Materials are absent of the three-cueing system.

Materials do not contain elements of instruction that are based on the three-cueing system.

• Materials do not contain lessons or resources that include the three-cueing system.

Materials include reasonable pacing of newly taught phonics skills. There is sufficient time for explicit instruction and practice to help students work toward automaticity. Students receive phonics instruction in both the large group manual and the small group manual. The materials also include cumulative review throughout the program.

Materials include reasonable pacing of newly taught phonics skills. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• In the Large Group Manual, Week 5, students learn how to divide multisyllabic words. They spend the entire week on this skill. 

• In the Large Group Manual, Week 10, students learn about Wishy Washy -ed. On Day 2, students learn the three sounds of -ed. On Days 3 - 5, students are given words written in past tense, and they circle the -ed sound for each word. Then, the class generates past tense words and circles the sound of the -ed for practice. 

The lesson plan design allots time to include sufficient student practice to work towards automaticity. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• In the Large Group Manual, Quarter 1, students spend 15 - 20 minutes on Advanced Oral PA and vowel practice and 15 - 20 minutes on spelling and word study. In Quarter 2, students spend 15 - 30 minutes on spelling. In Quarters 3 and 4, students spend only 5 - 10 minutes on large group instruction, and they spend the majority of the time, 60 minutes, on small group instruction. 

• In the Large Group Manual, Quarter 2, it recommends that students spend 15 - 20 minutes in Large Group Spelling and word study. In Week 17, it states that the phonics focus is words ending in -y and -ly. Students spend Days 1 - 4 practicing words with these suffixes. On Day 1, students analyze words, and on Day 2, they review them. Then, on Day 3, they practice spelling and proofreading and on Day 4, they finger spell and paragraph read. 

• In the Small Group Manual, Unit 12, students learn the vowel teams ay and oo. In Lesson 1, students spell the words prail, streak, bray, and groans. In Lesson 2, students spell words again with ay and oo, such as gray and snooch. Then, in Lesson 3, students read and spell additional words with the vowel teams, such as stay, stray, and troon. 

Materials contain distributed, cumulative, and interleaved opportunities for students to practice and review all previously learned grade-level phonics. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• In the Large Group Manual, Week 2, Day 4, Vowel Practice, students practice Conquer Vowel Mountain. Students place a star on individual mountains as the student demonstrates proficiency in each vowel skill. 

• In the Small Group Manual, Unit 7, Lesson 1, students work on vowel teams after being initially introduced to the concept of “two vowels go walking” in Unit 5, Lesson 1. 

• In the Small Group Manual, Unit 13, students review several phonics skills, including oi/oy, ou/ow, and au/aw. Words to practice spelling include prance, void, hang, thaw, and plow.

The materials contain systematic and explicit phonics instruction. The materials include explicit instruction in letter-sound correspondences, vowel teams, and multisyllabic words. Students can blend graphemes or syllables to read words with a consistent routine. The materials also include corrective feedback guidance for teachers for a variety of student errors.

Materials contain explicit instructions for systematic and repeated teacher modeling of newly-taught phonics patterns. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following: 

• RF.2.3a Distinguish long and short vowels when reading regularly spelled one-syllable words. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following: 

  • In the Large Group Manual, Week 1, Day 3, the teacher talks about the main vowel letters a, e, i, o, and u and introduces what’s your name -e for long vowel sounds. The teacher models changing a word from the short vowel to the long vowel by placing -e at the end and models for each vowel sound. 

  • In the Pathways to Spelling Manual, Lesson 4, Day 1, the teacher says, “In this week’s words, a vowel that sounds like its name has -e after it. However, in spelling, the -e goes to the end of the word.”  

• RF.2.3b Know spelling-sound correspondences for additional common vowel teams. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following: 

  • In the Large Group Manual, Week 1, Day 4, the teacher holds up oi and oy and tells students, “These two buddies stand for the sound /oy/.” The teacher then discusses mouth articulation and places oi and oy on the Vowel Town. 

  • In the Small Group Manual, Unit 5, Lesson 1, the teacher tells students that they are going to learn another way to spell the /ee/ sound. The teacher places ea together on the board and then says the jingle, “When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking, and what does it say? It’s name.” The teacher repeats this with the vowel teams oa, ai, and ay. 

• RF.2.3c Decode regularly spelled two-syllable words with long vowels. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following: 

  • In the Large Group Manual, Week 5, Day 3, the teacher explains that every syllable has a vowel and models the word stony. The teacher asks how many syllables stony has and then draws two lines indicating two syllables. The teacher then explains that “In multisyllable words if a vowel is spelled with one letter it gets to wear two hats. It might wear its Sound Hat like it usually does on Vowel Town or it might wear its special fancy Name Hat. When it wears its Name Hat, it doesn’t need an -e or another vowel to walk with it.” 

  • In the Small Group Manual, Unit 10, Lesson 3, the teacher goes over syllable types in multisyllabic words. The teacher writes the word tiger on the board and says to students that the first syllable “is an open syllable because it ends with a vowel and the vowel is usually long. Words of this type with only one syllable are like he, no, and we. They end with a vowel, and the vowel sound is long.” 

Lessons include blending and segmenting practice using structured, consistent blending routines with teacher modeling. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following: 

• In the Large Group Manual, Unit 2, Lesson 2, the teacher introduces /ch/. The teacher places magnetic letters c, h, o, and p in a random order on the board and asks students how many sounds are in chop. Students then say each sound. The teacher then places op in order and returns to the first sound /ch/. The teacher indicates if the sound is spelled with two letters, students use two fingers to point to the sound. The teacher repeats the process with chug. 

• In the Small Group Manual, Unit 8, Lesson 1, the teacher writes the word frozen in two syllables on the board fro/zen. The teacher tells students this word has two syllables and they have separated them. The teacher then tells students to locate the vowel and mark them with a dot or two dots if the vowel is spelled using two letters. Then, the teacher has the students circle the letters and read each syllable. 

Lessons include dictation of words and phrases using the newly taught phonics pattern(s). Examples include, but are not limited to, the following: 

• In the Large Group Manual, Unit 1, Lesson 1, students learn the digraph /th/, and then students segment and write the words path, beth, and math. 

• In the Pathways to Spelling Manual, Lesson 6, the teacher reviews words with ai, ea, ay. The teacher guides students to write the words reach, year, paint, air, tray, and play. The teacher asks students each sound, how to spell the word, and then writes the letters over sound dots. 

• In the Pathways to Spelling Manual, Lesson 20, the teacher dictates words with the phonics focus of schwa, including the words about, around, along, and the sentence, The second plane did loops above the crowd. 

Materials include teacher guidance for corrective feedback when needed for students. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following: 

• In the Large Group Manual, Week 5, Day 2, students tap the syllables in rabbit. The assist is for students who give the first sound in the word instead of the first syllable. The teacher says, “That’s the first sound of the syllable. A syllable can be several sounds stuck together. Let’s tap together and check what sounds we stick together in the first syllable. Ready? /ra...../. Did we just say /r/ when we tapped or did we stick some sounds together? Listen /ra..../.” 

• In the Large Group Manual, Week 6, Day 3, the materials provide assist corrections, including assisting students who do not blend but segment syllable chunks. Corrections include telling the student to squish the syllables together, the teacher modeling blending syllables when reading, and indicating the student should hold on to the vowel and move to the next syllable. 

• In the Small Group Manual, Unit 8, Lesson 2, there is an assist to support students in blending multisyllabic words together. The teacher says, “Say each sound as your finger slides under the letters in the first syllable. Pause just a little at the end of the first syllable, then point and slide the sounds in the second syllable. Repeat the word in normal speed.”

The materials provide students with frequent opportunities to decode and encode words with taught phonics patterns during large-group and small-group time. There are several routines included throughout the program to support this, such as Old Word-New Word and Read and Agree. The program includes the use of breaking words into syllables to blend and segment multisyllabic words. 

Lessons provide students with frequent opportunities to decode words with taught phonics patterns. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• In the Large Group Manual, Week 5, Day 4, students circle the first syllable and read it, then circle the last syllable and read it. Words to read include scraper, silent, return, and proceed. 

• In the Small Group Manual, Unit 8, Lesson 4, students read multisyllabic words with open and closed syllables. The word list provided includes dolphin, hippo, elephant, burrito, banana, and sparrow. 

• The Dive into Reading Book provides decodable word lists, sentences, and paragraphs for the Small Group Manual, Units 1 - 14, that provide practice with an embedded phonics skill. For example, the word lists for Unit 12 include words with key phonics skills: ea, ai, oa, and ay. Words included are wheat, stray, coach, cloak, and heave. 

Lessons provide students with frequent opportunities to encode words with taught phonics patterns. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• In the Small Group Manual, Unit 6, Lesson 2, students use the Old Word - New Word activity to change the vowels and consonants in words to encode new words. Words include hoint, hoit, hoy, thoy, thyroid, and thod. 

• In the Small Group Manual, Unit 10, Lesson 1, students Segment and Write nonsense words such as ching, grelth, and phat. 

Student-guided practice and independent practice of blending sounds using the sound-spelling pattern(s) is varied and frequent. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• In the Small Group Manual, Unit 6, Lesson 4, students practice blending words with a /k/ sound at the beginning of a word with different rime patterns such as -ilt, -en, and -urb. 

• In the Small Group Manual, Unit 9, Lesson 4, students practice reading multisyllabic words by reading each syllable, one at a time, and then blending the syllables together to read the word. Words include lazy, cozy, predict, and divide. 

Materials provide opportunities for students to engage in word-level decoding practice focused on accuracy and automaticity. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• In the Large Group Manual, Week 11, Day 2, students read tricky suffix “instant syllable” words with the -le ending. Students find the tricky suffix, read the word, and identify if the word has a short or long vowel. Students read the word, draw a line between double consonants, mark the vowel as either long or short, and then underline -le plus the consonant. Students go through the same process for -le one consonant words. Words include wiggle, bottle humble, and purple.

• In the Large Group Manual, Week 13, Day 2, students sort tricky suffix  “instant syllable” words with a partner. First, students spot the suffix, then they say the ending and read the word. The partner either disagrees or agrees and together, they decide on the accurate way to read the word.

In the materials, students learn spelling rules and generalizations that align with the phonics scope and sequence in the Large Group Manual. There is a resource called Pathways to Spelling which provides specific instruction around encoding and practice. This instruction includes explanations of spelling generalizations. Additional instruction and practice are found within the Small Group Manual. It is important to note that the lessons in the Quarterly Literacy Plan align with Pathways to Spelling lessons, but in the Week Overview, they do not match and are off by one week. 

Spelling rules and generalizations are aligned to the phonics scope and sequence. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• In the Large Group Manual, Week 4, students learn about ng throughout the week. The materials direct the teacher to the Pathways to Spelling Manual, Lesson 3, which provides practice spelling words with ng, such as bring, clang, strung, and strong. 

• In the Large Group Manual, Week 14, students learn about soft c and g. In the Pathways to Spelling Manual, Lesson 3, students have the opportunity to spell words like place, voice, since, page, and large. 

• In the Large Group Manual, Week 20, in Pathways to Spelling Lesson 17, the phonics focus is -ed. The spelling lesson contains words with -ed, and students practice -ed words, which include opened, grabbed, remembered, liked, trotted, and answered. 

Materials include explanations for spelling of specific words or spelling rules. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• In the Large Group Manual, Week 10, students learn about the ending -ed and the three different sounds it makes. The teacher says, “when you make a word past tense, if the vowel is a one-letter vowel followed by one consonant you have to double the consonant when you add -ed. The extra consonant keeps the -e from making the one-letter vowel sound say its name.”

• In the Large Group Manual, Week 11, students learn -oy and -ow. The teacher explains that when /ow/ is the last sound in a word, it is always spelled -ow. 

• In the Large Group Manual, Week 16, the teacher explains, “when the final syllable in a multisyllabic word is /er/, it is spelled -e-r.” 

Students have sufficient opportunities to practice spelling rules and generalizations. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• In the Large Group Manual, Week 4, students learn -ng and practice writing words like strong, clang, bring, long, and stuff. 

• In the Large Group Manual, Week 19, Day 1, students practice spelling words with the -ed inflectional ending. Students practice spelling words such as remembered, stared, stepped, and colored. 

• In the Large Group Manual, Week 30, students use their Screech and Me and Lesson 30 Take Home practice sheets to segment and spell words with the prefix pre-.

The materials include decodable texts containing grade-level phonics skills aligned to the program’s scope and sequence. The pace of instruction varies based on ability, so every student may not get to every skill/decodable. The small group instruction has its own scope and sequence (compared to large group instruction), and the decodable texts align with the small group instruction scope and sequence. Materials include lesson plans for repeated readings of decodable texts to address the acquisition of phonics skills. Students have the opportunity to practice reading a text more than once and are given a focus for each reading, such as accuracy and prosody. 

Decodable texts contain grade-level phonics skills aligned to the program’s scope and sequence. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• In the Small Group Manual, Unit 4, the phonics focus is y at the beginning and Copycat -y at the end. Students read the passage “Yes Day,” which includes words such as yes, say, money, yum, pry, dry, sky, and yikes. 

• In the Small Group Manual, Unit 5, students read decodables with vowel teams ai, ay, ea, and oa. Students read decodable lists, sentences, and passages, including “Gray Frog” or “Whale Watching,” which include words such as eat, snail, toads, and gray. 

• In the Small Group Manual, Unit 9, the phonics focus is -tch and -dge. Students read the text “New Plans with an Old Tent,” which includes words such as fletch, stretch, patch, and sledgehammer. 

Materials include lesson plans for repeated readings of decodable texts to address the acquisition of phonics skills. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• In the Small Group Manual, Unit 3, Lesson 5, the teacher explains the Prosody routine. The teacher states, “The purpose of reading today is to practice reading the way we talk. Now that you’ve figured out the words we want to read in phases.” The teacher then has a choice in how to support prosody instruction. The teacher can choose to draw red scoop lines on student papers for students to read, model reading with scooping, and then students read it, or students can do the scooping on their own. Because the instruction in small groups is aligned with student skill level, the instruction is tailored to group needs. 

• In the Small Group Manual, Unit 5, students read Passage 1, “Gray Frog,” three times. On the first day, they read it for accuracy, on the second day, they read it with the prosody routine, and on the last day, they read it with the meaning routine. 

• In the Small Group Manual, Unit 11, students read Passage 1, “Quinten the Dreamer,” or Passage 2, “The Problem with Royalty,” over three days, with a specific focus for each day. The first time is for accuracy, the second time is for prosody, and the third time is for meaning. 

Reading practice occurs in decodable texts (i.e., an absence of predictable) until students can accurately decode single syllable and multisyllabic words. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• In the Small Group Manual, Unit 8, Lesson 8, students read “Fudge,” which contains r-controlled vowels, open/closed two-syllable words, and r-blends and vowel-r words. The text includes words such as churn, learn, order, and measure. 

• In the Small Group Manual, Unit 9, students read the decodable “New Plans with an Old Tent,” which includes single-syllable and multisyllabic words with a focus on -tch and -dge. 

• In the Small Group Manual, Unit 10, students read “My First Horseback Ride,” which contains consonant digraphs previously taught. Words include stable, horseback, mouth, buckle, riding, reach, while, and back. The passage includes no illustrations and no predictable sentences.

The materials include instruction focused on oral reading fluency, primarily during small group instructional time. The program uses the same format of instruction with rereading a passage and having a different focus such as accuracy, prosody, or meaning. The instructional routine does not change, and students and teachers are expected to refer to a poster to find the routine for each decodable text. In addition, the program incorporates echo reading, and practice reading sentences with different emotions to work on prosody. 

Materials include frequent opportunities for explicit, systematic instruction in automaticity, accuracy, and prosody using grade-level decodable connected text (e.g. decodable texts, poetry, readers’ theater, paired reading). Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• In the Small Group Manual, Unit 1, Lesson 5, the teacher introduces phrasing and models reading a sentence with phrasing and without. The teacher and students talk about reading the way we talk, and then students echo read sentences with appropriate phrasing. 

• In the Small Group Manual, Unit 2, Lesson 3, the teacher introduces the What To Do When... poster, where the teacher defines and models reading sentences with various punctuation marks, and students echo read the sentences after the teacher, with proper intonation. In the next lesson, the teacher focuses on prosody with emotion and explains how students can use their voice to show emotion when reading. 

• In the Small Group Manual, Unit 3, Lesson 5, the teacher introduces the Read in Context Routine using the Read in Context Routine poster. The poster includes information on the accuracy routine and the prosody routine. The Accuracy Routine focuses on cold reads, and students are given the purpose of ensuring they read each word correctly. The routine advises teachers to provide decoding strategy prompts. The Prosody Routine focuses on punctuation and expression. This routine includes scooping and circling punctuation marks. These routines are referenced throughout the program. For example, in the Small Group Manual, Unit 13, Lesson 5, students read sentences including Remember the river creature featured in the motion picture is purification and The cowboy in the apron serving bacon from the chow wagon sometimes wanted freedom from the boredom of his job. The teacher focuses on the accuracy routine while students read these sentences.

Materials provide opportunities for students to hear fluent reading of grade-level text by a model reader. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• In the Small Group Manual, Unit 2, Lesson 5, the teacher explains and models what it means to “read the way we talk.” The teacher explains that when we read words together it is called a phrase. The teacher models the sentence “Look at the bird in the tree” in both a monotone voice, flat voice, and again with appropriate phrasing. 

• In the Pathways to Spelling Manual, Lesson 10, Day 4, the teacher reads the paragraph, reading each sentence with appropriate phrasing and expression, and then students echo read. 

• In the Pathways to Spelling Manual, Lesson 21, Day 4, the teacher reads the paragraph sentence by sentence with appropriate phrasing and expression, and students echo read it. 

Materials include a variety of resources for explicit instruction in oral reading fluency. Examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• In the Large Group Manual Appendix, there is a section called “Tips for Fluency Practice During Read in Context Practice.” This section gives guidance around instruction and support in oral reading fluency. The materials state that repeated readings of decodable texts are encouraged. Teachers will want to repeatedly model fluent reading, and students will need to practice rereading to become more fluent. 

• In the Small Group Manual, Section 3, there is a list of materials to use for oral reading fluency instruction, including sentence strips, passages, and decodable books.