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Fundations®: Level K


Establish a strong foundation for reading, spelling, and handwriting through a structured literacy approach.

Curriculum Overview

Young girl smiling as she holds a dry erase marker

Level K Fundations provides early learners with a structured literacy approach to develop sound- and word-level skills so they progress into proficient readers and writers. Teachers should combine Fundations with a wide variety of text experiences and expose students to poetry and narrative and informational text.

By the end of Level K, students will be able to: 

  • Recognize and produce rhyming words
  • Segment words in a spoken sentence
  • Segment words into syllables
  • Segment and pronounce initial, medial, and final phonemes in spoken CVC words
  • Manipulate phonemes with additions or substitutions in one-syllable words
  • Name all letters of the alphabet
  • Write all manuscript letters in lowercase and uppercase
  • Sequence letters of the alphabet
  • Fluently produce sounds of consonants (primary) and short vowels when given the letter
  • Fluently produce sounds for basic digraphs (wh, sh, ch, th, ck)
  • Name and write corresponding letter(s) when given sounds for consonants, consonant digraphs, and short vowels
  • Distinguish long and short vowel sounds within words
  • Read and spell approximately 200 CVC words
  • Spell other words phonetically, drawing on knowledge of sound-letter relationships
  • Identify 75% of first 100 high frequency words, including 25–30 Trick Words (high frequency words) such as the, was, of
  • Identify and name correct punctuation at end of sentence
  • Capitalize the first letter of people’s names and of words at the beginning of sentences
  • Name the author and illustrator of a story and define their roles
  • Explain narrative story structure including character, setting, and main events
  • Use a combination of drawing and dictating to narrate linked events to tell about a story in sequence
  • Retell key details of narrative and informational text, using pictures or prompts as a guide
  • Identify characters, settings, and main events in a story, with pictures or other prompts
  • Describe what happened in a story when given a specific illustration
  • With prompts, compare and contrast the experiences of characters in two stories
  • Explain the differences between narrative and informational text
  • Echo-read a passage with correct phrasing and expression
  • Identify and explain new meanings for familiar words and newly taught words
  • Produce and expand complete sentences in shared language activities

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