Description
Our goal is to provide teachers with the tools and resources to teach all children to decode and spell in a manner that leads students to become joyful, skilled, independent, and metacognitive readers and writers. Word-Wires is a comprehensive word analysis program that fosters a classroom environment where all students are honored for their personal strengths and literacy instruction meets them at their individual levels. Using Word-Wires, teachers can make instructional decisions that reflect a deep knowledge of linguistics, best teaching practices, and the individual needs of each student. We equip students with generalizable and transferrable skills for reading, spelling, and vocabulary acquisition.
Word Wires Foundations lays the groundwork for the program. It is a year-long program that introduces the core principles of word analysis by teaching students to work with sounds, letters, and meanings in relation to one another. The book emphasizes phonological awareness, orthographic organization, and phonics patterns. It is meant to establish the habits, language, and conceptual foundation students need for later learning.
The K-1 Foundation Curriculum is aligned with the Common Core Kindergarten and First Grade foundational skills. While some of the lessons may work with older children, we recommend teachers use the Wired For Reading™ intervention program instead, as the tone and pacing of the Word-Wires Foundation K-1 Curriculum is designed for use in a Core, Tier 1 Kindergarten or First Grade classroom.
Scope and Sequence:
Linguistic Based Phonological Processing
- Feel and hear all consonant sounds
- Feel and hear universal vowels (ee, ah, oo and uh)
- Identify and distinguish between onset sounds
- Identify onset and rime in three sound words
- Blend, isolate and manipulate three sound words with universal vowels
- Correctly sequence sounds in three and four sound words
- Feel and hear all other vowel sounds
- Blend, isolate and manipulate three sounds words with all vowel sounds
- Picture sorts based on onset, vowel, or ending sound
- Segment words into syllable beats
Foundational Literacy Concepts
- Alphabet sequencing
- Letter names and sounds
- Words have sound, letters, and meaning
- Syllable Segmentation
- Compound Words
- Homonyms
- High Frequency words
- Vocabulary
- Handwriting
- Word Wall
- Sound Wall
- Nouns, Verbs, and adjectives make sentences
- Onomatopoeia
Phonics with an emphasis on reading
- Consonant letter sounds
- Consonant digraphs (ch, th, sh, wh, ng)
- Universal Vowels (ee, ah, oo)
- Closed Vowels (short)
- Open Vowels (no, me)
- Silent e (name, note)
- R-controlled (ar, or, ur, ir, er)
- C expectancy
- Qu, x (Copy consonants)
- Diphthongs vowel teams: oo (moon), oo (hook)
- Nonsense word Reading with all known patterns
- Supplemental Lessons:
- Dipthongs and vowel teams: ou, ow, oi, oy, au, aw
- Two Vowels Go Walking: ai, ay, ea, oa
Morphological Awareness (Meaning Units) – All only oral word play
- Introduction to nouns, verbs and adjectives
- Generate words with the same root (camp, camping, camper, camps)
- Suffixes -s, -ing, -es, -er, -y, est
- Plural -es
- Regular and irregular past tense
- The prefix un, mis, mid, re
Writing
- Spell sort with known vowel patterns
- Spelling chains (pan, man, tan fan, can)
- Application of sound and letter awareness to student writing
- Word and phrase dictation
The curriculum set includes:
Three Volumes
- Part 1 (Units 1-3),
- Part 2 (Units 4-7),
- Appendices (Black Line Masters)
Teaching Tool
- 1 Mouth Mat Folder (A high quality file folder with the mouth pictures printed on the inside and a blank grid on the outside to speed up set-up for mouthy games. Includes two sheets of mouth pictures to cut out and adhesive dots for assembly)
