Core Reading Instruction
Roanoke City Public Schools uses the following programs to teach students who are in Kindergarten through 5th grade how to read:
- Heggerty is a program used in kindergarten and 1st grade to help students hear individual sounds in words.
- Really Great Reading helps students learn how to read and spell words and is used in kindergarten through 3rd grade.
- Imagine Learning is RCPS' core high-quality instructional materials that provides evidence-based, comprehensive literacy instruction aligned to science-based reading research. Phonemic and phonological awareness, phonics, literacy, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing are all required components of a core program.
Below you will find information to help you learn more about our curriculum and download resources to support your students at home.
Really Great Reading
Really Great Reading is focused on supporting students with decoding, which is how readers sound out words they encounter. All Really Great Reading lessons provide the explicit and systematic instruction and practice that students need to master decoding skills. Students learn how letters represent certain sounds to enable them to be strong readers and spellers. Strong decoding skills are necessary to read words automatically, this allows students to have the ability to think about what they are reading.
Heggerty
Heggerty is used to help teach students phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the ability to recognize, manipulate, and work with the individual sounds — or phonemes — that make up words in spoken language. It's a foundational skill in literacy that involves understanding that words are composed of distinct sounds and being able to manipulate those sounds within words. For example, being able to identify the separate sounds in the word "cat," blend them together to pronounce the word, or even change one sound to create a new word ("cat" to "bat").