Set what your students already know, pick the sounds to review and today’s new sound, and get the lists for each part of the lesson — review drills, reading, spelling, and syllable words, then the new-sound examples, reading, and spelling — all from one page.
Older students often know the short practice words (cat, map, sun) by sight, so at middle and high school the reading and spelling lists lean on longer words: harder one-syllable words, two- and three-syllable words, and academic words from math, science, and history — high school more strongly. Every syllable still uses only the sounds chosen below; short words fill in when those sounds leave too few longer ones.
Click the last stage your students have already learned. Everything through that stage becomes review. Need to make an exception (a sound skipped, or one taught early)? Use “fine-tune” below — most days you won’t need it.
Blends aren’t a stage of their own here, since programs place them differently. Switch this on once your students blend two consonants; until then no blend words appear in any list.
The l in these is silent: walk, talk and chalk end like all + k, and folk and yolk end like oak. So they are kept apart from the -lk blend (milk, elk, sulk), where the l is heard, and stay out of every list until you switch them on. The sound boxes show the ending as one piece (w · alk), like a glued sound.
Open-syllable words end on a long vowel, not the short sound the vowel chip teaches, so they stay out of the lists until you switch them on.
am and an stay glued before another consonant (lamp is l · am · p, sand is s · an · d) and split before a vowel (name, cane), so a stage-6 review list may include them. Programs that don’t glue am and an: switch welding off, and lamp reads l · a · m · p.
The stage your students finished most recently, by default. The review activities lean on these sounds (each review list has a “% review sound” setting; the rest come from earlier stages). Nothing in a review activity uses today’s new sound, since review comes before it is taught.
The new activities are built around these sounds, highlighted so you can point them out at a glance.
Off by default: each word appears in only one list, so students practice the concept rather than remembering a word they just saw. “Number of sounds” applies to the one-syllable word lists; at middle and high school, choosing one leaves the two- and three-syllable words out.
Nonsense words. The blending drill, the reading lists and the spelling lists each have a “% nonsense” box. That share of the list is made-up words (vop, blish, blape) built from the same sounds, so a student has to decode rather than recognize. The boxes start at 0 for elementary, 15 for middle school and 30 for high school, since older students know so many words by sight; changing the school level moves any box you haven’t changed. The made-up words follow the list’s own review / new-sound mix (with half the list new-sound words, half the made-up words use the new sound too), never spell a real word, and show in italics here and on the handout, and in [brackets] in copied text.
Review words only — no words with today’s new sound.
Words that don’t follow the sounds taught so far. Type them in; the review ones are remembered for next time.
Built around today’s new sound.
Words your students can read today, to build your own reading and dictation sentences from. Today’s new sound is marked; aim for a new-sound word or two in each sentence. Words from the lists above can turn up here too — a sentence is a good place to meet them again. Connected text and challenge reading come from a decodable reader at this stage.
Rather start from ready-made sentences? Sentence Creator makes them — its sound groups are the stages here.
The reading sentences and paragraph go on the student handout and into the spreadsheet’s sentence-reading and connected-text boxes. Left empty, the handout gives the student ruled space there instead, for you to write in. The dictation sentences go only into the spreadsheet’s sentence-dictation box, for you to read from; the handout gives the student a line to write each one on.
Save this lesson to a file keeps all of it in one file: the lesson info, the setup, the reading sentences and paragraph, and every word list exactly as it is now, with the words you clicked off. Open it here later to print or change it, or send it to a colleague. The file only opens on this page — print or download the plan for the lesson itself.
The lesson file above is this lesson, all of it. The setup is only what you start this student’s next lesson from: stages, sounds, list sizes, group, grade, and trick words. This page remembers the setup on this computer. Copy settings puts it on the clipboard as text — paste it into a document to keep a record per student, or send it to another teacher working with the same student. Paste settings takes that text and applies it here. Clear saved settings starts fresh. The date, session and lesson numbers, concepts, objective, and notes are for one lesson and are not remembered — save the lesson to a file, or copy, print, or download the plan, to keep them.