1st Grade Blast Foundations Teacher Guides

The Blast Foundations Teacher Guides provide teachers with all the information they need to effectively present the Blast lessons. All the lessons are built for the teacher and include a thorough explanation of the concepts, routines, and procedures. The lessons are easy to follow, so they can be taught by a wide range of educators, not just seasoned literacy professionals and phonics specialists. For those unfamiliar with teaching phonemic awareness and phonics, the guides include incremental professional development for each lesson.

Blast Foundations Teacher Guides Set includes:

• Two Teacher Guides/lesson plan books
• One copy of the Primary Student Workbooks 
• One copy of the Elementary Student Workbooks 
• One set of posters

Blast Foundations Fast Facts

• Number of lessons – 25
• Recommended Group Size – small group to whole-class
• 1^st Grade Foundational Skills Survey
• Primary Usage: Grade 1 as primary instruction
• Secondary Usage: Grades 2+ as intervention
• Weeks to Complete – 25
• Pacing – Fast
• Tier 1, 2 and 3
• Builds foundational skills

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 1^st grade, it is often taught as a whole class supplement, thus the group sizes are large. When it is taught as an intervention in 2^nd 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 succeed with basic skills in reading in 1^st 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 needed to build confidence with decoding skills in order to become accurate fluent readers.

Blast has 25 units which are comprised of 5 lessons per week.  Each lesson keeps students actively engaged in the learning process with multisensory teaching designed to be completed in 15-20-minute sessions. 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
• Lesson 5 (Friday) – Wrap-Up
  
  • Partially-Controlled Phrase and Sentence Reading
  • Spell It!  (Review and practice words with phonics concept from Lesson 3)