First Grade Title I Services
Children in first grade who are receiving Title I services are doing a program called "Sound Partners," this is our third year using this program. The Sound Partner lessons contain common, basic areas that change gradually so that lessons proceed in a very predictable fashion for our students. Sound Partners is a research based program. It introduces sounds/skills gradually, provides cumulative practice and review, teaches letter-sound correspondences and decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling) of letters/sounds. Some of the special features of this program include; modeling for the students, scaffold techniques (providing needed help and small steps so students can have success and move towards independent mastery of the reading skill.)
The early lessons cover instruction in most common sounds of individual letters and letter pairs, as well as containing practice in segmenting words into phonemes and a strategy for sounding out unfamiliar words composed of previously taught letter sounds. Spelling practice, word lists, and storybook reading are added throughout the lessons. In the middle lessons the phonemic awareness activities are faded out, and more phonics instruction and reading and spelling practice are added, including words with initial/final blends, magic -e- words, and word endings. The later lessons continue to teach letter-sound combinations and introduce strategies for reading longer words. Story reading also takes up a bigger part of the lesson time.
The early lessons cover instruction in most common sounds of individual letters and letter pairs, as well as containing practice in segmenting words into phonemes and a strategy for sounding out unfamiliar words composed of previously taught letter sounds. Spelling practice, word lists, and storybook reading are added throughout the lessons. In the middle lessons the phonemic awareness activities are faded out, and more phonics instruction and reading and spelling practice are added, including words with initial/final blends, magic -e- words, and word endings. The later lessons continue to teach letter-sound combinations and introduce strategies for reading longer words. Story reading also takes up a bigger part of the lesson time.
