Hold a book

Understanding the directionality of text

Understanding the difference between letters, words, and sentences

Center activities: Set up literacy centers with letter-matching games, word-building, and reading logs. 

The teacher explicitly states each letter's sound and demonstrates how to blend sounds together to read words.

Picture cards: Use pictures with large, clear images to match with corresponding letters or words for beginning readers. 

Magnetic letters: Allow students to build words on a magnetic board for hands-on practice. 

Identifying rhymes

Breaking the words into syllables

Informal: Rhyming Activities: Ask the child to identify words that rhyme with a given word (e.g., “What rhymes with cap?”). This can be done during reading time or as a playful exercise.

Formal: Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS): DIBELS is a set of standardized, one-minute fluency measures designed to assess early literacy skills, including phonological awareness. It’s often used to monitor progress and guide instruction.

The Guess-the-Word game helps students practice blending sounds to identify words. Using picture cards of familiar objects, the teacher slowly pronounces a word in "Snail Talk" (e.g., /fffffllllaaaag/), and students must determine the correct word. To ensure engagement, students first think of the answer silently before responding aloud, either individually or as a group. This activity enhances phonemic awareness by encouraging students to connect sounds to words in a fun and interactive way.

Students will develop phonological awareness by segmenting oral language at different levels. First, they will practice breaking sentences into individual words by clapping along to familiar poems like “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!” As they progress, students will learn to segment words into syllables using their own names as examples, such as Ra-chel or Al-ex-an-der. Once they grasp syllables, they will advance to isolating phonemes in short words, such as s-u-n or p-a-t. This structured approach helps build essential literacy skills by reinforcing word structure and sound recognition in an engaging way.

Beginning Learners – Use picture cards to help students recognize rhyming words (e.g., showing a cat and a hat). Engage them in clapping or tapping to count syllables in simple words like "apple" (ap-ple) or "banana" (ba-na-na)

Students Needing Extra Support – Provide hands-on activities, such as using counters or blocks to represent individual sounds in words. For example, students push a block forward for each sound in “dog” (/d/-/o/-/g/). Use guided small-group instruction to provide repeated practice with segmenting and blending sounds.

Ability to hear, recognize, and identify individual sounds in words (phonemes)

Blending: Combining individual sounds to form a word. and Segmenting: Breaking a word into its separate sounds 

Sound isolation: Identifying the first or last sound in a word 

Ability to recognize and name both upper case and lower case letters

Letter and name assessment: Each student will demonstrate the sound of each letter individually. Students must recognize both capital and lowercase letters shown in any sequence. Students must also be able to associate and articulate the sounds the letters represent.

Letter sorts: Having students categorize letters based on their names or sound

Letter matching games- present them with a set of letter cards (uppercase and lowercase), have them match the corresponding pairs, and actively listen for correct letter names as they match, noting any errors or hesitations

Multisensory approach: Incorporate visual, auditory, and tactile elements to reinforce letter learning. 

For sand writing activities, students receive paper plates with sand. The teacher calls out a sound, and students repeat it. Students then trace a letter in the sand corresponding to that sound as they verbalize the letter’s name and sound. According to Teaching strategies for students with (2024), "This kinesthetic activity stimulates the brain in many different ways, giving students a greater chance of successful retention."

Line Readers

Some students with dyslexia struggle to see words accurately on the page. Letters may appear to be moving or students may see them in the wrong order. Line readers can help eliminate some of these distractions. The tool highlights a single line of text at a time and blocks the surrounding areas. This allows students keep their place and stay focused.