Early literacy is one of the most important predictors of long-term academic success, yet national data continue to show how difficult it is to move the needle at scale. The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) created the practice guide Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade to help educators address that challenge with clear, evidence-based recommendations.
As a Special Education Director, I appreciate practice guides that are both research-informed and realistic for schools. This guide is not a “cookbook,” and it does not require adopting a specific curriculum. Instead, it offers four recommendations that can be implemented alongside your current standards and materials—whether you are strengthening Tier 1 instruction, refining intervention systems, or supporting students who need remediation.
At TinyEYE, we partner with districts to provide online therapy services that can complement literacy goals—especially when staffing shortages make it difficult to deliver consistent, specialized support. While this guide is aimed primarily at general education instruction in K–3, the recommendations are highly relevant for many students with IEPs and those receiving intervention supports.
Why this practice guide matters
The guide is built on a thorough review of research published since 2000 and was developed by a panel of researchers and practitioners. It emphasizes three overarching themes that align with what many districts are working on right now:
Reinforcing effective instruction in alphabetics, fluency, and vocabulary using updated evidence.
Expanding oral language instruction beyond vocabulary to include inferential and narrative language.
Integrating reading instruction so students move from learning skills to applying them in connected text as soon as they are ready.
Importantly, the WWC also rates the strength of evidence behind each recommendation. In this guide, Recommendations 2 and 3 have strong evidence, Recommendation 4 has moderate evidence, and Recommendation 1 has minimal evidence (meaning the research base is emerging or inconsistent—not that the practice is unimportant).
Recommendation 1: Teach academic language skills (Minimal Evidence)
The first recommendation focuses on building the oral language foundation students need to understand school-based text and tasks. The guide highlights three components:
Inferential language: talking about ideas beyond the here-and-now (predicting, reasoning, hypothesizing).
Narrative language: telling and understanding a sequence of events with clarity and structure.
Academic vocabulary: words and grammatical structures common in school and print.
In practice, this looks like purposeful conversation before, during, and after read-alouds—where teachers model complete, reasoned responses and prompt students to expand their thinking. It also includes explicit instruction in narrative structure (characters, setting, plot) and linguistic tools (connectives like “because,” pronoun references, and more complex sentence structures).
Leadership lens: When we see students with language vulnerabilities (including many students with speech-language needs), this recommendation intersects naturally with SLP goals. Districts can strengthen implementation by aligning classroom language routines with targeted supports, and by ensuring that language-building strategies are part of literacy professional learning—not an “extra” that disappears when schedules get tight.
Recommendation 2: Develop awareness of sounds in speech and link them to letters (Strong Evidence)
This recommendation addresses phonological and phonemic awareness and the alphabetic principle. The evidence is strong: when students learn to recognize and manipulate sounds and connect them to letters, they are better prepared to decode words and build early reading accuracy.
The guide suggests a developmental sequence that many educators will recognize:
Start with larger units (words in sentences, compound words).
Move to syllables (clapping or chin drops can help students “feel” syllables).
Teach onset-rime awareness (rhyming, matching beginning sounds).
Teach phonemic awareness (isolating and manipulating individual phonemes).
Then, explicitly teach letter–sound relations and provide repeated practice. Finally, link phonemic awareness to print using word-building activities (such as letter tiles and Elkonin sound boxes) so students can see how changing a sound changes a word.
Special education lens: Persistent difficulty with phonological awareness is a red flag for later decoding challenges and can be associated with dyslexia risk. This is where early, targeted intervention matters. When districts face staffing shortages (including interventionists and related service providers), consistency becomes the biggest challenge—so systems, routines, and clear instructional protocols are essential.
Recommendation 3: Teach decoding, word analysis, and word recognition (Strong Evidence)
Once students have basic letter–sound knowledge, they need systematic instruction to decode words, recognize patterns, and build automaticity. The guide includes six practical components:
Teach blending from left to right (chunking or sounding out).
Teach common sound–spelling patterns (digraphs like “sh,” vowel teams like “ea,” r-controlled vowels, syllable types).
Teach common word parts (prefixes, suffixes, contractions, basic roots) and simple word-analysis strategies.
Practice decodable words in isolation and in connected text.
Teach high-frequency words (regular and irregular) for efficient recognition.
Pre-teach essential non-decodable words in a text as whole words when needed for meaning.
Implementation reality: This is often where districts see uneven practice across classrooms. Some teachers have strong routines for explicit decoding and cumulative review; others rely heavily on leveled texts without enough decoding practice. The guide supports a balanced approach: teach decoding explicitly, then get students reading connected text as soon as they can read a few words.
IEP alignment: For students with reading-related IEP goals, this recommendation helps teams ensure that specially designed instruction is not disconnected from core instruction. When intervention and core use the same decoding language and routines, students generalize skills more effectively.
Recommendation 4: Ensure daily reading of connected text with feedback (Moderate Evidence)
Reading connected text is where students bring everything together: decoding, vocabulary, background knowledge, and comprehension monitoring. The guide recommends daily opportunities for students to read connected text to support accuracy, fluency, and comprehension.
The three key components are:
Model, scaffold, and provide feedback during oral reading to support word identification.
Teach self-monitoring and self-correction (students learn to notice when reading “doesn’t sound right” or doesn’t make sense).
Build fluency with oral reading practice and feedback, including repeated reading and wide reading.
The guide is also clear about what to avoid: prompting students to guess words from pictures or “riddle-style” hints. Instead, prompt strategy use (“Look for parts you know,” “Sound it out,” “Check it—does it make sense?”).
Scheduling and staffing lens: This recommendation can feel resource-heavy because feedback matters. Districts can make it feasible by using structured partner reading, small-group routines, and trained support staff—while also being strategic about where 1:1 support is most needed. When related service staffing is stretched, online therapy services can help maintain continuity for students whose communication needs directly impact literacy participation (for example, students working on language comprehension, narrative skills, or speech sound production that affects phoneme awareness).
Putting it all together: A practical integration plan
The panel recommends implementing the recommendations in the general sequence presented, while recognizing that instruction overlaps and should be adjusted based on student data. In many schools, a workable approach looks like this:
Daily Tier 1 routines that include explicit phonemic awareness/phonics (K–1), decoding and word study (1–3), and connected text reading with feedback (K–3).
Ongoing oral language supports embedded in read-alouds, science/social studies text discussions, and vocabulary routines.
Targeted intervention for students who show persistent difficulty with phonological awareness, decoding, or fluency—delivered early and consistently.
For district leaders, the key is coherence: shared language, aligned instructional routines, and professional learning that helps teachers implement with fidelity. That coherence is also what makes it easier for specialists—including SLPs and other service providers—to reinforce skills in a way that transfers back to the classroom.
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