Kindergarten - ELA
1: Letters
Unit 25: X - An Extraordinary Egg
Lesson 3
Day 3
Students are asked to read and repeat words containing the letter x (Activity 3), and to practice the sound of the letter x during handwriting and movement activities (Activity 1 and Option 2). Students read the sight word "look" in context and repeat words from the "Words with X" page after an adult reads them. Students also pronounce whole words when finding and naming numbers or reading the Hundred Chart in Activity 2.
2: Holidays
Unit 29: Christmas
Lesson 1
Day 1
The reading notes include a parenthetical pronunciation 'Anja (pronounced An-ya)', explicitly modeling the syllable division of a spoken name. Parents are also instructed to let the child explore the book and then read it aloud to the child, providing opportunities for the child to hear spoken words and syllable patterns during read-alouds.
1: Environment
Unit 1: Habitats and Homes
Lesson 1
My Environment
Students are asked to "sound out the labels" and to "use her finger to follow the sounds of each word as you pronounce them," which requires them to pronounce and attend to the spoken parts of words. The skills list includes "Show an understanding that the letters in a written word represent the sequence of sounds in a spoken word" and suggests students will "attempt to read dictated text," both of which involve pronouncing and blending spoken sounds into words.
2: Similarities and Differences
Unit 3: We're the Same, We're Different
Lesson 1
You're Special
The lesson instructs students to "sound out the words for his answers" and to "write the letters he hears," which has students practice pronouncing and segmenting spoken words into sounds. The skills list includes "Represent spoken language with phonetic spelling," indicating students will produce written approximations of spoken words. Handwriting activity asks students to practice the word "unique," requiring them to say and form a multisyllabic word.
6: Reading
Unit 1: Semester 1
Lesson 1
Letter Sounds Review I
The lesson defines segmenting and blending and repeatedly has students say letter sounds, sound out CVC words, and blend sounds to make words (e.g., Activity 3.2 Building Words: students lay out s-a-t and say "/s/ /a/ /t/, sat"). The Skills list explicitly includes "Segment spoken single-syllable words into their complete sequence of individual sounds" and "Orally produce single-syllable words by blending sounds," and multiple activities (Word Family at/ap, Reader #1, Writing Words) have students say words slowly to hear and write the component sounds.
Lesson 2
Letter Sounds Review II
The lesson repeatedly has students blend and pronounce sounds to form single-syllable CVC words (Activity 3.2: model blending /b/ /i/ /g/ → big; Word Chains and Word Families activities). The skills list and multiple activities ask students to segment single-syllable words into their individual sounds and to say words slowly to hear beginning, middle, and end (Skills: "Segment spoken single-syllable words into their complete sequence of individual sounds"; Activity 2.3 and Activity 5.1). Activities require students to orally produce single-syllable words by blending sounds and to point to letters for beginning/ending sounds, which practices pronunciation and blending at the single-syllable level.
Lesson 3
Letter Sounds Review III
The Skills list explicitly includes: "Segment spoken single-syllable words into their complete sequence of individual sounds" and "Orally produce single-syllable words by blending sounds, including consonant blends." Activities (2.2, 3.2, 5.1) ask students to "say each word slowly, drawing out the beginning, middle, and ending sounds," "say them slowly, clearly pronouncing each sound," and "say the word slowly so that he can hear all the sounds." Multiple activities require students to sound out, blend, and segment CVC and other single-syllable words aloud.
Lesson 5
Adding s, More Word Families, Ending with ck
The Skills list explicitly tells students to "Segment spoken single-syllable words into their complete sequence of individual sounds" and to "Orally produce single-syllable words by blending sounds, including consonant blends." Multiple activities require students to sound out and blend letters (e.g., Word Chains, Guess My Word, building words with letter cards) and to say each letter sound as they spell words. Activity directions repeatedly ask students to sound words out slowly and listen to middle sounds when sorting ck families.
Lesson 6
Open Syllables and Digraph th
The lesson defines a syllable and explicitly teaches open and closed syllables, asking students to sort words into open/closed columns and read them aloud (Activity 2.1). Students manipulate letter cards to remove ending consonants to create open-syllable words and read the resulting words (Activity 2.2) and say each word as they write it during writing practice (Activity 3.2). The skills list and multiple activities require students to isolate initial, medial, and final sounds, segment single-syllable words into individual sounds, and orally blend sounds to make single-syllable words (skills list; Activities 2.2, 4.2).
Lesson 7
Consonant Digraphs ch, sh, wh, ph
Students read and compare open and closed syllable pairs (Activity 3.1: read "go" vs "got" and "she" vs "ship") and are asked to identify which word is an open syllable. The lesson's skills list explicitly includes "Orally produce single-syllable words by blending sounds" and "Segment spoken single-syllable words into their complete sequence of individual sounds," and students build and read CVC and digraph words aloud in word-building activities.
Lesson 9
Blends with l
Students are asked to say words carefully to hear beginning blends (Activity 1.2) and to say the words in each column after sorting pictures by initial blends. The skills list explicitly includes "Orally produce single-syllable words by blending sounds, including consonant blends" and "Segment spoken single-syllable words into their complete sequence of individual sounds." Activities (word building, writing words from dictation, and word chains) require students to say each letter sound as they spell and change words.
Lesson 10
Blends with r
The Skills list explicitly instructs students to "segment spoken single-syllable words into their complete sequence of individual sounds" and to "orally produce single-syllable words by blending sounds, including consonant blends." Activity 2.2 directs students to "say each word slowly so that she can hear all the sounds" and then write the word while saying the sounds. Activity 1.3 asks the child which sight word has an open syllable (by), requiring recognition of syllable type.
Lesson 12
Double ll, ss, ff, zz (FLOSS)
Students are taught the definition of a syllable and given examples ("Pan" = one syllable, "pancake" = two syllables). Students practice counting and segmenting syllables by clapping the beats of words (clap once for "star," twice for "starlight") and are asked to answer whether words have only one syllable using yes/no and thumbs-up/thumbs-down. Students say and listen to spoken words aloud in guided activities (teacher reads words; students read/point/answer for words like cat, moss, huff), which requires pronouncing syllable structure.
Lesson 13
Glued Sounds ng and nk
In Activity 1.1 students are asked to clap the syllables in words from the Weekly Message (long, spell, going, learn, endings, something), with the teacher modeling clapping and defining a syllable as one vowel sound/one beat. In Day 2 students break words like "hang" into two parts (/h/ + /ang/) and are asked to sound out the word, which requires segmenting and blending the spoken parts to read. The Skills list explicitly includes 'segment spoken single-syllable words into their complete sequence of individual sounds' and 'orally produce single-syllable words by blending sounds,' indicating practice with segmentation and blending of spoken units.
Lesson 14
Three-Letter Beginning Blends
Activity 1.1 asks students to clap the syllables in specific spoken words (week, together, sounds, hear, beginning, many). The activity provides a linked video titled "Clap Our Syllables" for additional practice. The weekly message highlights multisyllabic examples (e.g., "beginning," "together") that students are asked to segment by clapping.
Lesson 15
More Ending Blends
In Activity 1.1, students read the Weekly Message aloud, are asked to highlight words that have more than one syllable, and clap the syllables in those words (going, continue, working, ending, lesson, about, several). The activity also draws attention to pronunciation nuance by pointing out that "learned" looks like two syllables but is spoken as one. Re-reading and pointing to words while reading supports students' oral pronunciation of multisyllabic words.
Lesson 16
R-Controlled Vowels (ar)
The Skills list explicitly states that students will "segment spoken single-syllable words into their complete sequence of individual sounds," "orally produce single-syllable words by blending sounds," and "isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds in three letter (CVC) words." Activities ask students to spell and read pairs like "cat" to "car," to say and point to ending r blends (arm, farm; barn, yarn; etc.), and to complete fill-in-the-blank pages where they must say the sound of each blend before writing it. Word chains and word-building tasks require students to say each letter sound as they spell and to change one sound to form a new word, which practices oral blending and segmentation at the sound level.
Unit 2: Semester 2
Lesson 1
Long Vowels a and i with Silent e
The Skills list and several activities require students to segment and blend sounds: students are asked to "segment spoken single-syllable words into their complete sequence of individual sounds" and to "orally produce single-syllable words by blending sounds." Activities have students spell and read minimal pair examples (tap → tape, slid → slide), build words with letter cards, and listen for vowel sounds to sort pictures into short vs. long vowel columns, which practices pronouncing and blending sounds within words.
Lesson 4
More R-Controlled Vowels (er, ir, or, ur)
The lesson's Skills list explicitly includes "Segment spoken single-syllable words into their complete sequence of individual sounds" and "Orally produce single-syllable words by blending sounds," and multiple Word Building activities ask students to spell and then read words aloud (blending sounds). Activity 3.1 instructs the student to "sound out the word 'letter' by sounding out the first half of the word ('let') and then the second half ('ter')," which has the student segment a multisyllabic word into syllable-like halves. Several activities require students to read words aloud after manipulating letter/word cards, which practices pronunciation and blending of spoken units.
Lesson 5
Long a Spellings ai, ay
Activity 1.1 asks students to find and clap the syllables in words from the Weekly Message and to identify four two-syllable words (reading, across, figure, letters), providing explicit practice in recognizing and segmenting multisyllabic words. The Skills list also states that students will "segment spoken single-syllable words into their complete sequence of individual sounds" and "orally produce single-syllable words by blending sounds," which gives explicit practice in oral segmentation and blending at the single-syllable/phoneme level. Several activities ask students to read words aloud and sound out spelling patterns, which requires pronouncing syllables within words.
Lesson 7
Long i Spellings y, igh, ie
Students orally blend and read single-syllable long i words in word-building activities (e.g., Activity 3.2: spell and read fight, fight → /f/ /ī/ /t/, Activity 4.1: add ie to make pie, tie, die). Students are asked to segment single-syllable words into individual sounds (Skills list: "Segment spoken single-syllable words into their complete sequence of individual sounds") and to sound out words during the sight word and word-sorting activities. Students identify syllable types by discussing open vs. closed syllables when reading words like my and by (Activity 2.2).
Lesson 8
Long o Spellings ow, oa, oe
In Activity 1.3 students are asked, "How many syllables does 'number' have?" and to clap the syllables with the teacher, providing direct practice counting and segmenting syllables. Activity 1.3 also asks students to note that 'go' and 'no' are open syllables, prompting students to attend to syllable structure and to pronounce the syllable shape. In Day 5 Activity 5.3 (Compound Fun) students read parts of compound words (covering 'bow' and 'rain') and then put the parts together, giving practice segmenting multisyllabic words into parts and blending them back together.
Lesson 12
Other Vowel Sounds oi, oy
The Skills list states students will "segment spoken single-syllable words into their complete sequence of individual sounds" and "orally produce single-syllable words by blending sounds," indicating students practice blending and segmenting sounds. Activities require students to orally read and spell words with oi/oy (Day 2 word sorting, Day 3 word building, Day 4 sentence making), and the teacher models stretching the oi/oy sound to make pronunciation clear. Students also practice reading multisyllabic words containing oi/oy (e.g., enjoy, ahoy) and are asked where the vowel blend falls in each word.
Lesson 15
These Make More Than One Sound: oo and ea
The Skills list and activities require students to orally produce and blend sounds to make single-syllable words (e.g., "Orally produce single-syllable words by blending sounds," Activities 2.2 and 4.1 ask students to spell and say words like wood, zoom, fool, seam, seat). The Skills list also explicitly includes segmenting spoken single-syllable words into their individual sounds, and several activities (Activity 5.2 sentence dictation, word building, and sorting) have students pronounce and manipulate sounds in single-syllable words.
Lesson 16
Silent Starts: kn, wr, gn
The lesson repeatedly asks students to sound out, read, and build single-syllable words (e.g., Activities 2.2 Word Building; 3.1/3.2 sound aloud and build wr words; 5.1 Word Scramble) and includes prompts to "sound them out" and read words aloud. The skills list explicitly states students will "segment spoken single-syllable words into their complete sequence of individual sounds" and "orally produce single-syllable words by blending sounds, including consonant blends." Several activities require students to read, spell, and orally blend one-syllable words with silent beginnings (e.g., know, write, gnat, knot).