Foundations and Sounding Out the Sight Words
Foundations and Sounding Out the Sight Words both teach high-frequency words; however, they are two separate programs designed to serve different purposes.
Foundations and Sounding Out the Sight Words Comparison
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Foundations
- Foundations is a complete language arts program that incorporates phonemic awareness, comprehension, fluency practice, handwriting, spelling, and more.
- The lessons provide instruction in the phonograms and spelling rules to decode about 98% of English words.
- Lessons include extensive practice using thousands of high-frequency words in a complete and integrated curriculum.
- Lessons increase in length as you move through the program but can take on average 30-90 minutes to complete, depending on the level you are teaching.
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Sounding Out the Sight Words
- Sounding Out the Sight Words is a supplemental program to use alongside any language arts curriculum or can be used as an alternative to sight word drills.
- Includes sixty-six simple mini-lessons that teach specific phonograms and spelling rules that are needed to decode high-frequency words.
- The lesson material includes the 220 Dolch Words and 95 Dolch Nouns.
- This supplemental program is a tool to introduce the concepts students need to decode high-frequency words without rote memorization.
- Sounding Out the Sight Word lessons can be completed in 10-20 minutes.
Using Sounding Out the Sight Words
If you are using the Foundations program, adding Sounding Out the Sight Words is not necessary. The concepts covered are already included in the Foundations curriculum, and you will not be missing any instruction if you only use Foundations.
Ways to incorporate Sounding Out the Sight Words
- Teacher Reference - The Sounding Out the Sight Words index makes it easy to look up a particular high-frequency word and discover why it is spelled the way it is.
- Pre-Teaching Particular Words - You can introduce a particular word before the phonograms and rules have been taught in Foundations or supplement your classroom reading instruction. By pre-teaching the concepts, your student can practice decoding the word, plus learn other words that use the same phonograms and spelling rules.
- Targeted Practice and Review - Since the lessons are grouped by words using a specific phonogram sound or spelling rule, they are great for providing targeted review and simple practice for a particular concept that needs extra work.
- Alternative to Traditional Sight Word Lessons - instead of asking students to memorize high-frequency words through rote memorization, use Sounding Out the Sight Words to help your student learn to decode the word.