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Fundations® Standards Alignment

States’ rigorous college- and career-readiness standards for English Language Arts (ELA) and Literacy for grades K–5 specify what students should understand and be able to do by the end of each grade.

Fundations includes significant updates to thoroughly and specifically address these rigorous standards. In particular, Fundations offers specific, measurable learning objectives that are aligned to states’ standards.

Fundations and Standards in Foundational Skills

Fundations thoroughly teaches the Foundational Skills in states’ college- and career-readiness standards, including Common Core State Standards, and strongly supports the reading, writing, and language standards, providing mastery instruction for many of the goals in each of those areas. Students learn the following through explicit instruction:

  • Fundamentals of reading, including systematic phonics (such as phonological awareness, phonics, and word recognition) and the study of word structure.
  • Rules of the English language, including the six syllable types, digraphs, blends, vowel teams, prefixes, roots, and suffixes.
  • Recognition of words that do not follow predictable patterns.
  • Decoding mastery through many engaging activities. Emphasis is on the application of skills so that students read with sufficient fluency to support comprehension. Differentiation for the amount of practice is achieved through Unit tests, and bi‐weekly progress monitoring for students in Tier 2 small groups.

Fundations and States’ ELA Language Standards

Fundations provides direct and systematic instruction in:

  • Uppercase and lowercase letter formation, which is linked to the foundational skill of letter sounds for both reading and spelling.
  • Conventions of standard English spelling for common spelling patterns.
  • Spelling of irregular words and frequently confused words (e.g., their, there, they’re).
  • Conventions of standard English capitalization and punctuation.
  • Reference skills, including application of skills through extensive dictionary work.
  • Multiple meaning words and affixes.
  • Production and expansion of complete sentences of varied kinds in response to prompts.

Fundations Meets the Quality Standards for Instructional Materials

Significant features include the following:

  • Each Level of Fundations has a Teacher’s Manual for its year-long curriculum, with a detailed scope and sequence for all Units.
  • Each day has fully developed lesson plans with a comprehensive two-page presentation, including a quick-glance for the day’s activities and materials to be used by the teacher and student.
  • A free companion website that provides teachers with additional resources and support, including printable materials, animations and video demonstrations, and discussion boards.
  • A Home Support Packet provides teachers with a letter to parents and accompanying material for each Unit in each Level.
  • Differentiated instruction is provided for advanced and struggling students, English learners (ELs), and students with language-based learning differences. Suggestions appear in learning activities sections and Unit introductions in the Teacher’s Manual, and on the web-based Fundations® Learning Community.
  • Fundations provides assessments of student mastery with weekly diagnostic checks and Unit tests. At-risk students receiving small-group Tier 2 Fundations instruction are assessed with the Fundations Progress Monitoring Tool, a curriculum‐based measurement to monitor progress.

State Standards Alignment

Available below are correlations between Fundations and the following Foundational Skills standards:

A comprehensive response to Ed Report’s review of Fundations®  is available here. 

Fundations teacher pointing at a sentence frame while the students in the classroom are raising their hands.