4 Key Areas of Instruction

In Up-Words Reading®, students learn to read and spell using four key areas of instruction – phonological awareness, sight word instruction, syllabication, and high-quality literature.  

Key 1: Phonological Awareness and Phonics

Before students are asked to read words, they are taught to attend to and hear the sounds and sound patterns within spoken words through phonological awareness activities. By offering practice with blending sounds, segmenting, rhyming, phoneme identification and phoneme manipulation, Up-Words Reading® sets itself apart from other reading programs. Building on these phonological awareness skills, students are also taught letter-sound correspondence, which develops understanding of the alphabetic principle the concept that letters represent the sounds within a spoken word. As their knowledge of letter-sound correspondence grows, students are trained to use all that they know -- phonological awareness, alphabetic principle, and letter-sound correspondence -- to decode (read) and encode (spell) phonetic words. Explicit and systematic instruction of these skills, coupled with recurring multisensory drills, provides the Up-Words Reading® student with a strong phonetic foundation in reading and spelling. 

Key 2: Sight Word Instruction

The majority of words in the English language are phonetic. However, many words feature sounds and spellings that do not follow the phonetic code. In Up-Words Reading®, the second key area of instruction is sight word instruction. From the beginning of Kindergarten, students are taught to recognize and spell these words by sight using multi-sensory methods to build a strong visual memory of the words. Students learn to recognize and read these words both in and out of context. Sight word instruction is a part of each daily Up-Words Reading® lesson.  

Key 3: Syllabication and Structural Analysis of Multi-Syllabic Words

As students move into levels 1and 2 in the Up-Words Reading® program, they encounter the third key area of instruction, syllabication and structural analysis of multi-syllabic words. Using systematic and explicit instruction, coupled with multi-sensory activities and drills, students learn and internalize effective strategies for reading and spelling longer words.  

Key 4: High-Quality Literature

The final key area of instruction in Up-Words Reading® -- one that is too often overlooked -- is reading high-quality literature.  Students are offered two main avenues for enjoying reading in context. 

First, high-quality children’s books are woven into daily lesson plans as teacher-read stories. As students listen to and engage in stories that are read aloud, they build a critical foundation of auditory comprehension. Without this foundation, reading comprehension can be impaired.  

Additionally, students are given a wonderful, unique opportunity in Up-Words Reading®: The Up-Words Reading® Decodable Readers. These delightful, fully original readers -- exclusive to the Up-Words Reading® Program -- allow students to independently read engaging stories that are carefully matched with target skills.  What’s more, these readers feature 100% vocabulary integrity -- students will never encounter a word they haven’t been taught how to read. As they read and are read to, students build an early and vital understanding that the purpose of identifying words is to understand, enjoy, and learn from written language in a variety of contexts.