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TEKS StandardsOTTER Reading
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Developing and sustaining foundational language skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking--beginning reading and writing. The student develops word structure knowledge through phonological awareness, print concepts, phonics, and morphology to communicate, decode, and spell.
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A. demonstrate phonological awareness by: i. identifying and producing rhyming words; ii. recognizing spoken alliteration or groups of words that begin with the same spoken onset or initial sound; iii. identifying the individual words in a spoken sentence; iv. identifying syllables in spoken words; v. blending syllables to form multisyllabic words; vi. segmenting multisyllabic words into syllables; vii. blending spoken onsets and rimes to form simple words; viii. blending spoken phonemes to form one-syllable words; ix. manipulating syllables within a multisyllabic word; and x. segmenting spoken one-syllable words into individual phonemes.OTTER Reading’s Learning to Read comes with 10 sound dots. These sound dots allow students understand rhyme, to manipulate (add, remove, substitute) sounds and syllables and blend and segment syllables and phonemes.
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B. Demonstrate and apply phonetic knowledge by: i. identifying and matching the common sounds that letters represent; ii. using letter-sound relationships to decode, including VC, CVC, CCVC, and CVCC words; iii. recognizing that new words are created when letters are changed, added, or deleted such as it - pit - tip - tap;
and iv. identifying and reading at least 25 high-frequency words from a research-based list.		OTTER Reading’s Learning to Read comes with 2 sets of lowercase letters a-z. This allows students to build VC, CVC, CCVC, and CVCC words to practice reading. The builders can be manipulated to easily allow students to change, add, or delete letters to create new words. It is this manipulation that is one of the most powerful parts of the builders because it makes an abstract skill become more concrete. Students can use the builders to practice reading sight words. The Heart Word S allows students to use their phonics knowledge and the Heart Word method to read high frequency words.
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C. Demonstrate and apply spelling knowledge by: i. spelling words with VC, CVC, and CCVC; ii. spelling words using sound-spelling patterns; and iii. spelling high-frequency words from a research-based list.OTTER Reading’s Learning to Read comes with 2 sets of lowercase letters a-z. This allows students to build VC, CVC, CCVC, and CVCC words to practice spelling. The builders can be manipulated to easily allow students to change, add, or delete letters to create new words. Students are given images like cup, dog, cat, etc to allow them to practice building words and practicing orthographic mapping. Because spelling is such a difficult skill, the builders provide a scaffolded transition. Students are able to build the word prior to writing. This relieves the overwhelming cognitive load that can sometimes happen with writing and spelling.

The Heart Word Set allows students to use their phonics knowledge and the Heart Word method to spell high frequency words.
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D. Demonstrate print awareness by: i. identifying the front cover, back cover, and title page of a book; ii. holding a book right side up, turning pages correctly, and knowing that reading moves from top to bottom and left to right with return sweep; iii. recognizing that sentences are comprised of words separated by spaces and recognizing word boundaries; iv. recognizing the difference between a letter and a printed word; and v. identifying all
uppercase and lowercase letters		OTTER Reading’s Capital Letter Set comes with one set of capital letters and one set of lowercase letters. This allows students to identify uppercase letters While OTTER Reading does not provide written text, there are resources available that encourage the use of decodables and read-alouds to build print awareness.
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E. Develop handwriting by accurately forming all uppercase and lowercase letters using appropriate directionality.While OTTER Reading does not offer a handwriting curriculum, I firmly believe in its importance. Because handwriting and spelling is such a difficult skill, the builders provide a scaffolded transition. Students are able to build the word prior to writing. This relieves the overwhelming cognitive load that can sometimes happen with writing and spelling.
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