Fundations

What is it?

Fundations is a multisensory and systematic phonics, spelling, and handwriting program that benefits all K-3 students. Fundations is designed as a whole-class, general education program used for literacy prevention (Tier 1) purposes. At the kindergarten level, Fundations works on letter recognition and letter sounds. At the first grade level, Fundations works on phonemic awareness, letter recognition, and letter sound relationships. At the second grade level Fundations has the students bridge their skills into phonics where they are blending sounds into words.

What are its benefits?

Students who receive Fundations instruction demonstrates:

· Larger gains in oral reading fluency.

· Improvement in phonemic awareness (phoneme segmentation).

· Improvement in phonological decoding (reading nonsense words).

· Significant gains in basic reading skills.

· Reduction in risk of later reading difficulties.

How Universal Literacy supports this program at PS 145?

Maintaining the goal of ensuring that all students are reading on grade level by the end of second grade; Universal literacy reading coaches help grade K-2 teachers build their knowledge base and skill level around instruction, curriculum, and assessment. Ongoing professional development as well as in-classroom demonstrations/modelling is provided to teachers for instructional growth.