Early Literacy: Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Sight Words, and Reading Fluency
Pre-K through Grade 2 | Aurora Curriculum Pack
Aurora Early Literacy standard: Learning to read is the most consequential skill a child acquires. Before a child can read words, they must hear sounds. Before they can write sentences, they must form letters. This strand follows the Science of Reading — the documented research consensus that effective reading instruction builds phonemic awareness (sounds), phonics (sound-letter correspondence), vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension in sequence. The griot tradition in West Africa demonstrates that before writing, oral precision was the foundation of preserved knowledge. Both traditions agree: language begins with careful listening.
Free supplemental resources: Starfall (starfall.com) | Khan Academy Kids (khanacademy.org/kids) | Readworks (readworks.org) | Phonics with Robot (phonicswithrobot.com) | See and Learn Reading (seeandlearn.org) | Epic! Books (getepic.com, free for educators) | LibriVox (librivox.org) — free audiobooks
Stage 1 — Phonemic Awareness: Hearing Sounds in Words (Pre-K and K)
Pre-K and Kindergarten
What is phonemic awareness? A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a language. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate those sounds WITHOUT using written letters. This must come BEFORE phonics. A child who cannot hear the difference between "bat" and "cat" is not ready to decode written letters for those words.
The sequence: Hear sounds in words → Identify beginning/middle/end sounds → Blend sounds into words → Segment words into sounds → Manipulate sounds → Then add letters (phonics)
Rhyming Awareness — Do These Words Rhyme?
Say each pair out loud. Circle YES or NO. If NO, think of a word that DOES rhyme with the first word:
Word pair
Rhyme? (yes/no)
A word that rhymes with the first word
cat / hat
dog / log
sun / run
tree / car
big / pig
book / hook
fan / man
Beginning Sounds — What Sound Does This Word Start With?
Say each word out loud. Write the SOUND you hear at the beginning (not the letter — just say the sound aloud first, then write it):
sun starts with: /___/
ball starts with: /___/
dog starts with: /___/
mama starts with: /___/
fish starts with: /___/
rain starts with: /___/
cup starts with: /___/
hand starts with: /___/
love starts with: /___/
Blending Sounds — Put the Sounds Together to Make a Word
Say each set of sounds slowly, then blend them together. Write the word you hear:
Stage 2 — Phonics: Letters, Sounds, and Word Families (Kindergarten and Grade 1)
Kindergarten and Grade 1
What is phonics? Phonics teaches the relationship between letters (graphemes) and sounds (phonemes). Once a child can hear sounds reliably, phonics shows them which written symbols represent those sounds. The goal is decoding — the ability to look at any written word and produce its spoken form accurately, even a word they have never seen before.
Short Vowel Sounds — The Five Core Vowels
a = /a/ as in cat, hat, map, ran e = /e/ as in bed, hen, pet, ten i = /i/ as in big, fin, hit, sit o = /o/ as in hot, mop, top, log u = /u/ as in bug, cut, fun, run
Read each word aloud and circle the vowel sound you hear. Then write two more words with the same vowel sound:
Word
Vowel sound
Write 2 more words with same vowel sound
map
/a/
bed
/e/
sit
/i/
top
/o/
bug
/u/
Word Families — Read and Build Each Family
A word family shares the same vowel + ending pattern (called a "rime"). Knowing one word in a family helps you read the whole family:
-at family: cat, bat, hat, mat, sat, fat, pat, rat
Read each one aloud. Cover and write 3 from memory:
-en family: hen, ten, pen, men, den, yen
Read each one aloud. Cover and write 3 from memory:
-ig family: big, dig, fig, jig, pig, wig
Read each one aloud. Cover and write 3 from memory:
-op family: hop, mop, top, pop, shop, stop
Read each one aloud. Cover and write 3 from memory:
Consonant Digraphs — Two Letters, One Sound
Digraph
Sound
Example words
Write one more word with this digraph
sh
/sh/
ship, fish, shop, wish
ch
/ch/
chin, much, chair, check
th
/th/
the, that, thin, with
wh
/wh/
when, what, where, which
ng
/ng/
ring, sing, thing, bring
Long Vowel Patterns — "The E Makes the Vowel Say Its Name"
Silent E rule: When a word ends in a silent E, the vowel before the consonant says its LONG sound (its letter name).
cap → cape hop → hope bit → bite cut → cute pet → Pete
Add a silent E to change the word. Read both words aloud. Write the meaning change:
rob → rob___ = _______ tub → tub___ = _______ us → us___ = _______
Stage 3 — Sight Words and High-Frequency Words (Grade 1)
Grade 1
What are sight words? High-frequency words are the most common words in written English — they appear so often that fluent reading requires recognizing them instantly, without sounding out. Many of them are irregular (their spelling does not follow phonics rules) so they must be memorized. The Dolch word list and Fry word list are the most documented research-based sight word sequences. Mastering the first 100 Fry words enables reading approximately 50% of all written English text.
Fry Words 1-50 — Read, Cover, Write, Check
Read each word aloud. Cover it. Write it. Uncover and check. Mark any you needed to see again with a star:
Word
Write it
Write it again
Mastered?
the
of
and
a
to
in
is
you
that
it
he
was
for
on
are
as
with
his
they
I
Number of words mastered this session: _______ / 20 Date: _______ Come back to any starred words tomorrow.
Sight Word Sentences — Read and Copy
Read each sentence aloud smoothly, then copy it on the line below:
The cat sat on the mat.
I can see the big dog run.
He has a red hat and I like it.
They are going to the store with us.
Stage 4 — Reading Fluency and Comprehension (Grade 2)
Grade 2
Reading fluency is the ability to read text accurately, at an appropriate pace, and with expression. Fluency is the bridge between decoding (phonics) and comprehension. A reader who is still working hard to decode every word has no mental resources left for understanding meaning. Fluency benchmarks (DIBELS/AIMSWEB norms): Grade 2, mid-year = 72-100 words per minute with 95%+ accuracy. Oral reading rate is tracked weekly.
Fluency Tracking — Timed Reading Practice
Use any decodable or leveled text at your reading level. Read for exactly 1 minute. Mark where you stopped. Count the words read correctly:
Date
Text / page
Words read in 1 minute
Errors
Words correct per minute (WCPM)
Goal this week
72+ WCPM
72+ WCPM
72+ WCPM
72+ WCPM
72+ WCPM
Reading Response — After You Read
After any reading session, answer these questions in complete sentences:
Book / passage title: _______________________________________________
1. What happened first in this text? _______________________________________________
2. Name one character or person from the text and describe them in one sentence:
3. What is one question you still have after reading?
4. Write one sentence predicting what might happen next (or what the author might say next):
5. What is one word from this text you did not know? Write it and find its meaning:
For any new word from your reading, complete this vocabulary record:
Definition (in your own words):
Draw a picture of the word:
Examples (words or situations where you'd use it):
Non-examples (what this word does NOT describe):
Word: _______________________
Aurora Pause — All Early Literacy Stages
Documented context: In the antebellum American South, it was documented as a criminal offense to teach enslaved Black people to read. Frederick Douglass described learning to read as the path to freedom — and his enslavers confirmed this by trying to stop him. The griots of West Africa memorized and transmitted thousands of years of history, genealogy, law, and poetry entirely through oral precision — demonstrating that the power of language does not depend on written form. Both traditions confirm the same thing: the ability to read, speak, and communicate with precision is power. No law, convention, or institution can take back what a person reads and understands.
Frederick Douglass wrote in his narrative: "I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty — to wit, the white man's power to enslave the black man. It was not color, but knowledge, that made the difference." Why did Douglass connect reading to power rather than to school or education? Write one sentence in your own words: