Common Core

Foundational Skills

Many of the new ELA standards identify a set of skills students must master before they can become fluent readers. These skills include the alphabet, the concept of print, phonological awareness, phonics, high-frequency words, and fluency.

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Learning A-Z Products That Support Teaching Foundational Skills

Reading A-Z

Reading A-Z provides easy access to a rich collection of resources that help develop strong Foundational Skills in reading. Many of these resources are available in printable and projectable formats and include Alphabet Books, Decodable Books, Shared Reading Books, Leveled Books, High-Frequency Word Books, and Leveled Fluency Passages.

Raz-Kids

Raz-Kids offers students digitally delivered books and comprehension quizzes that allow them to practice and improve their fluency and comprehension anytime, anywhere. Resources include Leveled Books and quizzes, Alphabet Books, Decodable Books, High-Frequency Word Books, and digital reports to track student activity, progress, and skill mastery.

More About Foundational Skills

Alphabet

Students need to know that the English language is based on 26 letters, each associated with one or more sounds. They must be able to recognize, name, and form these letters in order to read and write.

Print Concepts

When teachers introduce students to written language, students must understand the basic organization and concepts of print: Words have meaning, left-to-right and top-to-bottom hierarchy; letters create words and words create sentences; words are separated by spaces, and punctuation controls the pace and expression of print. Children frequently come to understand these concepts through owning their first books.

Phonological Awareness

This foundational skill is about recognizing the sounds of language. It begins with word awareness and the ability to recognize, for example, the number of words that make up a spoken sentence. Secondary mastery of these skills includes recognizing rhyme and syllables. At the most detailed level, the phoneme level, students can discern the sounds that make up a word. They can segment the sounds within a word, blend sounds together to make a word, and substitute sounds to make new words.

Phonics

Students must match a unit of sound (a phoneme) to the letter or letters that make the sound. Separating the written word into its individual sounds and blending the individual sounds of letters to make words are the foundation of reading.

High-Frequency Word Recognition

Students must be able to recognize and read a collection of high-frequency words — many of which cannot be decoded by sight — and be able to do so with increasing automaticity.

Fluency

Students must be able to read and comprehend text on-level accurately, at the appropriate rate, and with the correct expression. This is best accomplished by repeated readings of text passages of increasing complexity while reporting the reading rate and accuracy.

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