Frequently Asked Questions

Assessments are not included in the curriculum manuals.  We have assessments available in both English and Spanish on our website under Downloads.  We offer BOY, MOY and EOY assessments for Kindergarten and 1st grade, as well as BOY and EOY PreK assessments.  Please note that these are not norm-referenced assessments.  They are created by the company to align with our curriculum.  These assessments should also not be given to all students in your classroom, but rather to those students who are on track to receiving more targeted instruction or support in a Tier 2 or 3 setting.  

A Screener assessment is also available for students in 2nd grade and above to determine if Phonemic Awareness should be part of an intervention.  Strand assessments for Phoneme Manipulation (Adding, Deleting and Substituting) are also available.

Additional assessments that align with our intervention curriculum Bridge the Gap are available in the curriculum manual.

No. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that spoken words are made up of individual sounds called phonemes. In a Heggerty Phonemic Awareness lesson, students isolate sounds, blend sounds, segment a word into sounds and manipulate sounds in words. The lessons are oral and auditory.

Phonics instruction matches the phonemes or sounds to print, so it is both auditory and visual, as students read and write words and map sounds to print.

In phonemic awareness, students are being taught to hear and manipulate the sounds of language. In phonics, students are being taught which letters are associated with the sounds of the language. Both skills are crucial to reading mastery and are foundational reading skills.  Both phonemic awareness and phonics should be part of classroom reading instruction. 

No, the digital version of the curriculum is an additional subscription purchase.

No, but they can be purchased separately on our website in both English and Spanish, or you can download a free set of printable English ABC flashcards here.  You can also use any pack of cards for this activity. 

You want the cards to be large enough for the whole class to be able to see at the same time.  It is important to read the Alphabet Knowledge section of the curriculum weekly to see if you should be practicing the cards in alphabetical order, out of alphabetical order, as well as when to introduce multiple sounds for letters, blends, digraphs, trigraphs and vowel combinations.  It is also important that you expose students to all the letters of the alphabet during this activity, so that students can master all of the letter names and sounds. 

We also recommend that cards be created for letters who appearance varies with different fonts (ɑ, a, g, g). When you show each letter card, the students respond chorally, as a whole group, saying “The letter is __, the sound is __.” All possible sounds should be included for each given letter, when appropriate.

In Spanish, we also use the syllable flip chart to support learners in reading and recognizing syllables with automaticity.  Letter cards and the syllable flip chart can be purchased on our website.

The phonemic awareness program written by Dr. Michael Heggerty is a Tier 1 core program for phonemic awareness for PreK, Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade classrooms. However, it can also be used to provide Tier 2 add Tier 3 support through small group or individual instruction for students in grades K-8.  The Primary curriculum or our intervention curriculum, Bridge the Gap, can be used to provide intervention for students in 2nd grade and above.

When providing Tier 2 or Tier 3 intervention, you would not re-teach a full lesson.  Instead, you would target specific  phonemic awareness skills. Intervention lessons can use the curriculum that matches the student’s grade level (i.e. lessons from the Kindergarten curriculum can be used to provide Kindergarten intervention), and teachers would not use the previous level of the curriculum. We recommend providing 5-7 minutes of phonemic awareness instruction on targeted/specific phonemic awareness skills. You would then bridge into phonics instruction to help students see the reciprocal relationship between phonemic awareness and phonics.

You may use assessments your school or district already has available; such as DIBELS, Acadience or PAST. We also offer PA assessments under the Downloads section of our website to monitor student progress with the PA skills.

Word study and phonics would be a separate piece of the literacy block, but we do want to see a transfer from phonemic awareness to phonics.

YES! Phonemic awareness skills deal with the spoken language and are mainly auditory skills. Phonics skills deal with the printed and written language and are both auditory and visual. In phonemic awareness, students are being taught to hear and manipulate the sounds of language. In phonics, students are being taught which letters are associated with the sounds of the language. Both skills are crucial to reading mastery! These skills need to be combined, and it is my experience that this is best done during your word study time and not during your phonemic awareness time.

Yes. The Primary Curriculum (yellow book) is aligned with the first grade Phonological Awareness Standards of the Common Core Standards, as well as LAFS and TEKS. Click here for a summary of the first grade alignment and an alignment guide for your state can be requested by emailing pd@heggerty.org.  

The Kindergarten Curriculum (blue book) is aligned with the Kindergarten Phonological Awareness Standards of the Common Core Standards, as well as LAFS and TEKS. Click here for a summary of the kindergarten alignment and an alignment guide for your state can be requested by emailing pd@heggerty.org. 

An alignment to the Spanish CCSS standards for Kindergarten and 1st grade is also available.  

Each classroom teacher needs a copy of the curriculum manual for their grade level. The lessons are oral and auditory, so there are no student materials needed to teach the lessons. The curriculum manual can be purchased once and then used each school year.

Learn More

Our lessons are designed to provide daily instruction in 8 phonological and phonemic awareness skills. We have created an explicit and systematic approach in which students are practicing blending, segmenting, isolating and manipulating words, syllables, onset-rime and/or phonemes each day. Most literacy curriculum currently available places minimal focus on phonemic awareness, only practicing 1-2 skills each day.

“The two best predictors of early reading success are alphabet recognition and phonemic awareness.” (Adams, 1990) With our curriculum, students receive daily practice in both alphabet recognition and 8 phonological awareness skills. This explicit instruction scaffolds support for students to work with early, basic and advanced phonemic awareness skills. Phonemic awareness instruction, along with phonics, provides students with the foundational skills they need to become automatic decoders of print.