The goal of phonics instruction is simply and only to support kids’ progress as readers and writers. Every message you send during phonics instruction needs to be angled to support transfer to reading and writing. That transfer isn’t an optional extension of your instruction, or something you support for just the most accomplished of your students. It is everything.

— Lucy Calkins

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To create these new phonics units. Lucy and her coauthors have drawn on all that they know from decades of teaching reading and writing in thousands of classrooms across the world, and they've relied on proven, research-based practices—especially on the work of Isabel Beck, Donna Scanlon, Pat and Jim Cunningham, Rollanda O’Connor, Marilyn Adams, Tim Rasinski, Donald Bear, Wiley Blevins, and the late Marie Clay.

The new Units of Study in Phonics, Grades K–2:

• provide a lean and concise instructional pathway in phonics that is realistic and doable, and that taps into kids’ skills and energy for tackling the fabulous challenge of learning to read and write,
• introduce high-leverage phonics concepts and strategies in a way that keeps pace with students' reading and writing and helps them understand when, how, and why they can use phonics to read and write,
• offer delightfully fun and engaging storylines, classroom mascots, songs, chants, rhymes, and games to help students fall head over heels in love with phonics and to create a joyous community of learners,
• align with state-of-the-art reading and writing workshops for a coherent approach in which terminology, tools, rituals, and methods are shared in ways that benefit both teachers and kids.