool is used to assess a child’s progress with letter naming and sounds throughout the school year.

The same assessment can be given as a pre-assessment and then as a post-assessment, or a second assessment has been provided to be used at the end of the school year.

• Letter Naming Assessment for Mastery

This mastery assessment is used to check to see if students can accurately check to see if a student can accurately and consistently name each letter.

• DIBELS Letter Naming Fluency (LNF)

Involves showing a student a sheet of paper with random letters asking them to name as many letters they can in one minute.

The PALS Assessment works like DIBELS LNF, but it is uppercase and lowercase letters in one minute.

Evidence-Based Instruction:

• Flashcards: Uppercase and lowercase flashcards can be used for matching exercises. Students can either match the cards or play games like memory with the cards facing down.

• Letter Magnets: Using magnetic letters, students can match uppercase and lowercase letters on a magnetic surface like a whiteboard or a cookie sheet.

• "Letter naming is a strong predictor of later reading success

• Learning letter names and the difference between uppercase and lowercase letters is a foundational skill in learning to read

• Alphabet matching is a key component of phonics instruction where children learn the sounds associated with letters (the alphabetic principle)"(Jay et al., 2025).

Differentiation

Choose activities that can have different outcomes for different students.

Picture sorts are very helpful for introducing the letters.

After introducing each letter, you do a picture sort of A) pictures that do and do not begin with the letter, and/or B) pictures that begin with this letter and another letter. Here’s an example:

"All students can complete this activity. But can be adjusted to your expectations for different students. For example some students might complete the sort and be finished while others might complete the sort and draw additional pictures in each column or on the back (things that start with /t/ and things that do not start with /t/).

Others might complete the sort and then write the first letter for each picture underneath (for example, they would write the letter “t” under the tent” and the letter “l” under “log”).

Others might complete the sort and then use invented spelling to write the entire word under each picture (i.e. attempt to write “tiger” under the picture of a tiger)"(Ryan, 2021).

 Readable Fonts
When it comes to dyslexic students and reading, fonts really do make a difference!

The style, the size, the spacing, the layout, can help or hinder reading progress.The Dyslexia Friendly Style Guide from British Dyslexia Association recommend using san serif fonts such as Arial and Comic Sans, as letters can appear less crowded. "If the letters that appear differently or are too crowded on a page can make reading more challenging and a little less enjoyable for that student"(Langley, 2024).