Unit Overview: 

Unit 1 will be a review for students who completed the Grade 1 CKLA program. In Unit 1, students will review: (1) a number of spellings from Grade 1 with an emphasis on consonant sounds; (2) one- and two-syllable words; and (3) a number of high-frequency Tricky Words. They will also read new decodable stories from the Unit 1 Reader, The Cat Bandit.

Back-to-School Week Lessons (1–5)

The Back-to-School lessons reacquaint students with the CKLA daily routines and exercises. In addition, the Back-to-School lessons prepare students for the placement assessments that follow this week by providing practice and review of reading skills and code knowledge.

Placement Assessment Lessons (6–10)

During this week, all students will participate in a comprehensive series of placement assessments to evaluate their knowledge of the skills taught in the Grade 1 CKLA program. Detailed instructions are provided for analyzing each student’s performance, along with suggestions for grade-wide planning to determine the most effective and efficient way to group students for phonics instruction. It is imperative that students be placed in groups that correspond with their reading abilities. Students must receive instruction that is a good match for their current reading abilities and knowledge of the code.

Review of Spellings-to-Sounds Lessons (11–22)

In most CKLA Skills lessons, instruction involves the teacher introducing sounds first, followed by teaching the spellings for sounds. For example, a teacher would teach the sound /m/ before teaching the spelling ‘m.’ However, Grade 2 Units 1 and 2 are different as they feature instruction mainly oriented from spelling to sound. For example, you will show students the letter ‘m’ and ask them “What sound would you say if you saw this spelling in a word?” You will repeat this procedure to review many more spellings throughout the Unit 1 lessons.

The presentation and practice of sound/spelling correspondences in these lessons, most of which should be familiar to students who participated in the Grade 1 CKLA program, allows for a rapid review. Although the pace is fast, it should be appropriate and helpful for students who have already learned the bulk of these letter-sound correspondences, but may have forgotten some of the correspondences over the summer.

Unit Calendar:

Unit 1 is 22 instructional days with 5 pausing points. It is recommended that it be taught from August 22nd to October 1st.