Heggerty Early Pre-Kindergarten Phonological Awareness Curriculum Aust Ed

Overview: 35-weeks of lessons with 3 days per week of instruction, 5-7 components in each lesson

Grade level: 3 & 4 year old preschool classrooms

Format: Whole group instruction

Lesson length: 6-8 minutes

The Early Pre-K Phonological Awareness curriculum is meant for learners in 3- and 4-year-old classrooms, and the Early Learning and Development standards across all states were used to plan the lessons for instruction. While the standards and expectations differ from state to state, the Early Pre-K curriculum will teach 5 phonological awareness skills. The skills of rhyme, initial phoneme isolation, and blending are introduced at the beginning of instruction. Segmenting words and Final Phoneme Isolation are introduced in later weeks of instruction.

5 Phonological Awareness Skills
Rhyme repetition, recognition, and production
Initial Phoneme Isolation, including listening for a focus sound, alliteration and generating words that begin in a specific sound
Blending words, syllables, body-coda, and onset-rime (Note: we do not blend at the phoneme level like we do in the current PreK curriculum)
Segmenting into words, syllables, and onset-rime (begins in week 7; we do not segment into phonemes like we do in the current PreK curriculum)
Final Phoneme Isolation (introduced in Weeks 24-35)
2 Early Literacy Skills
Alphabet Knowledge
Language Awareness: Nursery Rhymes and sentences

The lessons include explicit language to teach the skills and provide directions for each activity. Teacher modeling and support is included within the lessons, along with hand motions.

The beginning weeks of instruction provide teachers with lessons for “Setting the Stage” to help students learn about listening for sounds and developing an understanding of the language play activities .