Blast Foundations

Blast Teacher Guides

Blast Teacher's Lesson Plans:

• are easy to follow
• can be taught by a wide range of educators, not just seasoned literacy professionals, and phonics specialists
• are perfect for those unfamiliar with teaching phonemic awareness and phonics
• include incremental professional development for each lesson
• provide teachers with all the information they need to effectively present the Blast lessons

No more building lessons! The  Blast Teacher's Lesson Plans are built for the teacher and include a thorough explanation of the concepts, routines, and procedures. 

Download a Blast Foundations Sample Lesson>>

Blast Foundations Online

Blast Online is an essential web-based online interactive teacher presentation tool,  comes in six-month and one-year subscriptions, is used in conjunction with the Blast Teachers Guides, and:

• Reduces teacher prep time
• Engages emerging and struggling readers 
• Helps students learn & retain concepts
• Delivers embedded professional development
• Make phonics instruction precise and concise
• Increases student outcomes

Our Online Tools can be presented with an interactive whiteboard, LCD projector, tablet, or stand-alone computer.

Blast Student Workbooks

The Blast Students Workbooks are everything a student needs to participate in the lessons. Blast has two different workbook sets, the Primary Student Workbook (PRSW) and the Elementary Student Workbook (ELSW).

• Primary Student Workbooks (PRSW)-  Grade 1
• Elementary Student Workbooks (ELSW) -  Grade 3+

The activities in the student workbooks:

• increase student outcomes
• provide a framework for student review
• serve as a light formative assessment
• give teachers an understanding  of who has mastered the concepts and who may need more instruction

Kit or Blast eLearning

Select one of two Blast Student Kits:

• Blast Student Kit - Students use this hands-on letter tiles and SyllaBoards kit to practice the phonics concepts taught in the Blast Foundations lessons.
• Blast eStudent Kit on the Learning Platform is a new online student practice portal that can be a virtual alternative to our student kits. Teachers, now you can progress monitor your students as they practice and learn! Learn more>>

Blast - Student Group Size, Scope and Sequence, and Lesson Structure

Blast Foundations lessons can be taught in various group sizes, depending on your situation. When used in early 1st grade, Blast can be taught as a whole class supplement, thus the group sizes are large. When it is taught as an intervention in 2nd grade, it is typically taught in smaller groups.

The Blast Foundations scope and sequence is systematic and cumulative. 

The scope and sequence covers explicit instruction in the foundational skills needed to help students who struggle with basic skills in reading in 1st Grade.  They will learn how to master reading words with complex consonant constructions in Closed Syllables, Open Syllables, Vowel-Consonant-e Syllables, Vowel Team Syllables, and inflectional endings. Students also learn how to apply functional strategies to successfully read multisyllabic words with ease. Blast targets the skills students need to build confidence with decoding skills in order to become accurate fluent readers.

For a full scope and sequence, click here to download the Blast Foundations Sample Lesson>>

Blast has 25 units which are comprised of 5 lessons per week. Designed to be completed in 15 to 20 minutes sessions, each lesson keeps students actively engaged in the learning process with multisensory teaching. In one week, students are immersed in 75-100 minutes of explicit instruction.

• Lesson 1 (Monday) – Letter Sounds / High-Frequency Words
• Lesson 2 (Tuesday) – Phonemic Awareness
• Lesson 3 (Wednesday) – Phonics Instruction
• Lesson 4 (Thursday) – Student Practice
  • Detective Work
  • Word Sort
  • Partially-Controlled Phrase Reading
  • New! Blast Foundation Passages, to be taught after Lesson 4
• Lesson 5 (Friday) – Wrap-Up
  • Partially-Controlled Phrase and Sentence Reading
  • Spell It!  (Review and practice words with phonics concept from Lesson 3)

Diagnostics

The 1st Grade Foundational Skills Surveys are a complimentary set of assessments that are commonly used:

• in 1st grade

• with older students who perform well below expectations on Beginning and Advanced Decoding Surveys

• as a one-on-one assessment of 1st-grade foundational literacy skills, including:

  • Simple and complex single-syllable words (including short vowels, digraphs, blends, closed syllables, and various long vowel spellings)

  • Decodable two-syllable words

  • Selected high-frequency words

  • Optional assessments for high-frequency words, letter-sounds knowledge, and letter-names knowledge

Sight Words Survey

The Sight Words Survey is a complimentary set of assessments that determine how well a student reads high-frequency English words. It is designed to be used:

• at the beginning of Kindergarten through 3rd grade
• and with older students who still struggle to read high-frequency sight words

One-on-one assessment of:

• High-frequency sight word knowledge from the Pre-Primer through 3rd-grade levels of the Dolch 220 list
• Automaticity reading sight words both in context (simple sentences) and in isolation

The data collected from these assessments can help determine the levels of sight words with which students are proficient and the levels with which they need more instruction and practice to gain automaticity.

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Grouping Students

Successful reading interventions start with accurate diagnosis and grouping. Really Great Reading’s Grouping Matrix helps facilitate differentiated data-driven instruction and reporting. It is a free, web-based data management system that enables educators to group students (K- 12) according to the type and depth of their decoding difficulties. The same data management system can be used to monitor progress, report, and adjust.

NEW - Grouping Matrix Live Assess

Now you can assess and group your students in just one step. As you listen to your students read, enter the miscues directly into the Grouping Matrix, and it will do the rest.  “Live Assess” will pinpoint the types of words a student is misreading, identify specific areas of confusion, total the types of errors, record the results, and group your students according to their decoding strengths and weaknesses. It’s never been easier to diagnose and group your students. 

Learn more and sign up for free access to the Grouping Matrix>>