Designed to supplement your existing literacy curriculum, the Heggerty Conciencia Fonológica lessons easily integrate into dual language or transitional bilingual classrooms. When lessons are taught consistently each day, teachers see improvement in students’ reading, spelling, and writing, as the students learn to hear the syllables in words and the sounds in syllables.
BLOG POST
Phonemic Awareness with English Language Learners
At Heggerty, we get a lot of questions about how to best use our curriculum with students learning English. This isn’t a surprise given that the number of students who are labeled English Learners (ELs) has been steadily increasing for decades. In this blog post, we unpack what phonemic awareness instruction looks like for English Language Learners and why it matters.
BLOG POST
Phonemic Awareness in a Dual Language Classroom
When people think about teaching early literacy skills in Spanish, many don’t jump to phonemic awareness right away, but rather they think of phonological awareness. However, students working with Spanish also do need to develop phonemic awareness. In this post, Heggerty Literacy Specialist Erica Suarez reflects on her personal experience as a DLL educator.
Easy to Implement
Lessons are easy to follow, require minimal prep time, and directly connect teachers to digital resources and videos helping them to implement the curriculum with fidelity.
Fast Paced and Engaging
The 8-12 minute daily lessons are the perfect combination of focus and fun that will have your students begging for more “Heggerty time!”
Cost Effective
Go digital for all-in-one access to every level of the Heggerty curriculum, daily lesson videos, on-demand professional development, and more, in both English AND Spanish.
We serve over 7,250 districts across the U.S.
🎥 Skill Tutorial Video: Deleting (Initial) Phonemes; “We can delete a syllable or sound from a word and say what is left.”
Students will hear and repeat a word. Students will then be asked to delete the initial sound, and say what is left.
Watch Mrs. VanHekken as she demonstrates how to teach this skill with the deleting hand motion.
🙌 Hand Motion: The teacher holds out both hands with open palms. The right hand represents the initial phoneme and the left hand represents the final phoneme. Remove the right hand to delete the initial phoneme and show the remaining phoneme with the left hand.
⭐ Skill Progression in the Primary Curriculum:
Week 1-2: Deleting syllables from spoken words
Weeks 3-15, 25-26: Deleting initial phoneme from spoken words
Weeks 16-19, 27-28: Deleting final phoneme from spoken words
Weeks 20-24, 29-30: Deleting phonemes within a word
✔️ Download sample lessons & watch more lesson videos on our website: www.heggerty.org
⭐ The best part of our day is seeing a glimpse inside your classrooms during #heggertytime! This week we are highlighting a 2nd-grade classroom from Fox Valley Elementary school in Michigan!
"2nd graders starting their morning with phonemic awareness using a program called Heggerty and then they get into some phonics with a cool activity called “Say It, Pop It, Write It, Read It”. These kids are doing great! We love the program and so do the kids!"
📸 We can`t wait to spot more #heggertytime, be sure to tag us & use our hashtag in your Heggerty time photos!
⬇️ Are you implementing Heggerty this school year? Comment below with the week just wrapped up!
✨ Isolating medial sounds in words is a basic phonemic awareness skill. The focus is on hearing the medial or vowel sound in a word. We ask students to isolate both short & long vowel sounds in the words they hear.
🎢 We use our roller coaster hand motion when we are isolating those medial sounds, watch Mrs. Bottari as she walks through how to use this hand motion with your students!
🔗For more skill tutorial videos, visit our YouTube channel using the link in our bio.
⭐ Can you name the skill this group of Heggerty all-stars are practicing?
📘 They are practicing Phoneme Isolation: Medial Sounds, students will listen to a word and isolate the short vowel sound they hear. Students will use the roller coaster hand motion, and come back to the top of the roller coaster to identify the middle/vowel sound.
🎢 Hand Motion- Roller coaster, the teacher & students move their arm like a roller coaster going over a hill. The bottom of the hill is the beginning of the word; top of the hill is the vowel sound; bottom of the hill is the end of the word.
✔️ Example: "We are listening for the vowel sound we hear in words." Teacher- hat, Students- haaaat, /ă/
💡 Tip: To reinforce the understanding of isolating the last or medial sound in a word, teachers can use Elkonin Boxes with colored chips to offer a visual for support for phoneme location.
🔗 Click the link in our bio for lesson plan samples & skill tutorial videos!
⭐ Skill Highlight: (Phoneme Isolation) Isolating Final Sounds is a basic phonemic awareness skill & can be more challenging than isolating the onset of a word.
💪 We use the punch-it-out hand motion to help students isolate that final sound.
✔️ As the teacher, you are going to use your left arm because students will see that as your right and we want students to see these sounds moving from left to right, the same way they are going to map print.
🎥 Watch our very own, Mrs. Bottari model how to use this punch-it-out motion to isolate the final sound in a word.
🔗 For the full skill tutorial video, head to the Heggerty YouTube channel, using the link in our bio.
⭐ It`s time for another #heggertytime share, this week we are excited to share Ms. Garcia`s 1st-grade class from Rancho Verde Elementary school in Texas.
📙 These 1st graders are working on the skill- Phoneme Isolation: Final Sounds, "We are listening for the last sound we hear in a word."
💪 Ms. Garcia`s 1st graders will listen to a word and isolate the last sound they hear, using the "punch it out" hand motion, sliding their right arm across the body when saying the first part of the word, and punching straight up in the air when saying the final sound
✔️ Teacher Tip: To reinforce the understanding of isolating the last sound in a word, use Elkonin boxes with colored chips to offer a visual for support for phoneme location
🔗 Find links for sample lessons, skill tutorial videos & a free Elkonin Box template in the link in our bio.
📒Heggerty in the classroom: Ms. Baum leads her class in our Primary curriculum, they are working on deleting initial phonemes. @oneccps @reamselementary
⭐ Skill: Deleting Initial Phonemes- “We can take away the first sound from a word and say what is left.”
🙌 Hand Motion: Ms. Baum is modeling our deleting hand motion, holding two open palms out in front of her, her right hand is the initial sound, left hand is the rest of the word. Watch as she pulls away her right hand as the class deletes the first sound, and shows what part remains with her left hand.
🤩 Her students are engaged, her pacing is fast & fun and they are on their way to becoming phonemic awareness all stars, keep up the great work!
Ready to try Heggerty in your classroom? Visit www.heggerty.org to download sample lesson plans!
📒Heggerty in the Classroom: (Pt. 2) Watch the amazing Mr. Williams and his students practice deleting initial phonemes during their #heggertytime.
⭐️Skill Focus: Deleting Initial Phonemes- “We can delete a sound from the beginning of a word and say what is left.”
🖐Heggerty Hand Motion: Notice Mr. Williams’s hand motions, he holds out both of his hands with open palms. The right hand represents the initial phoneme and the left hand represents the rime. He removes the right hand to delete the initial phoneme and shows what is left with his left hand.
😊 Student Engagement: A job well done to this class of Heggerty all-stars, they know the routines & procedures for #heggertytime & you can’t miss the smiles on their faces! Way to go Mr. Williams class 👏
🔗Click the link in our bio to download a free lesson sample!
It`s time for another #heggertytime share- this week`s share comes from Twitter, Ms. Amy Long @amybytheton shares: "It was a terrific 🐯 Tuesday at the Tell! ...🥇 Heggerty hand motions were on point ✅, modeling sounds & mouth formation, today was a good day!"
🔍 We spot Heggerty ABC cards & our letter name routine in action
🖐️ Can you tell which skill Mr. Williams`s class is working on during #Heggertytime? If you guessed "phoneme isolation: final sounds" you are correct! Look at that "punch it out" motion in action!
⭐ Use the link in our bio to grab your own set of ABC cards & download a free lesson sample!
📒Heggerty in the Classroom: Watch the amazing Mr. Williams and his students practice deleting final syllables during their #heggertytime.
⭐️Skill Focus: Deleting Final Syllables- "We can delete a syllable from the end of a word and say what is left."
🔗Click the link in our bio to download a free lesson sample!
True progress in just 8-12 minutes a day
Each level of the Heggerty Phonemic Awareness Curriculum provides up to 35 weeks of daily lessons, focusing on eight phonemic awareness skills, along with two additional activities to develop letter and sound recognition, and language awareness. Lessons are designed for a classroom setting, and only take 8-12 minutes.
Phonemic Awareness is not Phonics
Phonemic Awareness
- The instructional focus is on the phonemes or sounds we hear in words.
- Lessons are an oral and auditory warm-up to phonics instruction.
- Students isolate, blend, segment, and manipulate sounds in spoken words.
Phonics
- The instructional focus is on the graphemes or letters that represent the sounds we hear in spoken words.
- Lessons are visual and auditory, matching phonemes to graphemes.
- Students apply their knowledge of phonemic awareness and phonics to decode and encode words in print.
Heggerty is the most structured and systematic curriculum that I’ve seen. Everyone is really excited about it. It’s fun to watch. The kids like it too.
District of Columbia Public Schools
Washington, D.C.
It's one of the most worthwhile purchases the district has ever made. Everyone is happy with it -- it's 100%! We've done a lot of site tours to see how the implementation is going, and good anecdotal stories just keep coming from the instructors. I honestly haven't heard anything negative.
Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District
Alaska
When you look for programs out there, there are hundreds of phonics programs but very few phonemic awareness programs that take students from the simplest to advanced forms. Heggerty has come out with a comprehensive and systematic way to do that. It follows an excellent scope and sequence. It develops all of the skills they need to know. No one does it as systematically as Heggerty.
School District of Philadelphia
Philadelphia, PA
The Heggerty curriculum is consistent, repetitive, and presents the same skill in different ways. I've taken kids who were non-readers and after three to four months with the Heggerty program, they hear sounds and words and they segment and blend words which makes them better readers. It's the intermediary step between non-readers and readers.
Knox County School District
Tennessee, USA
The Heggerty Phonemic Awareness program is brilliant. It requires very little preparation and the lessons are engaging, quick, fun, and effective. The results speak for themselves, with a majority of students showing improved outcomes in both reading and writing.
WHSS
Queensland, Australia
Dr. Heggerty's program is easy to implement and requires very little preparation. We have used this program for one year and have seen fabulous gains in our students’ ability to attempt unfamiliar words in their writing.
Wellers Hill State School
Queensland, Australia
I purchased ALL the flash cards and love them! P.S. I love the updated Kinder "Blue Book!" My students are doing great...even virtual! That says a lot!
Kindergarten Teacher
Clark County School District
Comprehensive, yet succinctly organized, logically arranged, and richly resourced. The Heggerty Phonemic Awareness curriculum is the best research-based program for foundational literacy I have ever seen. Its value for hard-of-hearing & students struggling with central auditory processing issue is clearly applicable.
School District of Philadelphia
Philadelphia, PA
This curriculum has had a powerfully positive effect on student achievement in eastern Montana schools. Student early literacy assessment scores have improved greatly in the schools that have begun using this curriculum over the past 2-3 years.
RTL Support Specialist
Glendive, Montana
This is the best program I have EVER used! A few minutes a day and the results are mind blowing!
Facebook Review
Strong phonemic awareness is crucial to reading success! Heggerty lessons are quick, fun, and multisensory!
Facebook Review
I use this curriculum in my classroom almost every single day! It is incredible and it is the ONLY thing that makes sense about teaching reading! I am literally obsessed.
Facebook Review
Our kindergarten and first grade used it last year and now it is being used in second grade! It has made a huge difference!!
Facebook Review
We use your methods daily. The kids skills are improving, and we couldn't be more excited for them! Thank you for providing such an amazing program that is really worth the time and effort.
Reading Intervention Specialist
LakeVille Community School District