Reading and Phonics

Lesson Pathways is happy to provide access to FreeReading for instructing children in reading and phonics. FreeReading is an open-source instructional program that helps parents and educators teach literacy. Open-source means its source code is provided to allow modification by both users and developers. Thanks to this setup, FreeReading is able to provide high-quality, research-based instruction that has been shaped by a wide range of educators and researchers. FreeReading provides a full 40 weeks of phonological awareness and phonics activities.

We are providing FreeReading content to help homeschoolers and educators enjoy an easy, effective way to teach children to read. Parents and educators can use the FreeReading content as a standalone reading and phonics program, or they can use it as part of the Lesson Pathways Language Arts Program. 

The reading and phonics content is separated into two years of instruction: kindergarten, first grade, and second grade. There are 20 weeks of units for the Year K Level, another 20 for the Year 1 Level, and a final 20 for the Year 2 Level. Year K and Year 1 provide FreeReading content while Year 2 consists of resources compiled by Lesson Pathways. The weeks are named Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, and so on, making it easy to start with the most basic lessons and move on gradually. Each week is then separated into five days, so that the parent or educator has lessons and activities ready for use right away and without hassle. Each day of FreeReading instruction is intended to last for about 30 minutes, but many are able to complete the activities in less time. Daily Year 2 Reading and Phonics instruction may take slightly longer to complete, depending on the activities the parent and child choose to complete each day.

Over 40 weeks of instruction (20 weeks each year), FreeReading covers the following elements:

• Phonological Awareness
• Letter Sounds
• Letter Writing
• Sounding Out
• Word-Form Recognition
• Irregular Words
• Reading Connected Text
• Letter Combinations
• Irregular Words II
• Advanced Phonics

Each week of FreeReading lessons and activities serves as a reading and phonics program for kindergarten and first grade children who are proceeding as expected in reading as well as those who are struggling and in need of some extra help. These units were developed based on recommendations of the National Reading Panel as well as other reading researchers. They are structured to meet the needs of small groups of children, ranging from one to six beginning readers. Year 2 Reading and Phonics is provided as a continuation of the first two years of instruction provided by FreeReading. It is intended to prepare children to continue on with Year 3 Language Arts.

The FreeReading units provide a wonderful tool for teaching children reading and phonics, and can be combined with the Lesson Pathways Language Arts Program to provide a comprehensive selection of language arts elements, including literature, sight words, writing composition, beginning parts of speech and sentence structure, and more.

 This content was provided by FreeReading.netunder the Creative Commons license Attribution-Share Alike 3.0.