Kindergarten - Gateway 1

The materials reviewed for Kindergarten partially meet the criteria of Indicator 1b.

The materials include opportunities for students to listen to and read both literary and informational texts; however, there is not an equal balance as required by the standards. Students listen to and read texts that include biographies, fables, fairy tales, folktales, historical fiction, poetry, realistic fiction, nursery rhymes, rhyming fiction, photo essays, fantasy, explanatory, non-fiction, rhyming non-fiction, informational texts, and narrative nonfiction. A larger number of literary texts are found in most units. Students have limited opportunities to interact with selections that contain an informational text structure.

• Materials reflect the distribution of text types/genres required by the grade level standards. Examples include:

  • In Unit 1, the materials include the literary text genre of realistic fiction, fantasy, and poetry, as well as two informational texts. Examples of texts in Unit 1 include The One with Freckles by Brenda A. Ferber (realistic fiction), The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn (fantasy), and Schools Around the World by John Russell (informational).

  • In Unit 6, the materials include the literary text genres of poetry (two selections), historical fiction, and realistic fiction. Unit 6 also includes two informational text selections. Examples of texts in this unit include Pass it Down by Elizabeth Reid (literary), “Abuelita’s Lap” by Pat Mora (poem), and  A Collection of Cultures  by Paul Caserta (informational). 

  • In Unit 8, students interact with informational texts, a photo essay, and realistic fiction. Some literary texts include The Best Place is Home by Toby Nash (poem) and Turtle Beach by Hannah Green (realistic fiction). Some informational texts include Day and Night in the Desert by the editors of Click Magazine (informational text).

• Materials do not reflect a 50/50 balance of informational and literary texts. The Kindergarten materials include 59 literary texts and 31 informational texts. Examples include:

  • In Unit 1, Lesson 3, students listen to Kids Rule at School by Myka-Lynne Sokoloff (fantasy), and in Lesson 2, Who is at Your School? by Jan Mader (informational). In this unit there are five literary texts and two informational texts. 

  • In Unit 2, Lesson 2, students listen to the fairytale, Snow White and Rose Red by The Brothers Grimm, retold by Daniel Munn (fairytale), and The Lady and the Map: Florence Nightingale by Michael Green in Lesson 3 (biography). In this unit, there are six literary texts and one informational text.

  • In Unit 3, Lesson 3, students listen to Snow Day! by Lester Laminack, which is realistic fiction and When Rain Falls by Melissa Stewart (informational text). In this unit, there are three literary texts and four informational texts.

  • In Unit 4, Lesson 1, students listen to Time to Move by Jeffrey Lee (explanatory text) and in Lesson 3, Wild Rides by Michael Coine (realistic fiction). In this unit, students listen to six literary texts and two informational texts.

  • In Unit 5, students listen to The Golden Windows by Laura E. Richards in Lesson 3 (fable) and Our Earth, Our Home by Kiyo Fischer (informational text) in Lesson 2. In this unit, students listen to four literary texts and two informational texts. 

  • In Unit 6, students listen to “Abuelita’s Lap” by Pat Mora (poem) in Lesson 2, and Cultures and Holidays Around the World by Pam Conrad (informational text) in Lesson 1. In this unit, students listen to five literary texts and two informational texts. 

  • In Unit 7, Lesson 2, students listen to Jack and the Beanstalk retold and adapted by Gerald Fradette (fairytale), and in Lesson 3, From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons (explanatory text). In this unit, students listen to five literary texts and two informational texts. 

  • In Unit 8, Lesson 3, students listen to Turtle Beach by Hannah Greer (realistic fiction) and in Lesson 1, students see the photo essay “Seymour Simon’s Animal ABCs” by Seymour Simon and Liz Nealon. In this unit, students listen to three literary texts and four informational texts. 

  • In Unit 9, Lesson 2, students listen to Rules of the Wild: An Unruly Book of Manners by Bridget Levin (fantasy) and Obey the Law by Albert Carangelo (informational). In this unit, students listen to six literary texts and one informational text.

  • In Unit 10, Lesson 3, students listen to “President Me?” by Nicole Hatfield (poem) and in Lesson 2, Teddy’s Bears by Thomas Birch (narrative nonfiction). In this unit, students listen to two literary texts and seven informational texts.

  • In Unit 11, Lesson 2, students listen to By Colors, My World Mis Colores, Mi Mundo by Maya Christina Gonzalez (realistic fiction) and in Lesson 3, Seymour Simon’s Colors in Nature (informational text). In this unit, students listen to seven literary texts and two informational texts.

  • In Unit 12, Lesson 3, students listen to Little Cloud by Eric Carle (fantasy) and Shapes and Patterns by Orsalya Dalton (nonfiction). In this unit, students listen to seven literary texts and two informational texts.

The materials reviewed for Kindergarten partially meet the criteria of Indicator 1c.

Instructional materials do not include a text complexity analysis for the read-aloud texts included in the Kindergarten materials.  The majority of read-aloud texts do not have a quantitative measure and could not be located on a platform that provides quantitative measures. The associated student questions and tasks for the majority of the texts is for students to practice various reading comprehension strategies such as prediction, connections, and asking questions on the first read of the text. Then students discuss the text focused on skills during the Close Read portion of the lesson on another day.

Quantitative details for First Reader texts beginning in Unit 10 through Unit 12 and are provided by the publisher. The texts students read range in Lexile levels from 10L-330L. Materials state: “In Units 10–12, in addition to using Big Books, students transition to using a First Reader. The First Reader lets students read selections on their own. Each student has a First Reader, so it is not a shared reading experience with the teacher in charge of reading a selection from a single Big Book. Now students have the opportunity to practice all of their comprehension strategies and skills in a book of their own.”

The program does not include a rationale for educational purpose or placement of texts in the grade level, including a Lexile level for many of anchor read aloud texts. According to the Program Overview, “In Grades 4-5, where text complexity becomes even more difficult, Preview the Selection in the Teacher’s Edition states the Lexile level of the selection, indicates the level of complexity from simple to complex, and provides the reasoning behind why the text is complex.” However this information is not included in the Kindergarten materials.

It is difficult to determine the overall complexity of the texts included in the materials since quantitative measures were not provided and cannot be found for many read-aloud texts. Many tasks include students practicing a comprehension strategy on the first read, and then discussing the text on the second read. Examples include:

• In Unit 1, Lesson 2, students listen to Who is at Your School? by Jan Mader, which has no Lexile level. The text is considered moderately qualitatively complex due to the structure and language. On the first day, students listen to the teacher read and model the comprehension strategy of clarifying. Then students discuss what they learned from the text. On the second day, students classify and categorize the information in the text. 

• In Unit 2, Lesson 1, students listen to Two Foxes by Susan Kang, which has no Lexile level. The text is qualitatively high due to features such as the implied purpose of treating others kindly. Students use the text to practice the asking and answering questions comprehension strategy and discuss the author’s writing strategies.

• In Unit 3, Lesson 3, students listen to Snow Day! by Lester Laminack, which has a Lexile of 460L, making it an appropriate read-aloud for Kindergarten students. This text is slightly-to-moderately qualitatively complex due to the easy-to-predict text organization, familiar vocabulary, simple sentence structure, and clear theme. The associated task is for students to use the visualizing and predicting/confirming reading strategy and the teacher models thinking about various literary elements such as sequence and cause and effect.

• In Unit 4, Lesson 3, students listen to Wild Rides by Michael Colne, which has no Lexile level. The qualitative features are moderately complex due to the meaning and language. The associated task requires students to use the clarifying and predicting/confirming comprehension strategy and discuss literary elements such as the plot of the story. 

• In Unit 5, Lesson 2, students listen to Our Earth, Our Home by Klyo Fischer, which has no Lexile level. The text is considered qualitatively very complex due to language and knowledge demands. Students make connections and summarize on the first day with the text, then discuss the text, including cause and effect in the text, on the second day with the text. 

• In Unit 6, Lesson 2, students listen to Emma’s Walk by Charles Bell, which has no Lexile level. The text has several qualitative features that are very complex, such as multiple levels of meaning, cultural knowledge, and academic vocabulary. Students visualize and ask and answer questions on the first day with the text, then compare and contrast details and identify the sequence of events through discussions on the second day with the text. 

• In Unit 7, Lesson 2, students listen to Jack and the Beanstalk retold by Gerald Fradette, which has no Lexile level. The text is considered moderately qualitatively complex due to the language. Students use the text to apply the predicting/confirming predictions and summarizing reading comprehension strategies. 

• In Unit 8, Lesson 3, students listen to Day and Night in the Desert by the editors of Click Magazine, which has no Lexile Level. The text is considered qualitatively complex due to the language and knowledge demands. The associated task is for students to summarize and ask and answer questions on the first day with the text, then discussion about the main idea and details in the text on the second day with the text. 

• In Unit 9, Lesson 1, students listen to The Tale of Benjamin Bunny by Beatrix Potter, which has a Lexile level of 800L. The text is extremely qualitatively complex as it contains unfamiliar vocabulary, multiple levels of meaning, and figurative language. Due to the complexity of this text, it may not be appropriate for Kindergarten students. Students make connections and clarify on the first day with the text, and discuss sequence and main idea and details on the second day of the text.  

• In Unit 12, Lesson 3, students listen to Little Cloud by Eric Carle, which has a Lexile level of 470L, which is appropriate for a read-aloud. This text is considered slightly-to-moderately qualitatively complex due to the relatively easy-to-predict text organization, familiar vocabulary, simple sentence structure, and familiar vocabulary. On the first day with the text, students summarize and make predictions. On the second day with the text, students identify the main idea and details and compare and contrast details during a close read on the second day of the text.

The program does not include a rationale for educational purpose or placement of texts in the grade level. Lexile levels were also not provided for many of the texts. Lexile levels are found for texts in the student anthology, but not for read-alouds.

The materials reviewed for Kindergarten partially meet the criteria of Indicator 1d.

The materials in Kindergarten do not include a quantitative measure for anchor read-aloud texts and the majority of anchor texts cannot be located on Lexile.com or other sites that provide quantitative measures, making it difficult to determine if the texts support students’ literacy growth across the year. The texts students read beginning in Unit 10 range in Lexile level from 10L-330L; however, these texts are not appropriately sequenced across the year, with students at times reading more complex texts in earlier units. Additionally, reader and task demands spend time focusing on comprehension strategies, such as predicting and making connections that do not align with the standards. The tasks across the year remain relatively the same with students practicing a comprehension strategy and then discussing the text. Comprehension strategies and questions are repeated throughout the year and applied to different texts; however, since the overall complexity of the texts is unknown, students may not apply skills and strategies to more complex texts as the year progresses. Students typically spend one to two days on a text before moving on to another text, which may not provide all students with opportunities to advance their literacy skills and knowledge. 

In the beginning of the year, the majority of lessons prompt the teacher to simply model and in the middle of the year, the teacher models and prompts students for answers. By the end of the year, the teacher prompts students, with scaffolds removed.

• It is difficult to determine if the complexity of most anchor texts students listen to provide an opportunity for students’ literacy skills to increase across the year, encompassing an entire year’s worth of growth, since the majority of anchor texts do not have a quantitative measure that can be located in Lexile or provided by the publisher. For example:

  • The texts students listen to in Unit 2 do not have a quantitative measure, so the range of texts students encounter cannot be measured. The qualitative complexity ranges from low to high complexity. Associated tasks are low to moderate tasks. In Unit 2, students spend time on questions that focus on comprehension strategies such as visualizing, clarifying, and making connections. Some of the texts in Unit 2 include: 

    • The Elves and the Shoemaker by Brothers Grimm retold by Daniell Munn does not have a Lexile level but has a low qualitative level of complexity. The associated task is also low complexity and the overall text complexity cannot be determined.  

    • The Lady with the Lamp: Florence Nightingale by Michale Greene does not have a Lexile level but has a moderate qualitative complexity. The associated task is also of moderate complexity and the overall text complexity cannot be determined. 

  • The majority of texts students listen to in Unit 7 do not have a quantitative measure, so the range of texts students encounter cannot be measured. The qualitative complexity ranges from low to high complexity. Associated tasks are low to moderate tasks. In Unit 7, students spend time on questions that focus on comprehension strategies similar to the ones in Unit 2 such as visualizing, clarifying, and making connections.Some of the texts in this unit include:

    • Garden Stories by Kevin Sanji, which has no Lexile level but has a moderate level of qualitative complexity. The associated task is also of moderate complexity and the overall text complexity cannot be determined.

    • Jack and the Beanstalk retold and adapted by Gerald Fradette, which has no Lexile level. The text is qualitatively moderately complex. The associated task is also of moderate complexity. The overall text complexity cannot be determined. 

    • From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons, which has a Lexile level of 560L. The text has a moderate qualitative complexity. The associated task is complex. The overall text complexity is complex. 

  • The texts students listen to in Unit 11 range in Lexile level from AD460L-550L Lexile Level. In this unit, students read texts in the 70L-330L Lexile range. The qualitative complexity ranges from low to high complexity. Associated tasks are low to moderate tasks. In Unit 11, students spend time on questions that focus on comprehension strategies such as asking and answering questions, making connections, predicting/confirming, summarizing, and clarifying. Some of the texts in this unit include:

    • Rainbow Stew by Cathryn Falwell, which has a Lexile level of AD540L. The materials present the text as a read aloud within the materials with no pictures, but the actual text is not presented to students. Due to this, the qualitative measures are low complexity. The associated task is low complexity. The overall text complexity is low.  

    • Chameleon’s Colors by Chisato Tashiro, which has a Lexile level of AD540L. The text has a moderate qualitative complexity. The reader and task demands are low and complex. The overall complexity is moderate. 

    • Seymour Simon’s Colors in Nature by Seymour Simon, which has a Lexile of NC550L and a high level of qualitative complexity. The associated tasks are moderate. The overall text complexity is moderate. 

• As texts become more complex, appropriate scaffolds and/or materials are not provided in the Teacher Edition (i.e., spending more time on texts, more questions, repeated readings). Texts remain relatively at the same complexity and scaffolds are removed throughout the year. Examples include:

  • In Unit 2, Lesson 2, students listen to Snow White and Red Rose, by Brothers Grimm retold by Daniell Munn, which has no Lexile level. In this Unit, the teacher simply models. 

  • In Unit 7, Lesson 1, students listen to Garden Stories by Kevin Sanji, which has no Lexile level. In this unit, the teacher shifts from modeling to modeling and prompting. 

  • In Unit 11, Lesson 3, students listen to Seymour Simon’s Colors in Nature by Seymour Simon and Liz Nealon, which has a Lexile of NC550L. The teacher no longer models, and instead, prompts the students by asking questions during the read aloud.

The materials reviewed for Kindergarten partially meet the expectations of Indicator 1e.

In the Kindergarten materials, students have the opportunity to engage in a range and volume of reading to support their reading at grade level by the end of the school year. Students engage with Big Books (66 total in Kindergarten), First Readers in the last three units, and Teacher Read-Alouds that begin each unit. Each unit begins with a selection that is read aloud by the teacher to introduce the unit theme. In each unit, there are Big Books that are used for read-alouds, where the teacher models comprehension strategies. The selections incorporate a variety of genres. Students listen to the Big Books several times for different purposes, including applying comprehension strategies, identifying elements of the writer’s craft, and practicing fluency. In Unit 10, students are introduced to First Readers, where students begin reading texts on their own. While the curriculum provides various opportunities for students to interact with read-alouds, a routine for independent reading is not included. The materials provide a Home Connection letter for each lesson and an instructional routine for reading a text, but there is no system for scheduling independent reading or tracking independent reading. 

• Instructional materials clearly identify opportunities and supports for students to engage in reading a variety of text types and genres. Examples include:

  • In Unit 1, the read-alouds include a variety of genres, including realistic fiction, fantasy, poetry, and informational texts. Some examples of texts include The One with the Freckles by Brena A Ferber and Kids Rule at School by John Russell. 

  • In Unit 4, Lesson 2 students interact with three texts within a five-day span. The texts are all different genres and are Big Book read-alouds. The texts are “Push and Pull”, a poem by Kay Davis, The Little Green Engine, a fantasy by Karen E. Martin, and “How We Move” a poem by William Vega.

  • In Unit 9, Lesson 3, students interact with three big books within a five-day span. The texts vary in genre and text structure. These texts include Famous Faces Carved in Stone, an informational text by Fredrick Nelson, A Feathered Friend, a narrative nonfiction by Phillip Frederick, and “President Me?”, a poem by Nicole Hatfield.

• Instructional materials clearly identify opportunities and supports for students to engage in a volume of reading. Examples include:

  • Teachers use Big Books to model comprehension strategies. In Units 10-12, in addition to using Big Books, students transition to using a First Reader, which allows students to read on their own. This allows students to practice “all of their comprehension strategies and skills in a book on their own''. 

  • In Unit 3, Lesson 1, students listen to  Hail: Ice from  the Sky by Cynthia Light Brown. Then the teacher introduces the Big Book, Weather Measures by Yvonne Morrison and the students listen to the text three times for a variety of purposes including comprehension strategies, print directionality, and discussing author’s writing strategies.

  • In Unit 5, Lesson 3, students listen to How a House is Built by Gail Gibbons. Students listen to the text three times for a variety of purposes including focusing on print directionality, comprehension strategies, and classifying and organizing information. 

  • In Unit 10, Lesson 3, students read the First Reader text “A Feathered Friend” (no author). For the first read the students read a short section and then respond to comprehension/skill prompts. After the first read, the teacher frames the second read with complex text skills and students reread in order to analyze the text. 

  • No evidence is found for students to engage with texts in small groups.

There is no teacher guidance to foster independence for all readers. There is no proposed schedule for independent reading or a system to track independent reading. The texts are not organized with built-in supports to foster independence and there are no independent reading procedures included in the lessons.

The materials reviewed for Kindergarten partially meet the criteria of Indicator 1h.

Throughout the Kindergarten materials, students have opportunities to engage in a whole-group discussion following the first read of a text. Discussion Starters are provided to help support students’ listening and speaking. Most opportunities are about what students are reading or researching, but at times, students are asked for personal opinions or thoughts. At the end of a unit, students engage in a Theme Wrap-Up and Review where they meet in small groups to retell their favorite selection, review the knowledge learned, and share their thinking with the class. However, students do not have varied opportunities for speaking and listening. The majority of the time, students are speaking and listening during whole group discussions or turn and talk. Because the majority of discussions are done in the whole group with the teacher asking questions, all students may not be engaged in speaking and listening about what they are reading.

• Students have multiple opportunities over the school year to demonstrate what they are reading through speaking and listening opportunities, though they are not varied. Some opportunities require students to discuss the text specifically, while other opportunities have students share personal experiences or opinions related to the text. Examples include: 

  • In Unit 1, Lesson 2, after listening to the poem “Kindergarten Rocks!” by Loris Lesynski, students are asked to discuss their favorite parts of the poem. Students respond to questions such as, “Do you think the activities listed in the poem are fun? What are your favorite things to do in kindergarten?”

  • In Unit 4, Lesson 3, students discuss the text Wild Rides by Michael Coine. Students first draw a picture of a ride they would like to go on. During the discussion, students share their drawings, describe the movement of the ride, and talk about different ways things move. 

  • In Unit 7, Lesson 1, after listening to What Green Beans Need by Carol Elliot, students are asked, “Where do vegetables, like green beans, come from?” and then students name as many vegetables as they can. 

  • In Unit 8, Lesson 3, for the Theme Wrap-Up and Review, students meet in small groups based on their favorite selection from the unit. Students retell the text and explain why they liked it. Students then identify what they learned about animal habitats from the selections and how the text features helped them understand the texts. After the small group discussion, each group shares out to the entire class and the other students ask questions in order to clarify or gather additional information. 

  • In Unit 11, Lesson 1, after listening to the poem “Red, Yellow, and Blue” by Joseph Phelan, students discuss their favorite part of the selection. The teacher reminds students to speak loudly enough so that everyone can understand and to answer using complete sentences. 

• Speaking and listening work requires students to utilize, apply, and incorporate evidence from texts and/or sources. Examples include: 

  • In Unit 7, Lesson 1, after listening to Garden Stories by Kevin Sanji, students are asked to discuss their favorite parts of the selection. Students answer specific questions such as, “What kind of plant would you like to see at a botanical garden? Why? Which fable did you like best? Why?”

  • In Unit 9, Lesson 3, students discuss the setting in Obey the Law! by Albert Carangelo. The students look at the illustration and then discuss, “What details about police officers can you learn from the illustration?” 

  • In Unit 12, Lesson 1, the students discuss the main ideas and details of the text, The Shape of my Heart by Mark Sperring. Students respond to, “What details describe what that narrator, the person telling the story, loves?”

The materials reviewed for Kindergarten partially meet the criteria of Indicator 1i.

Materials include opportunities for students to engage in process writing everyday in each unit. Students learn how to prewrite, draft, revise, edit, proofread, and publish or present. Materials include graphic organizers, routines, rubrics, and model texts to support process writing. However, materials include limited opportunities for students to engage in on-demand writing throughout the year.

• Materials include limited on-demand writing opportunities that cover a year’s worth of instruction. An example of one on-demand writing opportunity follows:

  • In Unit 7, Lesson 3, students dictate sentences to tell the beginning, middle, and end of a make-believe story and then illustrate the story. 

• Materials include process writing opportunities that cover a year’s worth of instruction. There is a predictable routine for students with graphic organizers and revising, editing, and publishing checklists. For example: 

  • In Unit 1, Lesson 1, students begin brainstorming topics for a list of rules for working together. They then revise the classroom rules list and learn about presenting and sharing writing. 

  • In Unit 2, Lesson 3, students begin prewriting by drawing a picture to show their opinions about which characters show the most kindness in stories from the Anthology Let’s Be Kind (no author).

  • In Unit 3, Lesson 1, students describe a place, and on Day 4, they draft pictures for their descriptions. 

  • In Unit 5, Lesson 1, students work on drafting a persuasive poster explaining which animal is the best animal to have for a pet. 

  • In Unit 6, students write a story with a beginning, middle, and an end, connected to the theme Our Country, Our Cultures. 

  • In Unit 7, Lesson 3, students write a make-believe story. On Day 1, students prewrite. 

  • In Unit 8, Lesson 3, students write a report. On Day 3, students use a checklist to edit their report.

  • In Unit 12, students write a humorous rhyming poem. They begin by brainstorming ideas and rhyming words for the poem, and then draft the poem. Students then revise and edit the poem before publishing it and sharing it with the class. 

• Opportunities for students to revise and edit are provided. In each unit, students engage in process writing and are explicitly taught revising and editing. Examples include:

  • In Unit 4, Lesson 3, students write a poem and then revise and edit with a peer, looking for “spacing between words, capital letters at the beginning of sentences, and end punctuation.”

  • In Unit 5, Lesson 3, students revise their book review. On Day 2, they meet in groups to evaluate the reasons they have included to support their opinions and then revise their writing. 

  • In Unit 7, Lesson 3, the teacher circulates to support students revising their sentences. The teacher reads the items on the revising checklist and students dictate changes they want to make. 

  • In Unit 9, Lesson 3, students edit an opinion piece. On Day 3, students use a checklist to edit for correct spacing, capital letters, and periods at the end of sentences. 

• Materials include digital resources where appropriate. Examples include:

  • In the ePresentation feature in the digital version, teachers have access to graphic organizers as well as revising and editing checklists, which can be presented to students. 

  • In Unit 6, Lesson 2, students publish their story and it is suggested that the students dictate the story titles to the teacher so he/she can type them on the computer. 

  • In Unit 9, Lesson 3, students use a computer to share their writing. Students either type or scan their writing before displaying it for the class to see.

The materials reviewed for Kindergarten partially meet the criteria of Indicator 1j.

Throughout the year, students have opportunities to learn, practice, and apply different types of writing. Students write opinion, narrative (including poetry), and informative genres and a variety of types within the genre. Informational writing makes up the majority of writing time and accounts for nearly half of all finished pieces. At times, writing assignments are connected to the texts. The teacher may remind students about a text they have read, but there are limited opportunities for the teacher to analyze a text as an exemplar to help students develop their craft.

Materials provide opportunities across the school year for students to learn, practice, and apply different genres/modes/types of writing, but it does not reflect the distribution required by the standards.  Different genres/modes/types of writing are not evenly distributed throughout the school year. For example: 

• Students have opportunities to engage in opinion writing at the beginning, middle, and end of the year; however, opinion writing accounts for roughly 25% of the writing assignments. There is a variety of opinion writing including a persuasive poster and a book review. Examples include:

  • In Unit 2, students write an opinion.

  • In Unit 5, students create a persuasive poster and write a book review. 

  • In Unit 9, students write an advertisement and write an opinion.

  • In Unit 10, students write an opinion. 

• Students have opportunities to engage in informative/explanatory writing at the beginning, middle, and end of the year. Informative/explanatory writing accounts for roughly 50% of the writing assignments. There are a variety of informative writing opportunities including a summary and a news story. Examples include:

  • In Unit 2, students describe a person and a character.

  • In Unit 3, students describe a place and the weather. They draw weather that is different from the current weather. Students are encouraged to write a sentence to tell about their picture. 

  • In Unit 4, students write a news story about something interesting on the way to school.

  • In Unit 7, students write a summary and describe a planet. 

  • In Unit 8, students describe an animal and write a report.

  • In Unit 10, students describe a character.

  • In Unit 12, students describe patterns.

• Students have opportunities to engage in narrative writing. At the beginning of the year students write poems (Units 3, 4, and 6); however, narrative writing does not begin until Unit 6. They account for roughly 15% of the writing assignments and are found at the middle and end of the year. Examples include:

  • In Unit 6, students write a story. They engage in guided practice and brainstorm characters with their class. 

  • In Unit 7, students write a make-believe story.

  • In Unit 11, students write a make-believe story.

• Where appropriate, writing opportunities are connected to texts and/or text sets (either as prompts, models, anchors, or supports). The teacher refers to texts, but does not engage in an analysis of an exemplar text as a model. Examples include:

  • In Unit 2, Lesson 2, students learn about describing a story character. Students spend a few days describing characters from books previously read, including Snow White, and students use the description words to draw illustrations that describe Snow White and dictate a sentence about her. 

  • In Unit 5, Lesson 2, students write a book review about a book from the unit. The teacher models using the book Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom. 

  • In Unit 10, Lesson 1, students listen to The Tale of Benjamin Bunny and review the dialogue between characters. Then students include dialogue in their own writing.

The materials reviewed for Kindergarten partially meet the criteria of Indicator 1k.

While students in Kindergarten write daily, materials include limited opportunities for students to write using information from text. The majority of the writing opportunities are based on students’ personal experiences and are not text-based. There are no opportunities for students to respond to what they listen to over the course of the year. When students do have evidence-based writing opportunities, they are often about character traits or a book review of a favorite shared reading text. There are opportunities for evidence-based writing in the final Inquiry presentations, but these are not required by the materials.

• Materials provide some opportunities across the school year for students to learn, practice, and apply writing using evidence. Examples include:

  • Inquiry projects occur once per unit and are related to the topic of the shared readings. Students ask questions and recall concepts that are added to a class Concept/Question Board. At the end of the unit, students create a presentation of their learning. A final shared writing project is one of the options, but it is not required. 

  • In Unit 2, Lesson 2, after listening to The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn, students brainstorm describing words about the character Chester. The students say the words and the teacher writes the describing words.

  • In Unit 7, Lesson 1, students look at a digital graphic and describe a plant. Students are told to think of a time they touched and smelled a plant and to include sensory words based on that experience in an Idea Web. 

  • In Unit 10, Lesson 1, students describe a character as a written task. During the lesson, students recall familiar characters and practice telling character traits. When students begin writing, they create a new character. 

• Some writing opportunities are focused around students’ recall of information to develop opinions from reading closely and working with evidence from texts and sources. Examples include:

  • In Unit 2, Lesson 3, the students participate in shared writing. The teacher writes a character’s name in the left column and the students give examples of how the character shows kindness and the teacher adds it to the right column. 

  • In Unit 5, Lesson 2, students write book reviews about the best selection from Unit 5. They need to include what the selection is about and two reasons why they think it is the best. 

  • In Unit 7, Lesson 2, students write a summary about what plants can do. Students are asked to recall information they have learned so far in the unit as well as other books in order to help write the summary. 

  • In Unit 8, Lessons 2 and 3, after reading the Big Book “Animal Homes,” the students help the teacher complete an Idea Web about different animal homes. 

  • In Unit 9, Lessons 2 and 3, students discuss the rules in the book That’s Not Fair! Together with the teacher, students create a pros and cons chart and the teacher asks, “Are there any other pros or cons I should add from the story?”

  • In Unit 10, Lessons 2 and 3, after reading Vote for President by Dennis Fertig, students choose who would make the best president and explain what makes them a good leader.

The materials reviewed for Kindergarten partially meet the criteria for Indicator 1l.

Materials provide explicit instruction of the grade-level grammar and usage standards through the instruction and guided practice sections of the day’s activities that direct the teacher on wording and examples to teach the skill. Most grammar and convention standards are addressed in Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics. There are opportunities for students to apply grammar and conventions skills to limited in-context tasks. There are limited opportunities for students to apply grade-level grammar and usage standards to their individual writing.

• Materials include explicit instruction of all grammar and conventions standards for the grade level. For example:

  • Print many upper- and lowercase letters.

    • In Unit 3, Lesson 1, Day 1, Penmanship/Handwriting, the teacher models how to make uppercase and lowercase Ss using the letter formation procedure. 

    • In Unit 4, Lesson 1, Day 1, Penmanship/Handwriting, the teacher models how to make uppercase and lowercase Hh using the letter formation procedure.

    • In Unit 5, Lesson 1, Day 3, Penmanship/Handwriting, the teacher models how to make uppercase and lowercase Cc using the letter formation procedure.

    • In Unit 7, Lesson 1, Day 5, Penmanship/Handwriting, the teacher models how to make uppercase and lowercase Kk. Students write a line of uppercase K's and a line of lowercase k’s.

  •  Use frequently occurring nouns and verbs.

    • In Unit 1, Lesson 2, Day 2, Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics, the teacher prompts students to share what other kinds of words can be nouns. During Guided Practice, the teacher helps students list nouns that are people.

    • In Unit 1, Lesson 3, Day 1, Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics, the teacher reminds students that nouns name people, animals, things, and places. The teacher provides clues, and the students name the word for the place.

    • In Unit 2, Lesson 2, Day 2, Grammar, Usage and Mechanics, the teacher explains that an action is called a verb. The teacher reads, “I run.” During Guided Practice, the teacher reads aloud a poem. Students identify the verbs in each line.

    • In Unit 11, Lesson 2, Day 1, Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics, the teacher models using a present-tense verb. In Guided Practice, students generate sentences about a picture. Students use present-tense verbs in their sentences.

  • Form regular plural nouns orally by adding /s/ or /es/ (e.g., dog, dogs; wish, wishes).

    • In Unit 7, Lesson 2, Day 1, Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics, the teacher points to a picture of a boy and writes boy on the board. The teacher puts the numeral 1 next to the word boy. The teacher has two boys stand in front of the class and demonstrates adding an s to boy. Students participate in guided practice to make other nouns plural, such as clock.

    • In Unit 7, Lesson 2, Day 5, Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics, the teacher points to the word fox and states, “I see one fox. If there were more than one fox, I’d say something like ``I see two foxes’.” The teacher writes foxes on the board and underlines the -es. The teacher explains when -es is added to nouns. The teacher models adding -es to dish, couch, and fox. Students participate in guided practice.

  • Understand and use question words (interrogatives) (e.g., who, what, where, when, why, how).

    • In Unit 4, Lesson 1, Day 2, Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics, the teacher explains an interrogative sentence and provides example words such as who what, where, why, how. The teacher reads three sentences, and the students identify which sentence asks a question. In Guided Practice, students listen to sentences and determine which sentence is a question sentence.

  •  Use the most frequently occurring prepositions (e.g., to, from, in, out, on, off, for, of, by, with). 

    • In Unit 2, Lesson 1, Day 4, Warm Up, the teacher reminds students that prepositions are words such as through, in, bedside, and on. The teacher has students stand in a line. The teacher gives the directions, “Sit in the chair.” After completing the action, students identify the preposition.

    • In Unit 7, Lesson 1, Day 2, Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics, the teacher models a book’s position and states, “Where is the book? It is in the drawer.” The teacher writes prepositions on the board. During Guided Practice, students share prepositions about a character in a set of pictures.

  • Produce and expand complete sentences in shared language activities.

    • In Unit 1, Lesson 1, Day 2, Review Vocabulary, the teacher asks the following questions, “What is another word for photograph? Where do you think Alex had a freckle?” Students are to answer in complete sentences.

    • In Unit 2, Lesson 1, Day 1, Phonological and Phonemic Awareness, the teacher introduces students to the idea of a sentence. The teacher states a simple sentence,  “The walls are green.” The teacher explains that a sentence names something and tells about the something. The teacher repeats the sentence and asks students if it is a complete sentence. The teacher speaks aloud other sentences and phrases. Students provide a thumbs up or thumbs down to show if the spoken words are a sentence.

    • In Unit 7, Lesson 1, Day 1, Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics, the teacher states three sentences out of order. The teacher models using order words (first, next, last). In Guided Practice, students help put sentences in order and add order words.

    • In Unit 10, Lesson 1, Day 1, Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics, the teacher models making a sentence using words and pictures. In Guided Practice, students create sentences using words and pictures.

  • Capitalize the first word in a sentence and the pronoun I

    • In Unit 3, Lesson 2, Day 1, Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics, the teacher explains that capital letters show where a new sentence starts. The students come up to the board and identify initial capital letters.

    • In Unit 3, Lesson 2, Day 2, Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics, the teacher points out that sentences have an end mark. The teacher writes a declarative sentence without the capital letter at the beginning and without the period at the end. Students identify what is missing.

    • In Unit 7, Lesson 3, Day 1, Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics, the teacher explains that the pronoun I is always capitalized. The students suggest sentences that include the I. Students write the capital I.

  •  Recognize and name end punctuation.

    • In Unit 3, Lesson 2, Day 2, Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics, Guided Practice, students identify that a sentence is missing ending punctuation.

    • In Unit 3, Lesson 2, Day 5, Grammar, Usage, and Mechanics, the teacher demonstrates writing a complete sentence with ending punctuation. The students complete Skills Practice I, which requires students to add ending punctuation.

    • In Unit 11, Lesson 1, Day 4, Close Reading, the teacher asks questions about exclamatory sentences. “Where do we find an exclamation point on page 26? What does an exclamation point tell the reader? How do we read the last sentence on page 26?” The teacher asks questions about interrogative sentences. “What punctuation is at the end of an interrogative sentence? What interrogative sentences does the author write?”

  • Write a letter or letters for most consonant and short-vowel sounds (phonemes).

    • In Unit 3, Lesson 1, Day 1, Penmanship/Handwriting, the teacher names pictures. Students write s if the word for the picture starts with /s/. 

    • In Unit 4, Lesson 1, Day 3, Penmanship/Handwriting, the teacher names pairs of pictures. Students write t under the picture that starts with /t/.

    • In Unit 5, Lesson 1, Day 1, Penmanship/Handwriting, the teacher reviews pictures and asks students if the picture begins with /b/. The students write b if the picture starts with /b/.

  • Spell simple words phonetically, drawing on knowledge of sound-letter relationships.

    • In Unit 7, Lesson 1, Day 5, Phonics, the teacher gives students Letter Cards (i, d, n, k, w). The teacher says the word wind. The teacher asks students what sounds they hear one by one. Students place the Letter Cards in order to build wind.

    • In Unit 10, Lesson 1, Day 1, Phonics, the teacher gives students Letter Cards (a, m, p, s, s, t). The teacher says the word mats. The teacher asks students what sound they hear one by one. Students place the Letter Cards in order to build mats.

    • In Unit 11, Lesson 2, Day 1, Phonics, the teacher gives students Letter Cards (o, m, p, s, t). The teacher says the word post. The teacher asks students what sounds they hear one by one. Students place the Letter Cardsin order to build post.

• Materials include some opportunities for students to demonstrate application of skills both in- and out-of-context. Examples include:

  • In Unit 3, Lesson 3, Day 1, Print and Book Awareness, the students look at a text and point to and name the capital letters. Students explain why the letters are capitalized at the beginning of the sentences.

  • In Unit 10, Lesson 1, Day 2, Comprehension Strategies, the teacher reminds students that asking and answering questions helps the reader think about the text. The teacher asks students for examples of question words.

  • In Unit 11, Lesson 1, Day 2, Discuss the Selection, the teacher asks questions about the text, and students answer using complete sentences.

The materials reviewed for Kindergarten partially meet the criteria of Indicator 1m.

Vocabulary routines occur frequently and routinely throughout the year; however, vocabulary words are not repeated across multiple texts. Students may interact with words before, during, and/or after reading. Vocabulary words are essential to understanding the text and comprehension questions often include the vocabulary words.

• Materials provide teacher guidance outlining a cohesive year-long vocabulary development component. For example:

  • Routine 9 is the Selection Vocabulary Routine, which consists of three steps in Kindergarten-- develop, practice, and review. One of these three stages occurs with every reading of a text. 

  • According to the Program Overview, before reading a selection, the teacher orally introduces the definitions of vocabulary words that are essential to understanding the story and gives examples. Students use the words in sentences. 

  • According to the Program Overview, during reading, students monitor their understanding of words and texts; however, there are no lessons that provide instruction for students in this process. 

  • According to the Program Overview, after reading, the teacher introduces the remaining vocabulary words. 

  • Vocabulary instruction occurs in Foundational Skills, Reading and Responding, and Language Arts. During Reading and Responding, vocabulary words are selected to help students understand the text.

• Vocabulary is repeated in context, yet it is not repeated across multiple texts.Vocabulary words are previewed, reviewed, and practiced across multiple days using the same texts or in the absence of texts. However, the vocabulary words are not found across multiple texts. Additional words are added on each day. For example:

  • In Unit 1, Lesson 2, Day 2, the students are introduced to the vocabulary words colorful, secretary, counselor, and problem. On Day 3, before reading the text, students complete a practice vocabulary activity where they fill in the blank of a sentence with appropriate vocabulary words. 

  • In Unit 2, Lesson 2, Day 1, the vocabulary word inviting is introduced and students are asked to find it in the text Kindness Is by Patrick Murphy. On Day 2, three additional words from the selection Snow White and Rose Red by Brothers Grimm are taught, hearth, expect, and piece. On Day 3, the words are reviewed and students also learn the words withered, fellow, and accusingly. On Day 4, students practice these words and add the word helping from the text Kindness Goes by Many Names by Tanya Anderson; however, the words introduced on previous days are not found in this text. 

  • In Unit 6, Lesson 1, Day 2, before reading, students learn the words define and exchange. In Lesson 1, Day 4, students review the vocabulary words from Day 3 (other, decoration, filled and seals). On Day 5, students review additional words from Days 3 and 4 (hold, cracks, teach, tradition, other, decoration, filled and sealed). 

  • In Unit 8, Lesson 1 , Day 2, the teacher explains the words adapt and balance and then during reading, the teacher asks questions such as, “What does the author mean when he writes ‘to adapt to each other’?” Then after the reading, the teacher asks questions such as, “What in this selection is out of balance without rainforests?” 

  • In Unit 9, Lesson 1, Day 2, the vocabulary words shed and sieve are introduced in the read-aloud The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter. These words are not featured in any other story selection this week.

• Attention is paid to vocabulary essential to understanding the text and to high-value academic words. For example:

  • In Unit 1, Lesson 1, students learn the words freckle and photograph and while listening to the text The One with the Freckles by Brenda A. Ferber. Students are asked, “What does Alex mean when he says, ‘I’m the one with the freckle?’” and “What does Alex mean by ‘one photograph of me’?” 

  • In Unit 6, Lesson 1, students learn the words define and exchange. While listening to Cultures and Holidays Around the World by Pam Conrad, students are asked, “What does the author mean when she writes ‘people define the way they live’?” and “What does the author mean by ‘exchanging gifts’?”. 

  • In Unit 7, Lesson 1, students review the vocabulary words packet and fertilizers and then respond to questions such as, “What in this story is in a packet? What in this story fertilizes the soil and gives the plants the food they need?” 

  • In Unit 11, Lesson 3 students learn that “the word ‘sport’ means to wear.” Students then look at this word on page 44 of their text and the teacher asks, “What helps you understand that the word sport means ‘to wear?”.

The materials reviewed for Kindergarten partially meet the criteria for Indicator 1n.iii.

The materials include the research report, Foundational Skills: Five Ways to Build the Cornerstone of Proficient Reading, which provides a clear, evidence-based rationale for phonics instruction and the progression of skills. Also, the Unit Planner for each unit provides a cohesive scope and sequence for phonics instruction based on the evidence-based rationale in the research report. Patterns and generalizations are presented and then reviewed for students to learn a manageable number of phonics patterns to learn deeply. There are lessons that provide students with frequent opportunities to decode phonetically spelled words, read complete words, and review previously taught grade-level phonics daily through word-building routines, phoneme blending activities, oral language warm-ups. There are numerous activities to decode words at the phoneme level and read complete words by saying the entire word as a unit using newly taught phonics skills through the use of the Whole-Word Blending Routine and Sentence-Blending routine when working with Alphabet Sound Cards, letter cards, and word lists/sentences from the ePresentation Resources. Students have frequent opportunities to decode words in sentences through materials in the ePresentation resources, PreDecodables, Core Decodables, Practice Decodables, and Skills Practice Pages. The materials include explicit, systematic teacher-level instruction of modeling that demonstrates the use of phonics to encode sounds to letters in writing tasks. The teacher models how to form the letter, reviews the Alphabet Sound Card, and the sound the letter makes. The teacher references and reminds students to use the Alphabet Sound Cards when writing words and thinking through the letter/sound correspondence. Students have some phonics activities as they encode words into sentences or phrases through penmanship/handwriting and Student Skills Pages at the letter/sound level; however, on some Student Skills Pages, students write the word that completes each sentence, but the students choose from a set of words and do not encode the word independently.

• Lessons provide students with frequent opportunities to decode (phonemes, onset, and rime, and/or syllables) phonetically spelled words. Examples include:

  • In Unit 1, Lesson 1, Day 1, Phonics Building and Reading Words, the teacher gives each student the a, m, p, s (2), and t Letter Cards. The teacher follows Instructional Routine 5, Word Building Routine, to complete this activity. The teacher says, “We sit on mats.” The students say the word and tell the first sound they hear in the word mats. /m/ They check the Alphabet Sound Card and tell which letter says /m/. Students then pull down Letter Card Mm and say what sound they hear next in mats. /a/ The teacher uses the same procedure to have students identify the final two sounds. 

  • In Unit 8, Lesson 1, Day 5, Alphabetic Principle, Blending Words with Long Aa, the students begin blending with /ā/ written a_e. The teacher writes a_e on the board and the word cap. Students blend the word using Routine 3, the Sound-by-Sound Blending Routine. /k/ /a/ /p/ . The teacher writes the letter c next to cap. Students say the letter’s sound. The teacher writes a_e, making sure to underscore the blank between the letters a and e. The class says the sound of a_e. If necessary, the teacher reminds students that a_e says /ā/. The teacher blends the sounds with students and points to the blank between a and e, and tells students they need another letter to make a word. The teacher writes p in the blank. Students say the letter’s sound /p/and then blend the word. Students read both words on the board (cap, cape). 

  • In Unit 12, Lesson 1, Day 1, Phonics Blending, the teacher uses Instructional Routine 6, Whole-Word Blending Routine, and Instructional Routine 7, Sentence-Blending Routine, for this activity. The teacher points to Alphabet Sound Cards Cc, Gg, Jj, Ll, Mm, Nn, Pp, Rr, Ss, Tt, and short Uu. They review the sound and the letter for each card. Using the ePresentation Resources, the teacher displays the word run. Students sound out /r/, then /u/, then /n/ and use the blending motion to blend all three sounds, and say the word run. The teacher repeats the routine with the words jump, plug, and plus. They repeat the routine with the words just and unjust. 

• Lessons provide students with frequent opportunities to read complete words by saying the entire word as a unit using newly taught phonics skills. Examples include:

  • In Unit 9, Lesson 3, Day 1, Alphabetic Principle, Building and Reading Words, students engage in the Word Building Routine in which they read the complete word they spelled and proofread for spelling.

  • In Unit 12, Lesson 3, Day 5, Phonics Blending, the teacher uses Instructional Routine 6, Whole-Word Blending Routine, and Instructional Routine 7, Sentence Blending Routine, for this activity. The teacher displays the word zap from the ePresentation Resources, and students sound out /z/, then /a/, then /p/. They use the blending motion to blend all three sounds, and students say the word zap. They repeat the routine with the words yap, yams, and flags. Students repeat the routine with the word size. They repeat the routine with the words nose, froze, and zone.

• Lessons provide students with frequent opportunities to decode words in a sentence. Examples include:

  • In the Teacher Edition, Instructional Routine 4, Reading a Decodable Routine, students read a page silently and then read the page aloud. Students apply their knowledge of spelling and syllabication patterns to blend decodable words. They refer to the Alphabet Sound Cards as necessary. They repeat this procedure for each page. After this reading, students respond to the story by discussing unfamiliar words, retelling the story,  and responding to questions by pointing to the answers in the text.

  • In Unit 10, Lesson 3, Day 5, Reading the Decodable, the teacher uses Instructional Routine 4, the Reading a Decodable Routine, for the procedure for reading the decodable book.

  • In Unit 12, Lesson 1, Day 2, Guided Practice, the students complete Skills Practice page 205 for additional practice in blending and writing words. They read aloud each sentence, and students blend each word as much as necessary. Students write the word on the line before moving on to the next word.

• Lessons provide students with frequent opportunities to build/manipulate/spell and encode words in isolation based in common and newly taught phonics patterns. Examples include:

  • In Unit 9, Lesson 3, Day 1, the teacher gives the students individual letter cards and uses the Word Building Routine for the students to build the words cap and cape. 

  • In Unit 10, Lesson 1, Day 1, the teacher gives the students individual letter cards and uses the Word Building Routine for the students to build the words: mats, maps, taps, pats, and stamps. 

  • In Unit 11, Lesson 2, Day 3, Alphabetic Principle, Building and Reading Words, students engage in the Word Building Routine in which they use Alphabet Sound Cards to spell the words: moles, mold, told, and lone.

• Materials contain a variety of methods to promote students’ practice of previously taught grade-level phonics. Examples include:

  • Sound cards are used to review letter names and sounds. 

  • Alphabet books are used to review letter names and sounds.

• Materials clearly delineate a scope and sequence with a cohesive, intentional sequence of phonics instruction and practice to build toward application of skills. Examples include:

  • The Teacher Edition, Scope and Sequence for Sound and Spelling Introduction, indicates the sequence for introducing each consonant and vowel sound. The pattern introduces a sound as an initial sound, a final sound, and then a review of two or three sounds at a time. The sounds introduced correspond with the decodable words in a core and practice decodable book.

  • In Unit 3, Unit Planner, a scope and sequence highlights a progression of the following sounds with corresponding letters: s/s/, m/m/, d/d/, p/p/, and a/a/. The unit culminates with a review of all the sounds of the unit.

  • In Unit 6, Unit Planner, a scope and sequence highlights a progression of the following sounds: j/j/, f/f/, x/x/, z/z/, and u/u/. The unit culminates with a review of all the sounds of the unit.

  • In Unit 10, Unit Planner, Lesson 1, there is a scope and sequence that highlights a progression of the building and reading words with the following letters and sounds: a, m, p, s, t, d, n, i, b, c, r, u.

• Materials have a clear research-based explanation for the order of the phonics sequence. Examples include:

  • In the Teacher Edition, Resource Library, Foundational Skills: “Five Ways to Build the Cornerstone of Proficient Reading,” page 12, the materials state that “There is no single best sequence for introducing sounds and letters” but that the sequence “should begin with relationships that have high utility in making words” and “short vowels should be introduced gradually, followed by digraphs, inflectional endings and long vowels.”

  • In OCR Foundational Skills Kit, Grade K, Foundational Skills: “Five Ways to Build the Cornerstone of Proficient Reading” research report, the author Marsha Riot explains that the hierarchy of difficulty ranges from consonants whose sounds can be produced in isolation with the least distortion, high utility consonants, short vowels, digraphs, inflectional endings, and long vowels.

• Materials provide some opportunities for students to develop orthographic and phonological processing. Some encoding tasks do not require students to use letters and sounds to encode because students copy the word’s spelling. There are limited encoding tasks for students to encode in sentences or phrases. Examples include:

  • In Unit 11, Lesson 1, Day 2, Phonics, Guided Practice, the teacher guides students in completing Skills Practice page 190 for additional practice blending and writing words. The teacher says, “Listen as I read each sentence. Look at the picture. Blend and read each word. Circle the best word to fill the blank and then write the word on the line.” This is only a partial encoding activity and does not include sentences or phrases.

  • In Unit 4, Lesson 1, Day 5, Guided Practice, students complete Skills Practice pages 58–59 for additional practice writing the letters h and t and identifying initial /h/ and /t/. Some of the things in the pictures on page 58 begin with /h/, and some start with /t/. The teacher names each picture and asks students if it starts with /h/ or /t/. They write an h or a t to complete each word. This is only a partial encoding activity and does not include sentences or phrases.

  • In Unit 12, Lesson 2, Day 3, students complete Skills Practice page 211 for additional practice in blending and writing words. The teacher reads aloud each sentence. Then students blend and read each word to the right of the sentences. Finally, students write the word that completes each sentence before moving on to the next word. This is only a partial encoding activity.

The materials reviewed for Kindergarten partially meet the criteria for Indicator 1p.

The materials provide a limited purpose for reading. The purpose is primarily conducted through a picture walk and prediction before reading. The materials contain no explicit directions for the teacher to model how to engage a text to emphasize reading for a purpose. While students discuss illustrations, make predictions, and engage in text-to-self thinking, there is no evidence found that materials contain explicit directions and/or think-alouds for the teacher to model how to engage with a text to emphasize reading for purpose and understanding. The materials provide systematic and explicit instruction and practice in fluency by focusing on accuracy and automaticity in decoding through the use of Pre-Decodable and Decodable Books and the use of the Pickled Pepper Big Book and Pocket Chart Word Cards. Students utilize Routine 4: Reading a Decodable when engaging in decoding practice focused on accuracy and automaticity. This routine is in Units 11 and 12 as the units before that focused on fluency and automaticity of letters, sounds, and phonological awareness skills based on the scope and sequence and Kindergarten expectations. The materials provide systematic instruction of high-frequency words with words introduced throughout the year. Although there are frequent opportunities for students to read the high-frequency words and many instances of teachers modeling the reading of the words, there are not frequent opportunities for the teacher to model spelling for the students. Teachers do not model the spelling as part of introducing high-frequency words. Students spell a high-frequency word with the teacher if it is in the sentence they are reading during Phonics Blending and Sentence Extension, and they spell by typing them in during eActivities. There is a sufficient number of high-frequency words in the Kindergarten materials.

• Some opportunities are provided over the course of the year in core materials for students to purposefully read emergent-reader texts. Examples include:

  • Read emergent-reader texts with purpose and understanding.

    • In Unit 2, Lesson 1, Day 2, Reading a Pre-Decodable, students browse through the Pre-Decodable Book “The Zoo”, look at the illustrations, and comment on what they see to make predictions about the story. After reading the book using the Reading a Pre-Decodable Routine, the teacher leads the students in a group discussion to discuss the characters and events in the illustrations. Students connect the story to any zoo experiences they may have had. They also name other animals at a zoo and tell what they know about them.

    • In Unit 5, Lesson 1, Day 5, Reading a Pre-Decodable, students browse “Cal Can Bat” to look at illustrations to make predictions about the story. There is no purpose for reading.

    • In Unit 7, Lesson 1, Day 5, Reading a Decodable, students browse the decodable book, “Kim and Sam”, look at the illustrations, comment on what they see, and make predictions. Although they do make predictions, students are not given a purpose for reading this story.

    • In Unit 9, Lesson 1, Day 5, Reading a Pre-Decodable, students browse “Cute Little Mule” to look at illustrations to make predictions about the story. The materials do not provide a purpose for reading.

• Materials support students’ development of automaticity and accuracy of grade-level decodable words over the course of the year. Examples include:

  • In the Resource Library, Reading a Decodable Routine, Reread the Decodable includes partner reading, choral reading, and turn-taking, all of which are used to build fluency.

  • In the Sound-by-Sound Blending Routine, the teacher guides students through a process in which they spell a given word in a sentence sound-by-sound. Once the word has been spelled, the students reread the word to build fluency. Once the entire sentence has been written, the students reread the whole sentence to build fluency.

  • In the Whole-Word Blending Routine, the teacher guides students through a process in which they say the sound of each part of the word and then reread the word naturally. After the entire line of words has been decoded, the teacher directs students to reread the line to build fluency.

  • In Unit 11, Lesson 1, Day 1, Teacher Tip, Blending, if students find the whole-word blending difficult with the new blending sentences activity, they should drop back to sound-by-sound blending until they can blend with fluency.

  • In Unit 12, Lesson 3, Day 1, Warm Up, Reviewing Word Order, the teacher assigns the words in the top line of page 9 (the rhyme “Little Boy Blue” on pages 8–9 of Pickled Peppers) to individual students and gives them the corresponding Pocket Chart Word Card. They stand in a row, hold up their cards, and repeat their words in order from left to right several times until they can do it with fluency.

• Materials include systematic and explicit instruction of high-frequency words (e.g., the, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do, does). Examples include:

  • Read common high-frequency words by sight (e.g., the, of, to, you, she, my, is, are, do, does).

    • In Unit 1, Lesson 2, Day 4, the teacher introduces the sight word the. The teacher writes the on the board, points to it, says the, and asks students to say the word the. The teacher uses the word in a sentence and points to it again, asking students to read the word the. The teacher asks the students to find the in environmental print around the room. The lesson progresses to the teacher guiding students to read the decodable book “The Lunch”, which focuses on the sight word the.

    • In Unit 2, Lesson 1, Day 2, Reading a Pre-Decodable, Core Pre-Decodable 7: “The Zoo,” the teacher writes the high-frequency word had on the board. The teacher points to the word and says it. Then students say it with the teacher. The teacher tells students that the word had can be used to describe what someone or something owned. Students use had in a sentence. For review, the class reads each high-frequency word in the Word Bank, and students select one to use in a complete sentence.

    • In Unit 3, Lesson 2, Day 5, the teacher introduces the word of. The teacher writes the word of on the board, points to it, says of, and asks students to say the word of. The lesson progresses to the teacher guiding students to read the decodable book “We Carry,” which includes the previous high-frequency word the and also includes the word of. 

• Students have opportunities to read and practice high-frequency words in isolation; however, students do not have opportunities to spell high-frequency words. Examples include:

  • In Unit 2, Lesson 1, Day 4, Reading a Pre-Decodable, High-Frequency Word, the teacher writes the word he on the board and reads it aloud. Students say it with the teacher and then repeat it independently. Later in the lesson, the teacher is directed to review by reading each high-frequency word listed in the Word Bank, including the newly added he. The high-frequency words are also listed on the inside back cover of Core Pre-Decodable 8. 

  • In Unit 11, Lesson 2, Day 5, the teacher points to individual high-frequency words in a poem and asks students to read each word. The teacher points to the words little, boy, the, in, is, a, you, him, I, for, if, do, and to. The teacher points to individual words in a word bank and asks students to read the words is, on, a, the, with, at, go, you, and, was, can, and up. The teacher pulls high-frequency word flashcards from a bag and has the students read the individual words a, and, at, can, go, is, on, the, up, was, with, and you.

  • In Unit 12, Lesson 1, Day 5, the teacher reviews the high-frequency words as, some, were, then, but, a, can, at, in, he, and and. The teacher writes each word on the board and asks students to read each word individually. 

• Materials include a sufficient quantity of new grade-appropriate irregularly spelled words for students to make reading progress. Examples include:

  • In the Teacher Edition, Appendix, page 21, High-Frequency Word Lists, Section 4, lists 50 high-frequency words for Kindergarten.

  • In Unit 11, Lesson 1, Day 5, the class reviews high-frequency words little, to, did, said, all, do, of, we, am I, a, and, at, on, go, taught in previous lessons.

  • In Unit 12, Lesson 2, Day 5, the class reviews high-frequency words be, what, a, am, of, can, I, he, have, do, them on, taught in previous lessons.

The materials reviewed for Kindergarten partially meet the criteria for Indicator 1q.

The materials include the use of decodable texts aligned to the program’s scope and sequence. Students have multiple opportunities to reread decodable texts independently and in partnership with their peers to build fluency. The materials include decodable texts with high-frequency words aligned to the scope and sequence. Students have phonics activities as they encode words into sentences or phrases through penmanship/handwriting and Student Skills Pages at the letter/sound level. On some Student Skills Pages, students write the word that completes each sentence, but the students choose from a set of words and do not encode the word independently. In addition, there is minimal practice, if any, for writing high-frequency words in context. 

• Materials support students’ development to learn grade-level word recognition and analysis skills (e.g., one-to-one correspondences, syllable segmentation, rime and onset recognition, long and short sounds with common spellings and distinguish between similarly spelled words by identifying sounds of the letters) in connected text and tasks. Examples include:

  • In Unit 5, Lesson 1, Day 5, students read a decodable text including the words Cal, at, bat, Tim, tips, cap. Students read a decodable text using a decodable routine. The routine includes directions asking students to re-read the decodable to build fluency. 

  • In Unit 7, Lesson 1, Day 2, Alphabetic Principle, Alphabet Book, students point to words in the book that have the letters Ww, such as Walruses, Wildcats, and woof.

  • In Unit 9, Lesson 1, Day 5, Reading a Decodable, Blending, the teacher reviews Routine 6, the Whole-Word Blending Routine, with students before reading Core Decodable 17, “Cute Little Mule.” They blend the words go, pole, use, mule, and excuse. 

• Materials provide frequent opportunities to read high-frequency words in connected text and tasks. Examples include:

  • In Unit 1, Lesson 2, Day 4, the word the is the high-frequency word for the lesson. Students read the pre-decodable book “The Lunch.” The high-frequency word the is in the pre-decodable on each page in a rebus formatted pre-decodable.

  • In Unit 2, Lesson 3, Day 2, the word has is the high-frequency word for the lesson. Students read the decodable book “The Tree.” The pre-decodable book has the words the, has, and in using rebus formatted sentences. 

  • In Unit 5, Lesson 1, Day 5, the students read a decodable book with the words can, his, is. Students read the decodable using Reading a Decodable routine, in which students reread the decodable with a partner, taking turns, or by choral reading. 

  • In Unit 8, Lesson 1, Day 5, students read a decodable book with the words you, can, said, and, that, see in sentences. Students read the decodable using Reading a Decodable routine, in which students reread the decodable with a partner, taking turns, or by choral reading. 

  • In Unit 8, Lesson 1, Day 5, Reading a Decodable, students engage in Routine 4, in which they reread the decodable “Jake Plants Grapes.” This text reviews the following high-frequency words said and that.

  • In Unit 9, Lesson 2, Day 5, Reading a Decodable, students engage in Routine 4 in which they reread the decodable “We Did It!” This text reviews the high-frequency words be and she.

• Lessons and activities provide students some opportunities to learn grade-level word recognition and analysis skills while encoding (writing) in context and decoding words (reading) in connected text and tasks. Examples include:

  • In Unit 8, Lesson 2, Day 1, students practice writing the number word two in isolation. In Unit 9, Lesson 2, Day 3, students practice writing the number word nine in isolation. These opportunities occur infrequently in the Grade K materials.

  • In Unit 12, Lesson 1, Day 1, Student Edition, Guided Practice, the students complete Skills Practice page 204 for additional practice in blending and writing words. The teacher reads aloud each sentence and helps students blend each word as much as necessary.

  • In Unit 12, eActivity: Lesson 2, Day 4, Foundational Skills, students read, spell, and type high-frequency words in isolation. If the student is using a tablet or interactive whiteboard, they write the letters with a finger. How to spell and type the word is modeled in the eActivity.

• Materials include decodable texts that contain grade-level phonics skills aligned to the program’s scope and sequence. Examples include:

  • In OCR Foundational Skills Kit, Grade K, Core Decodables, there are 28 books with decodable texts for students to practice phonics skills. The Takehome Decodables include 28 books with decodable texts, and the Practice Decodables have 28 books with decodable texts.

  • The OCR Foundational Skills Kit, Grade K, Core Decodables, Books 1-9, contains texts aligned to the following graphemes: b, c, o, r, and g. Books 10-19 have texts aligned to the graphemes: j, f, w, k, and ae. Books 20-28 contain texts aligned to the graphemes: e, g, h, n, s, t, and v. This sequence is aligned to the program’s scope and sequence.

• Materials include decodable texts that contain grade-level high-frequency/irregularly-spelled words aligned to the program’s scope and sequence. Examples include:

  • The Core Decodables, Books 1-9, contain texts aligned to the graphemes: b, c, o, r, and g and the following high-frequency words: as, have, his, on, did, and girl. Books 10-19 contain texts aligned to j, f, w, k, and ae and the high-frequency words: was, were, her, what, said, that, down, and they. Books 20-28 contain texts aligned to e, g, h, n, s, t, and v and the high-frequency words: when, some, but, can, we, and her. These are aligned to the program’s scope and sequence.

The materials reviewed for Kindergarten partially meet the criteria for Indicator 1r.

Materials include a Unit Planner in the far-right column that identifies which days of the lessons contain assessments in the Assessment Book. The Assessment Book and Benchmark Assessment Book provide teachers with information regarding students’ current level of understanding and skills and instructional suggestions for assessment-based steps to help students progress toward mastery. The Assessment Blackline Masters Books provide student copies of assessments to view as teachers note responses on pages in the Assessment and Benchmark Assessment Book. There are multiple opportunities to assess foundational skills concepts, but there were no assessments found for letter formation. Materials also do not include assessment results guidance in the following areas: determining students’ proficiency level based on stages of reading development and specific, concrete instructional suggestions on how to support students’ progress toward mastery. There is a missed opportunity for providing teacher guidance for instructional strategies for assessment area deficits. Students use eActivities and eGames for informal assessment. A Teacher Resource Book with interventions is not cross-referenced with each assessment. There is a lack of direct, explicit information on how to provide intervention based on each assessment. Multiple assessment opportunities are provided over the course of the year in core materials for students to demonstrate progress toward mastery and independence of foundational skills.

• Materials include assessment opportunities that measure student progress of print concepts.  Examples include:

  • In the Unit Planner, at the front of each Unit, the assessment column on the right identifies which lessons contain the assessments that can be found in the Assessment book, but it does not include instructional suggestions.

  • The Assessment Book, T-12-T15 contains pages for the teacher to record student responses regarding letter identification. Students view the Assessment Blackline Masters Book during the assessment.

  • The Benchmark Assessment and Foundational Skills Assessment provide resources for the assessment of letter identification.

  • The Assessment Book, T-32, provides a checklist to assess a student’s ability in print concepts utilizing the Pickled Peppers Big Book.

  • The Resources, Assessment, Assessment TE, Unit 2, Print Concepts, is administered individually. Students demonstrate an understanding of 18 print concepts including front and back of book, title, author, table of contents, page number, letters, words, space between words, illustration, first and last word on the page, and moving finger from left to right.

• Materials include assessment opportunities that measure student progress of phonological awareness. Examples include:

  • The Unit Planner shows the frequency of formal and informal assessments. There are three Lesson Assessments and one Unit Assessment per unit.

  • In the Benchmark Assessment, Test 1, Rhyming, the teacher says a word, and the students must supply a word that rhymes.

  • In Unit 1, Lesson 2, Phonemic Awareness: Word Sequence, the teacher says a group of words, asks the positionality of one of those words, and the students provide the word’s position in the group (e.g., first, middle, or last).

  • In Unit 6 Assessment, Phonemic Awareness: Phoneme Segmentation, the teacher says a word, and the students must repeat the word sound-by-sound.

  • In Unit 7, Lesson 3, Day 5, Progress Monitoring, Assessment, pages 80-83, the materials assess students’ understanding of skills taught in the unit, including beginning and ending sounds.

• Materials include assessment opportunities that measure student progress of phonics and decoding. Examples include:

  • In the Diagnostic Assessment, there is one Phonics and Decoding assessment in which students identify letters representing a given sound, and one Oral Reading Fluency assessment in which students provide the sound of the associated letter.

  • The Resource Library, Benchmark Assessment, Test 1, Letter Sounds, provides a recording sheet for the teacher to document student knowledge of letter sounds for r, b, e, w, f, h, s, t, a, and p and an area to note errors and/or self-corrections.

  • In the Resource Library,  Benchmark Assessment, Test 2, Oral Fluency, students provide the sound the letter makes.

• Materials include assessment opportunities that measure student progress of word recognition and analysis. Examples include:

  • The Unit Planner for each unit indicates when assessments are completed. For example, Unit 1, Lesson 2, Unit Planner, Assessment column, notes Assessment pages 2-3 on Day 3 and Assessment pages 4-6 on Day 5.

  • In Unit 7, Lesson 3, Day 5, the teacher completes a formal assessment of high-frequency words. The teacher asks students to read a list of high-frequency words, including the words he, his, him, is, on, of, can, girl, have, to, it, did, were, him, and is.

  • In Unit 7, Assessment, students underline the high-frequency word the teacher says from a choice of three words. The words are: look, what, with, her, was. 

  • In Unit 8, Lesson 1, Day 5, there are both an Informal Assessment and a Formal Assessment. The Informal Assessment has students use the Unit 8 eActivity, Lesson 1, Foundational Skills, Blending, and also the Unit 8 eGame, Lesson 1, Foundational Skills. The Formal Assessment has students count phonemes in spoken words.

  • In Unit 9, Lesson 3, Day 5, there is a formal assessment of medial sounds. There are five questions. The first one is, “Teacher: This activity is about sounds in the middle of words. Listen carefully to what I say. Draw a line under the letter you think is correct. The word in the box is met. Which letter can replace e in the middle of the word to make the new word mat?” The students have three vowels to choose from. On page T101, students read five high-frequency words there, do, be, little, she.

Assessment materials provide teachers and students with information of students’ current skills/level of understanding. For example: 

• The Assessment Book, T 11, suggests that if students do not meet the recommended performance level, they should repeat the assessment after intervention or additional instruction.

• The Assessment Book, vi, provides criteria expectations for letter identification and print concepts.

• The Assessment Book, page 5, notes: “The primary purpose of the lesson assessments is to allow the teacher to monitor student progress regularly. This process makes it less likely that a student will fall behind because it allows teachers to adapt or repeat instruction as needed.”

• In the Performance Expectations: Lesson and Unit Assessments, 80% mastery is considered an acceptable level of mastery (e.g., four out of five items correct).

• In the Performance Expectations: Lesson and Unit Assessments, the benchmark is six correct out of eight assessment items on letter recognition.

• In the Benchmark Assessments, Diagnosis, page v, the materials state “Because each segment of the Benchmark Assessments provides a separate score for that strand of the curriculum, the strand scores can be used to identify the specific curriculum areas that are strengths or weaknesses for a student or across a classroom.”

• In the Benchmark Assessment, page 54, High-Frequency Word Reading Tracking Chart, the number of high-frequency words read correctly in one minute is plotted. There are targets for the number of words read correctly expected by each of the three benchmark assessments (first assessment - 5 words, second assessment - 15 words, third assessment - 38 words).

• In the Benchmark Assessments, pages 52-54, the teacher has a Benchmark Tracking Chart for each student. Plotting student scores gives a visual appreciation of progress, standing, and student trends.

• In the Benchmark Assessment, Screening, the following are cut-off scores for Oral Fluency: Letter Sounds: 10 (Test 1), 12 (Test 2), and 30 (Test 3).

• In Unit 4, Lesson 2, the materials provide teachers information regarding students' knowledge of the letters representing beginning sounds in hat, let, and nap and ending sounds in nap, but, and hen.

• In Unit 12, Lesson 3, Day 5, there is a recording sheet for high-frequency words. The teacher makes one copy of page 41 for students to use during the assessment and a copy of the chart to record results. The teacher circles the words that a student reads incorrectly. The teacher notes students’ strengths and weaknesses, the types of errors they make, and when they self-correct.

Materials provide limited support to teachers with instructional adjustments to help students make progress toward mastery in foundational skills. For example: 

• The Benchmark Assessment suggests that if students score below the cutoff for any Benchmark Assessment, teachers can use one or more of the following to help students get back on track: (1) reteach students who need extra help, (2) provide practice opportunities to students within the Skills Practice Workbooks, Decodable books, eGames, and Language Arts Handbook, and (3) differentiate instruction during Workshop. Intervention should be assigned to students who need more intensive help. These suggestions are general in nature, not specific to the assessment skill.

• The Assessment Book, Class Assessment Record, identifies students who have not mastered specific skills clusters. Students can be grouped for additional instruction and practice in the skills they have not yet mastered.

• In the Benchmark Assessments, Screening, it states, “At the beginning of the year, and then periodically throughout the year, any student who falls below the cutoff score on the 100-Point Skills Battery or Oral Fluency assessments should be considered for intervention. The student’s progress should be closely monitored through weekly oral fluency assessments.”

• The Assessment Book, page vii, provides some general suggestions for students to help them progress, but they are not specific. The materials state, “The High-Frequency Word assessments are based on five words plus an automaticity rating for a total score of six. The acceptable level of performance is four out of six. Also, you may choose to examine a student’s performance on the High-Frequency Word assessments at the word level. Here are some patterns of performance you might consider. 

  • Misreading regular vowels and consonants suggests that the student needs more practice in reading highly decodable words.

  • A student who reads highly decodable words well but has difficulty with less decodable words probably understands the most common sound spellings. The student probably needs practice in reading common words that have uncommon sound spellings. 

  • When a student reads words correctly but slowly or with hesitation, the student likely lacks confidence. Paired reading with an adult or older student who reads will help to build confidence and fluency. 

  • Frequent self-corrections imply that the student is not yet reading automatically. Paired reading with an adult or older student who reads will help to build automaticity.”

The materials reviewed for Kindergarten partially meet the criteria for Indicator 1s.

The materials include differentiated suggestions and a photo library to support language development and comprehension of vocabulary. English Language (EL) Tips are integrated throughout the lesson at the point of use. The materials also provide an EL Appendix and a Newcomers English Language Development Teacher’s Guide with eight board games to support those lessons. Routines are clear in the English Learner teacher’s guide, and routine names match the names of routines for the whole class (e.g., whole-word blending). The materials guide teachers in scaffolding and adapting lessons and activities to support students who read, write, speak, or listen below grade level or at the OCR “Approaching Level.” Each digital lesson has a toggle that can be switched on for differentiation support strategies and lesson extensions/adaptations. These activities are also in the Differentiated Instruction Guide in the Resource Library. The Program Overview refers to small groups as part of Workshop time, but there is no guidance in the Foundational Skills Kit explaining how or when to hold Workshop small groups. Although the program overview indicates that differentiated instruction occurs in small group settings, and differentiated instruction guides are provided in daily lessons, there is no mention of changing from the whole group to small group in the digital guide. 

The materials provide a Supplemental Word List in the Appendix found in the Resource Library to extend learning in the lesson. The Program Overview references lessons containing detailed suggestions for differentiated instruction for those Beyond Level. Although there is a toggle switch for differentiated learning in the digital teacher edition. Differentiation for Beyond Level was noted in the printed teacher editionat the bottom margin. The differentiated activities for Beyond Level are only evident in the print teacher edition, not the digital teacher edition. Many of the above-grade-level activities are not seen as doing more than their classmates rather different activities based on skill level.

Materials provide strategies and supports for students who read, write, and/or speak in a language other than English to meet or exceed grade-level standards. Examples include:

• In the English Learner Appendix, Contrastive Analysis Chart for Speakers of Other Languages: Phonemes, a correlation chart compares English phonemes to those of other languages.

• In Unit 2, Lesson 2, Day 5, the teacher assists ELs by repeating word cards with additional picture cards to demonstrate compound words. 

• In Unit 6, Lesson 1, Day 1, the teacher instructs students on the sound of the j. Materials provide instructions for teachers for four different English learner levels, with varying prompts according to English language proficiency level.

Materials some provide strategies and supports for students in special populations to work with grade-level foundational skills and to meet or exceed grade-level standards. Examples include:

• The Resource Library, Program Overview, page 7, refers to Workshop time to allow for small groups, but there is no elaboration of this in the lessons.

• The Resource Library, Program Overview, page 21, indicates that differentiated instruction tips in the teacher guide should be used in small groups, but these do not show up in the lessons.

• In Unit 2, Lesson 2, Day 5, materials provide a differentiated instruction guide for the sections labeled word part blending and how the alphabet works.

Materials provide extensions and/or advanced opportunities to engage with foundational skills at greater depth for students who read, write, speak, and/or listen above grade level. Examples include:

• The Resource Library, Appendix, Supplemental Word List can be used in several ways to extend the lessons. Words are listed by beginning sounds, ending sounds, and medial vowel sounds.

• In the Resource Library, Program Overview, every lesson contains detailed suggestions for differentiating instruction for the following groups of students: Approaching Level, On Level, and Beyond Level (this is seen in the print materials but not online materials).

• In Unit 3, Lesson 1, Day 2, Alphabetic Principle, students Beyond Level come up with their own words and explain if they start with the s/s/.

• In Unit 7, Lesson 2, Day 4, Phonemic Awareness, students Beyond Level come up with their own words to segment using Elkonin boxes.