Blanchard Schools

Lions Literacy Links

Blanchard Elementary School has been utilizing the Literacy First model to assess and differentiate reading instruction for students for many years.  Literacy First is a researched based, personalized curriculum that focuses on the 5 pillars of reading:  phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.  Students work on their skill in small groups during the daily reading block.  The reading block also consists of the teachers incorporating writing, vocabulary instruction and stories through the McGraw Hill – Wonders basal reading series.

Links are listed below to help with Literacy First resources at home.  If you have questions, you may contact your student’s teacher or the Literacy Coach.  

Literacy First Sight Words

Sight words, also referred to as “high frequency words” are a vital part of your child learning to read.  Sight words are words that are most frequently used and repeated in text.  Students memorize and have automatic recognition of sight words without sounding them out.  Sight word instruction begins in kindergarten and continues to the end of 2^nd grade.

Kindergarten – 50 of the most commonly found words in Kindergarten level material typically mastered by the end of Kindergarten

List A – 100 words typically mastered by December of 1^st grade

List B – 100 words typically mastered by the end of 1^st grade

List C – 300 words typically mastered by the end of 2^nd grade

Literacy First Sight Word PowerPoints

List K-1        List K-2

List A-1        List A-2

List B-1        List B-2         List B-3        List B-4

List C-1        List C-2         List C-3      

Literacy First Sight Word Phrases

Sight word phrases are the next step in fluency instruction.  Reading words in phrases helps your child improve fluency by chunking words together to increase their speed and smoothness as they read.  Students move to reading sight word phrases after they have mastered the 300 words on List C.

First 100 Phrases

Second 100 Phrases

Third 100 Phrases

Fluency Passages 

Students move to fluency passages next.  The goal of fluency passages is to improve all dimensions of fluent reading.  The components of fluency instruction involves expression/volume, phrasing, smoothness, and pace of reading.  Your student’s teacher will send passages home to read. 

Literacy First Phonological Awareness and Phonics Skill Sequence

Phonological Awareness:  Hearing the individual sounds

Phonological awareness is the ability to break down words into smaller parts or individual sounds.  Students manipulate sounds by blending, segmenting, substituting and deleting sounds to create new words. 

Phonological Awareness Skills Continuum

Phonics:  Hearing and Seeing the letters and patterns within words

Phonics links letters from written language to the sounds of spoken language.  Students associate letter and letter patterns to the sounds they make in order to blend the sounds to make words.  Students learn different syllable types, digraphs, blends and other word patterns in order to decode words.

Phonics Skills Continuum