Early Elementary Short Vowels
Grade: Kindergarten
Curriculum: Bookworms—Differentiated Instruction
Instructor: Dr. Sharon Walpole
What makes this a strong model?
Explicit, systematic instruction of segmenting and blending short vowel words, modeling how to listen to sounds and blend them together to form words
Use of multisensory tools (e.g., pushing chips into Elkonin sound boxes) to strengthen isolation and blending skills before moving to print
Clear progression from sound to print, moving from oral phoneme segmentation with Elkonin boxes to decoding written words, explicitly building phonics by connecting sounds to letters
