Do you have a 6- to 8-year-old in Essentials or a 7- to 9-year-old in Foundations? Are you looking for additional phonogram-controlled texts for reading practice?
We have recently mapped out the correlations between the content taught in the Essentials lessons and the content of the Foundations readers, and vice-versa.
Who will this help?
This won’t be relevant to everyone. The readers are written to serve students at different developmental stages and in many cases won’t be an appropriate fit for students in the other curriculum. The content, tone, and vocabulary of the Foundations readers are suited to students ages 4 to 7 or 8, while the Essentials readers are designed to provide older struggling readers with age-appropriate reading material that they can enjoy instead of “babyish” early children’s readers.
However, we know that some of you, for a variety of reasons, are using Foundations with slightly older kids or Essentials with younger ones. If that’s your situation, and you’d like more phonogram-controlled readers - ones that don’t rely on memorizing any sight words or exceptions - this information is for you!
What are the readers?
Our new student readers for Essentials, written by Kimber Iverson, are matched with Essentials lessons and include only the phonograms and spelling rules that have been taught up to that point, providing students with an opportunity to practice and succeed rather than guessing or relying on sight words. They offer a delightfully rich variety of playful poetry, fictional stories, and nonfiction articles on scientific and historical topics appropriate for ages 8 to adult. The Foundations readers are also controlled for concepts that have been taught, and they include both fiction and non-fiction texts, but with topics and vocabulary that are suitable for young students. See the lists below to see how the readers correlate with the two curricula.
A note about Essentials
Many students will not need a phonogram-controlled reader with Essentials because they are reading fairly comfortably already and are focusing more on spelling and vocabulary. The optional Essentials reader is designed to provide older struggling readers with engaging texts that have been controlled for the linguistic concepts they have already been taught, ensuring success and building student confidence.
Lesson and Reader Correlation - Logic of English® Foundations and Essentials
Foundations students
- By the time students have completed Foundations lesson 64 (or lesson 60 if they have already learned the necessary uppercase letters), they have all the decoding tools they need to read Essentials readers 1-2.
- By lesson 84: Essentials readers 3-4
- By lesson 93: Essentials readers 5-6
- By lesson 115: Essentials readers 7-11
- By lessons 116: Essentials readers 12-24
Essentials 2nd edition students
- After lesson 1 of Essentials 2nd edition, students have the tools to read all the Foundations A readers.
- By the time they have completed lesson 8, they can read Foundations B readers 1-3.
- After 17: Foundations B readers 1-7 (if you teach the first two silent E rules earlier, students can read B readers 4-6 after Essentials lesson 8)
- Further Volume 2 correlations: TBD
Essentials 1st edition students
- After lesson 1 of Essentials, students can read all the Foundations A readers.
- By the time they have completed lesson 8, they can read Foundations B readers 1-3.
- After 18: Foundations B readers 1-7 (if you teach the first two silent E rules from lessons 17 and 18 earlier, students can read B readers 4-6 after Essentials lesson 8)
- After 23: Foundations C reader 4
- After 32: Foundations B readers 1-8 and C readers 1-7 (B 8 and C 1-3 can be read as soon as lesson 18 if you pre-teach Rule 6, from lesson 23, and the pronunciation of “of” from lesson 32)
- After 34: Foundations C readers 1-8 (Students can read all Foundations readers by lesson 26 of Essentials with no sight words if you help them with a few concepts covered later in Essentials: silent L words, in lesson 34, and the strangely spelled “of,” discussed in lesson 32.)