THE 5 PILLAR OF EARLY LITERACY WITH PHONICS STAGE 1

WHO IS THE COURSE FOR

This course is designed for educators and intervention specialists working with emergent, beginning, and transitional readers in grades K-3. It provides practical guidance across five pillars of early literacy instruction to equip students for independent reading success.

The modules on decoding, phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary/sight words, and reading fluency offer instructional strategies, activities, and assessments tailored to different stages of literacy development. Teachers can apply this content to structure a comprehensive foundational reading program in line with stage 1 phonics goals.

Whether leading whole-class literacy blocks, small reading groups, or one-on-one intervention, instructors will discover ways to explicitly teach early reading skills. Through multisensory techniques, differentiated activities, decodable texts, and informal assessments, they can scaffold students’ mastery of concepts from print awareness to proficient comprehension.

The course modules highlight the scope and sequence for building decoding, spelling, and word recognition skills systematically. Teachers of emergent readers will gain ideas for fostering alphabet knowledge, concept of words, phoneme blending and more. For those working with beginning readers and transitional readers, the focus expands to advanced phonics, automaticity, and multisyllabic word reading strategies.

Any educators seeking to strengthen their foundational reading instruction and early intervention competencies will benefit. Those striving to balance explicit modeling, ample guided practice, and motivating feedback will find applicable tips throughout the course. Equipped with these essential literacy teaching capabilities, instructors can empower young students to become capable, enthusiastic readers.

About Course

Module 1 FOUNDATIONS OF DECODING

This module focuses on decoding skills, which involve using knowledge of letter-sound relationships to accurately read words in print. Decoding is the foundation for word recognition and fluent, automatic reading.

What You Will Learn:

• The role of decoding in the reading process
• Sounding out words through segmenting and blending sounds
• Using phonics rules to decode letter patterns
• Developing phonemic awareness and letter-sound correspondence
• Strategies for decoding multi-syllabic words
• Assessing decoding skills through various measures

Module 2 BUILDING PHONEMIC AWARENESS

This module examines phonemic awareness, which is the ability to identify, segment, and manipulate individual sounds in spoken language. Phonemic awareness provides the basis for learning phonics and decoding print.

What You Will Learn:

• Definition and components of phonemic awareness
• Main phonemic awareness skills such as blending, segmentation, deletion, substitution
• Principles for effective instruction in phonemic awareness
• Engaging activities to build phonemic awareness
• Informal and formal assessment of students’ phonemic awareness

Module 3 UNLOCKING WORDS THROUGH PHONICS

This module explores phonics instruction, which teaches students the predictable relationships between written letters and spoken sounds. Phonics provides beginning readers with a system for decoding new words independently.

What You Will Learn:

• The scope and sequence of phonics skills instruction
• Explicit teaching methods and ample practice for phonics mastery
• Using manipulatives, songs, and wordplay to engage students in phonics lessons
• Assessing phonics skills through decoding inventories, spelling tests, and more
• Importance of phonics for unlocking the code of text

Module 4 EXPANDING VOCABULARY AND SIGHT WORD KNOWLEDGE

This module discusses strategies for developing students’ vocabulary knowledge and automatic sight word recognition. These are key foundations for reading increasingly complex text.

What You Will Learn:

• Importance of oral vocabulary development through rich language exposure
• Systematic methods for building a sight word vocabulary
• Shared reading techniques to expand vocabulary and sight words
• Explicit vocabulary instruction using multimedia and deep processing
• Assessing vocabulary breadth, depth, and sight word retention
• Role of vocabulary and sight words in fluency and comprehension

Module 5 DEVELOPING ACCURACY AND FLUENCY

This module examines fluency, the ability to read text quickly, accurately, and with expression. Fluency depends on accuracy, automaticity, and prosody and is essential for skilled reading.

What You Will Learn:

• The components of reading fluency including accuracy, automaticity, and prosody
• Methods for developing accuracy in word recognition
• Strategies to improve automaticity and instant word recognition
• Fostering prosodic reading through modeling and practice
• Assessing reading rate, expression, and comprehension to monitor fluency
• Importance of fluency for overall reading proficiency