Foundational Literacy

A progressive module teaching basic reading, writing and literacy aimed at students who lack the literacy skills to access other Off2Class content.

Target students

Rather than a specific language proficiency level (e.g. A2, Beginner, etc.) these lessons are

ideal for all students who need to develop basic literacy skills, including:

1. SLIFE: Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education. These students may have limited literacy in their L1 and often need significant support to function successfully in an English-language school environment.
2. Newcomers: Students who have arrived in the US within the last 3 years and who are still learning English. The phonology and orthography of English may be very different from their L1.
3. LTEL: Long-term English Learners. Students who have been in the US school system for several years and who have not achieved proficiency in English. A lack of literacy skills often prevents these students from progressing in their core subject classes.

Key features

All lessons in this series are based around the following elements:

1. Progressive approach: The 48 lessons in the module build upon one another and form a complete sequence. New concepts are introduced in order of usefulness to students.
2. Rules for sound-out words: Rules are taught for letter patterns that can be decoded (sounded out) consistently, making reading unknown words a logical process and reducing rote memorization.
3. Sight words: Students are introduced to the most useful sight words (words that cannot be decoded) and build familiarity with them over the course of the module.
4. Reading from the start: Each lesson ends with students reading short texts to practice what they have learned in the lesson. These texts increase in complexity as the module progresses.
5. Opening up the O2C Lesson Library: By the end of the module, students have all of the literacy tools necessary to navigate the lessons for lower proficiency levels (A0, A1, A2) in the Lesson Library.