Emergent Early Beginner Mid-Late Beginner

Phonological Awareness
Reminder: Most ‘sound only’
PA work happens in the
Emergent stage. PA is always
linked to letters for the
Beginner Reader (it becomes
Phonics), which blends and
connects with Spelling/Writing
work. Make sure your
activities match the
appropriate point of the PA
developmental continuum for
each phase.
Activity: Two for One! Long
Words, Short Words (students
work with compound words
and picture cards to see how
two short words make one
long word)
Justification: Because
emergent learners have
difficulty separating the sound
structure of a spoken word
from its meaning, this activity
begins to sensitize students to
the phonological aspects of
words by building compound
words. This activity focuses on
the concept that some words
are long, and some are short.
Activity: Beginning-Middle-End Activity: Push it, Say It.
Find Phoneme in Sound Boxes
Justification: Because these
students do not have full
phonemic awareness and do
not have all of the letter
sounds, this activity helps
students see a concrete way
of how words are made of
smaller pieces of sound.
Justification: Because these
students have a full phonemic
awareness and understand all
sounds, they can begin to
manipulate the sounds. This
activity helps mid-late
beginner students to blend
sounds as they move letter
tiles or cards. This skill helps
set them up for decoding
unfamiliar words.

Fluency/Reading Activity: Concept of Word – Activity: Rereading memorized Activity: Rereading

Whole-to-Part Five Day lesson texts independent leveled texts
framework.
Justification: These students Justification:
Justification: Emergent are very new to reading Because these students are
students are learning about therefore by having them read still reading word by word and
letters and sounds at the same texts that have been are building up their lexicon of
time and by having them memorized, they are able to sight word vocabulary, by
fingerprint reading from gain exposure and confidence having them reread texts that
 memory, they are able to
begin to see the importance of vocabulary.
words in and out of context in
building the concept of word
which will then lend to the
process of reading in the later
stages.
Spelling/Writing Activity: Interactive Writing
and Morning Message
Justification: Because
emergent learners are not
writing or spelling in the full
sense later learners, the act of
offering these students the
opportunity to see the use of
the alphabet, phonemic
segmentation, letter-sound
matching, concept of word
and conventions. Students are
invited to come and share the
pen and add to the writing of
the message.
while building their sight word
Activity: Hopping Frog Game
Justification: Because these
students are still very new to
spelling and are typically able
to write using beginning and
ending sounds, this game
helps them focus on the
medial vowel which will then
help set them up to begin to
move into mid-late beginner
development.
are on their independent
reading levels, they are able to
have more exposure to
reading which builds
confidence through
predictable and repetitive
texts.
Activity: Build, Blend, and
Extend.
Justification:
This activity is helpful in
reinforcing phoneme
segmentation and blending as
a spelling inventory. Because
these students are moving
into 4-5 phonemes, this
activity helps foster the
building of moving through
the developmental stages of
spelling.