Reading Course Content and Organization
SuccessMaker Reading is organized around the strands recommended by the National Reading Panel and recognized as contributing to the development of foundational and life-long reading skills.
If a student exits prior to completing a full lesson, the progress at the activity level is bookmarked. This allows the student to start the next session at the same point where the student’s last session ended.
Instructional Strands
The scope and sequence of SuccessMaker Reading incorporates the six strands of reading instruction for course-level grades K–1, six strands for course-level grades 2–5, and three strands for course-level grades 6–8:
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Concepts of Print (course-level grade K)
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Phonological Awareness (course-level grades K–1)
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Phonics (course-level grades K–5)
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Fluency (course-level grades K–5)
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Vocabulary (course-level grades K–8)
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Comprehension (course-level grades K–8)
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Grammar (course-level grades 2-8)
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Spelling (course-level grades 2–8)
Scope and Sequence
Although SuccessMaker Reading is designed as a self-contained curriculum, you can also customize the content of courses to provide intervention or complement your existing curriculum. You can preview the skill objectives by signing in to the LMS. See “Create a Custom Course” in the SuccessMaker Help for more information.
To help you customize course content, supplemental scope and sequence guides are also available on the SuccessMaker Announcements and Resources website.
Concepts of Print (Course-Level Grades K–1)
The Concepts of Print content is embedded within the instruction for course-level grades K–1 and guides students through the fundamental strategies of print.
Phonological Awareness (Course-Level Grades K-2)
The Phonological Awareness strand helps students distinguish sound structures of language and parts of speech, such as syllables and phonemes. The objectives in this strand focus on the student's ability to blend and segment phonemes, which is critical to the development of decoding and spelling skills.
Phonics (Course-Level Grades K-5)
The Phonics strand helps students with the basic principles of phonics, including how to connect sounds with letters or groups of letters.
Fluency
The Fluency strand provides instruction that is both intensive and direct. The fluency component of SuccessMaker Reading is designed to supplement classroom instruction through purposeful, uninterrupted reinforcement of key strategies and skills. SuccessMaker Reading provides practice in the top three priorities in teaching fluency: letter/word/phrase recognition, pacing, and prosody.
This approach has shown to significantly increase reading comprehension—which is the ultimate goal of fluency instruction. The SuccessMaker Fluency strand includes speed drills of high-frequency and phonetic words and phrases, a retelling component, and a timed reading of familiar text. Specific learning concepts focus on fluency objectives and provide focused instruction in retelling, reading with expression, and reading for speed and accuracy.
The Fluency strand is OFF by default; however, it can be enabled based on the availability of a required supported browser and microphone. Specifications are provided in the SuccessMaker System Requirements.
Vocabulary (Course-Level Grades K-8)
The Vocabulary strand provides instruction, practice, and assessment to improve reading comprehension in recognition of the direct correlation between vocabulary development and improved comprehension.
SuccessMaker Reading distinguishes between exposure to and mastery of vocabulary words. The model used in this course also distinguishes between high-frequency, content-area, and academic vocabulary.
As part of the guided instruction, the academic vocabulary connects words to concepts, increases student comprehension, and mirrors the item types of new state and national assessments by providing;
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Instructional videos explicitly expose students to vocabulary topics and specific words.
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Lexile-leveled reading passages demonstrate the function and meaning of words in context.
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Practice activities, including a Print Partner Pack (Grades 3-8), require various types of interaction to help solidify student understanding.
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A media-enhanced glossary that is student-accessible at any point during the course.
Each grade level has a grade-level-appropriate database consisting of appropriate words a child may and should be exposed to. In addition, each grade level has an identified list of words that should be mastered. The goal is for each child to identify the mastery words automatically.
The mastery words for each grade level are a cross-reference of high-frequency words from both the Fry list and the Dolch list.
Comprehension (Course-Level Grades K-8)
The Comprehension strand provides lessons and activities designed to provide instruction and practice of reading strategies as well as assess understanding of the text.
Grammar (Course-Level Grades 2-8)
The Grammar strand provides instruction and activities designed to reinforce student understanding of parts of speech, sentence structure, subject and verb agreement, and punctuation.
Spelling (Course-Level Grades 2–8)
The Spelling strand provides instruction and activities designed to reinforce student understanding of spelling applications that involve vowel combinations, consonant and syllable patterns, common endings, and unusual spellings.