Embedded Files
Red Flag: Supporting materials do not provide a systematic scope and sequence nor opportunities for practice and review of elements taught (e.g., phonics, decoding, encoding).
This red flag practice is the least obvious, partly because ARC did have a phonics scope and sequence that was used, at least with the Foundational Skills Toolkits. However, ARC Core had a much more limited phonics than the IRLA toolkits, which were previously not part of ARC Core.
Even when considering the original toolkit scope and sequence, the supporting materials provide very minimal opportunities for practice and review of elements taught.
Phonics was covered very briefly.
Phonics was covered very briefly.
Prior to recent changes and the addition of the toolkits into ARC Core, phonics was only covered in the first Kindergarten unit. And even this scope was not systematic. There are instructions to:
“Choose the sequence most appropriate for your class” which implies several things:
The sequence for the letter sounds is not important.
There are no associated texts for introducing letter sounds.
No systematic sequence nor decoding practice.
No systematic sequence nor decoding practice.
The Yellow and Green levels, due to their foundation in three-cueing, effectively do not have a scope and sequence outside of the Power Words. These books primarily provide practice for memorizing Power Words and do not provide sufficient decoding practice for typical kindergarten-level words (CVC words).
Even when blends and digraphs are introduced in 2G, it is only to help scaffold cueing.
Students are not expected to use vowels in their reading until they move to the Blue level.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse