Foundational Literacy: a closer look at the program
The pedagogy, sequence and key concepts behind Off2Class's 48-lesson literacy module for secondary English Learners.
Table of contents
- Why Foundational Literacy matters for secondary ELs
- Aligned with the science of reading
- Key concepts you'll see in the lessons
- How the program is structured
- What a typical lesson looks like
- The role of the teacher
- Tailoring instruction to different students
- How Foundational Literacy fits with the rest of Off2Class
- Where to learn more
Why Foundational Literacy matters for secondary ELs
Literacy gaps are present across several secondary EL populations: newcomer students arriving without strong English exposure, long-term English Learners who never developed reading and writing foundations, and students with limited or interrupted formal education in any language. These gaps make it hard to access content in core subjects and slow down language acquisition across the board.
Most literacy interventions on the market were built for younger learners or native English speakers. The texts, illustrations and pacing aren't a good fit for a 13- or 17-year-old, which makes it difficult to find programs that respect students' age while meeting them at the right skill level.
Off2Class's Foundational Literacy lessons were built specifically for secondary ELs. The scope, sequence, and visuals are designed for older learners who are still developing the early building blocks of reading and writing in English. Closing those gaps is one of the higher-leverage things you can do for a student's overall English proficiency.
Aligned with the science of reading
The Off2Class Foundational Literacy lessons cover the five essential components emphasized by the science of reading:
- Phonological awareness: the ability to recognize and work with the sounds of spoken English.
- Phonics: the relationships between sounds and the letters that represent them.
- Word recognition: building automatic recognition of both sound-out words and sight words.
- Fluency: reading short texts with accuracy and at a reasonable pace.
- Comprehension: understanding what's been read, starting with words and phrases and growing into sentences and short passages.
The lessons deliver this content through systematic and explicit instruction. Phonemes (sounds) and graphemes (letters and letter combinations) are introduced in a logical progression, with built-in review and practice so students consolidate one concept before the next is added. The materials were developed in collaboration with US schools and the literacy organization ProLiteracy to ensure alignment with best practices in literacy instruction.
Key concepts you'll see in the lessons
A handful of terms come up throughout the program. If you're newer to teaching literacy, these are worth knowing before you start.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Phoneme | The smallest unit of sound that distinguishes one word from another (e.g. /k/, /ă/, /t/ in "cat"). Most varieties of American English have 44 phonemes. |
| Grapheme | The written symbol that represents a phoneme: a single letter or combination of letters (e.g. c, a, t in "cat"; sh in "ship"). |
| Sound-out word (decodable) | A word that can be read by applying knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences, like "cat" or "ship." |
| Sight word (undecodable, heart word) | A word that doesn't follow a regular spelling pattern and has to be memorized as a whole, like "said," or "two." |
| Voiced and unvoiced sounds | Speech sounds made with vocal-cord vibration (voiced, like /z/) and without (unvoiced, like /s/). The Foundational Literacy lessons use icons to mark which is which. |
| Articulators | The parts of the mouth and throat used to produce speech: lips, teeth, tongue, palate, and vocal cords. |
| Initial, medial, final | The position of a grapheme within a word: beginning, middle and end. |
Each phoneme is also introduced with an anchor word: a simple, recognizable word that contains the target sound, like "acorn" for /ā/ or "sun" for /s/. Anchor words show up again later when graphemes are taught, giving students a familiar reference point.
How the program is structured
The program is made up of 48 lessons across 12 units. The full list with launch links is in the Foundational Literacy lesson catalog.
The units fall into two distinct stages.
Unit 1: phoneme overview. Four lessons that introduce the sounds of English on their own, before any letters are added. Students focus on how each phoneme is produced and pair it with an anchor word. If a student already has strong oral English, Unit 1 can be skipped or used briefly as review.
Units 2-12: graphemes in progression. Each lesson introduces a small set of graphemes and links them back to the phonemes and anchor words from Unit 1. The sequence moves from simple consonants and short vowels into digraphs and VCe ("magic e") patterns, then into longer word patterns, r-controlled vowels, and finally long-vowel combinations and diphthongs.
Review lessons are spaced at logical points throughout to consolidate everything taught so far, and the program as a whole is designed so students build incrementally. They never encounter a sound-out word that uses a grapheme they haven't yet learned.
What a typical lesson looks like
Lessons in Units 2-12 follow a consistent format so students always know what to expect:
- Review. Students re-read words built from graphemes they've already learned. This builds fluency and pulls prior learning forward.
- New concept. A small set of new graphemes is introduced, with explicit links back to the corresponding phoneme and anchor word.
- Practice the new concept. Students sound out and write words containing the new graphemes, including identifying each grapheme's position (initial, medial or final) inside a word.
- Sight words. A small set of high-frequency sight words is introduced. The set is kept small on purpose, so students aren't asked to memorize too many irregular words at once.
- Extended practice. Students read full sentences and short passages that combine the new graphemes with previously learned sound-out words and known sight words. This is where fluency and comprehension start to develop.
- Homework. Reading and writing tasks (including a voice recorder for spoken practice) that students complete asynchronously to reinforce the lesson.
Because the lessons are designed to be visual and image-supported, they intentionally keep wordy explanations on the slides themselves to a minimum. This is where the teacher comes in.
There's no requirement to do everything on screen. Many of the activities, like listening to words and writing them down, identifying the position of a sound inside a word, or copying sentences, are ideally suited to pencil-and-paper practice alongside the digital lesson. Mixing the two formats works well and gives students the tactile reinforcement that many teachers value.
The role of the teacher
The lessons carry the structure and sequence; the teacher carries the explanation, modeling, and feedback. That balance is intentional. The slides minimize text and lean on consistent task icons, supporting images, and audio recordings so students aren't reading dense instructions. What turns a slide into a learning moment is the teacher demonstrating the sound, modeling how a word is decoded, and giving real-time feedback as the student attempts it.
To make this easier, every lesson includes Teacher Notes: slide-by-slide in-classroom guidance with objectives, teaching tips, pronunciation pointers, and the answers to each task. Teacher Notes are visible only to teachers during a live classroom session and are designed to let you deliver the lesson with very little prep time.
Tailoring instruction to different students
Students who land in Foundational Literacy don't all start from the same place. The program is intentionally flexible so you can shape it around what each student needs:
- High oral English, limited literacy. Unit 1 can be a quick review rather than a full module. Most of the lift is in Units 2-12, where students map sounds they already know to written forms for the first time.
- Low oral English. Slow down on Unit 1. Spend time on individual phonemes and use anchor words to build the spoken foundation before adding written symbols.
- Literate in another language (L1). Invite students to compare sound-symbol patterns between their L1 and English, and to look for cognates. Existing literacy skills transfer faster than people often expect.
- Limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE). Expect to spend more time on foundational skills and on building familiarity with the routine of a lesson. The asynchronous homework with voice recording is a useful repetition tool.
- Long-term English Learners (LTEL). Students may have strong conversational English but still hit walls when reading. The program lets them fill the literacy gap without restarting their entire language learning journey.
The consistent lesson format makes it easier to differentiate without redesigning anything. Students follow the same flow, but you can stretch some sections and compress others depending on who's in front of you.
How Foundational Literacy fits with the rest of Off2Class
Foundational Literacy is a 48-lesson module, not a standalone year-long curriculum. By design, it sits inside the larger Off2Class Lesson Library of 1,500+ lessons and acts as a runway: once students have completed the module, they have the literacy tools to navigate the lower-proficiency lessons (absolute beginner/A0/pre-entering, beginner/A1/entering, upper beginner/A2/emerging) in the broader library.
Many teachers use the program in combination with other Off2Class content rather than in strict sequence. A newcomer student, for example, might work through Foundational Literacy lessons during part of a class period and complete a topical Everyday English for Newcomers lesson during another. As students' decoding skills grow, you can also pull words and sentences from Foundational Literacy into other reading and writing tasks across your ELD instruction.
The reverse is also true: skills built in Foundational Literacy carry forward into other lessons. Students start recognizing graphemes when they encounter new topics and can sound out unfamiliar vocabulary on their own, which is often one of the first visible signs of progress.
Where to learn more
- Foundational Literacy lesson catalog: the full list of 48 lessons with direct launch links and per-lesson objectives.
- Lesson Library: the full 1,500+ lesson catalog that foundational literacy feeds into.
- Teacher Notes inside Classroom: how slide-by-slide guidance shows up during a live lesson.