First Grade Phonics & Phonemic Awareness

Course Description

In this course, students build on the language and literacy foundational skills established in Kindergarten. The course is structured, systematic, morphophonemic (relating to sounds that belong to the same letters or groups of letters and the relationships among them as well as the conditions that determine when the same letter/s produce different sounds), multisensory, and scaffolded to include a written spelling component.

Grade Level(s): First Grade

Related Priority Standards (State &/or National):  K-5 Missouri Learning Standards & ELA Priority Standards

Essential Questions

• How do readers create meaning from informational and literary texts?
• How does a student become a skilled reader?
• How do phonemic awareness and phonics impact learning to read?
• How do sound and letter relationships help a student learn to write?

Enduring Understandings/Big Ideas

• Students will recognize that sentences are comprised of words separated by spaces
• Students will produce and identify sounds and syllables in spoken words
• Students will decode words in context by using letter-sound knowledge
• Students will use context to confirm or self-correct word recognition and understanding, rereading as necessary

Course-Level Scope & Sequence (Units &/or Skills)

• Lessons 1-10: Consonants
• Lessons 11-25: Short Vowels
• Lessons 26-75: Sight Words and Sound Review
• Lessons 76-105: Beginning Blends 
• Lessons 106-140: Long Vowel and Sight Words
• Lessons 141-155: Vowel-Consonant-e and Review Sight Words 
• Lessons 156-165: End Blends
• Lessons 166-180: Compound Words and Sight Words

Course Resources & Materials: Sonday System Essentials

Date Last Revised/Approved: 2022