The Foundations A-Z materials meet the expectations for alignment to standards and research-based practices for foundational skills instruction. Foundational skills instruction includes a research-based synthetic approach with systematic and explicit instruction. The program has a well-defined scope and sequence that follows the expected hierarchy of skills and that delineates daily opportunities for students to practice all foundational skills concepts through explicit teacher modeling and allows students to engage in oral practice activities that are reinforced through a variety of multimodal activities. Materials provide teachers with explicit instructional routines, systematic and repeated modeling, and instruction for all foundational skills concepts. Materials include a well-defined teacher resource for content presentation, which includes a detailed scope and sequence, support materials, and detailed information and instructional routines that help the teacher to effectively implement all foundational skills content through session-specific teacher-scripted lessons. Materials provide a clear research-based explanation for the instructional sequence of phonics skills that are taught and regularly and systematically provide a variety of assessment opportunities over the course of the year to demonstrate students’ progress toward mastery and independence of foundational skills concepts.