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UFLI Foundations An Explicit and Systemic Phonics Program
Ventris Learning is the University of Florida Literacy Institute’s publishing partner for the UFLI Foundations Teacher Manual. Foundations is an explicit and systematic phonics program that introduces students to the foundational reading skills necessary for proficient reading. Foundations follows a carefully developed scope and sequence designed to ensure that students systematically acquire each skill needed and learn to apply each skill with automaticity and confidence. Foundations is designed to be used for core instruction in the primary grades or for intervention with struggling students in any grade.
372 pages, Spiral-bound
Published January 1, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 5, 2026
This the best value you can get for teaching modern phonics in a K-2 grade range. Even better, there's an Australian edition with updated pronunciation and vocabulary.
For $70 you get this book, which is 3 years worth of lesson plans. On their website they offer, for free, the associated decodable texts, homework assignments, roll & read, slides that educators can use, their web-based "blending board" (which I was initially very skeptical of but have come to like), and assorted other print outs for putting on walls or making flash cards or whatever.
It actually pretty impressive how much they make available for free. The book itself is, by its nature, somewhat repetitive -- you're going to be doing basically the same activities every day for your literacy block. After the introduction and implementation guidance, you get roughly 300 pages of lesson plans. Each new lesson is split across two days and has blending drills, writing practice, explicit instruction of the new concept, practicing irregular words, reading connected text, a longer decodable text, and then some addition resources for group or individual practice (extra word chains, extra word lists).
The good: this is a pretty comprehensive one-stop package that is basically ready to use out of the box, offering explicit scripts on teaching each concept, letter formation for three full years of literacy instruction. If you're a tutor or an engaged parent or a Lone Ranger teacher trying to introduce a phonics curriculum you simply won't find a better value.
As a "not a plus, or a minus, just a lettin' you know" the approach here feels pretty "old school" by which I mean "not gamified or cutsied up in the slightest". There are no mascot characters for each letter, no handouts with gamified elements or hearts & unicorns & robots & dinosaurs ... the decodable texts aren't even illustrated (an approach I've personally come to prefer anyway). It is very much based on drills that don't have a ton of intrinsic "fun" so providing the motivation is mostly up to the teacher.
Some caveats: this is clearly targeted at teachers doing whole class instruction. If you're dealing with smaller groups or individual students (i.e. a tutor or parent) all of the material still works but the over all timings will need some rejiggering. The entire lesson won't take a full 30-minutes, as it would in a classroom. But trying to fit 2 lessons in a day will likely be too much, especially at the Foundation (Kindergarten) age. With a bit of trial & error you'll be able to find your own pacing but there is clearly room for someone to put together a bit more "ready out of the box" version for individual or small group usage.
I'm also pretty dubious about the first two weeks of Getting Ready Lessons which are going to be delivered to a group of kids sitting in Kindergarten for the first time ever and feel pretty dang technical. (It explains the technical difference between consonants and vowels and goes over the different places of articulation, e.g. tongue pulled back vs back of throat.) It is a lot of just the teacher talking non-stop. At least with my kids, I didn't feel like they took any of this in and I eventually cut it short and moved on to the main lessons.
If you're a teacher using this in a classroom the biggest drawback is there aren't really any "alternative activities" provided. If your students absolutely hate doing "word work with manipulative letters" and you wanted to cut that specific activity by 50% and throw in something else to practice the same skills....there's nothing. Or if you want some "game" other than three years of roll & read. If you like to custom-tailor your activities, you're pretty much on your own.
Still, all the alternatives -- especially covering all three years and not just one -- are generally $200+, so my quibbles are minor considering the value for money here.
edit to add: having now completed the entire "Foundation" scope & sequence (e.g. around 1/2 of the lessons) I'd update this to add: I've tried a few of the worksheet activities you can find on Teachers Pay Teachers for UFLI and have come to dislike all of them as mostly mindless busywork. I've come to appreciate the vanilla book. If you want to supplement then just do more word chains (which are provided).
I think the program has two big weaknesses: it provides zero instruction on spelling. Other programs, like Core Knowledge, at least tell you "hey, at this stage accept any spelling that is phonetically correct, so 'was', 'wus', 'wuz', 'waz' are all fine". Other programs like Logic of English will say "correct mistakes immediately" (though how you'd do this at a classroom level is a bit tricky). For a book that is pretty of not just explicit instruction but direct instruction, it is surprising there is zero guidance on what to do when students inevitably misspell things.
The other weakness is it doesn't give you great guidance on how to improve fluency. A decodable text is provided but the guidance on how to actually use it is very sparse. And what is just reading that once (or twice? or three times?) isn't enough? Other programs offer things like fluency pyramids (which, you can find on Teachers Pay Teachers for UFLI) and other guidance on interventions.
If you're not sold on buying UFLI then Core Knowledge provides a complete phonics curriculum (and full English Language Arts and Math and Science and ....) completely free. I don't like the scope & sequence quite as much as UFLI but it provides a lot of scaffolding around things like interventions and assessments. If I did it all over again, I'd be tempted to go with Core Knowledge as "good enough".
For $70 you get this book, which is 3 years worth of lesson plans. On their website they offer, for free, the associated decodable texts, homework assignments, roll & read, slides that educators can use, their web-based "blending board" (which I was initially very skeptical of but have come to like), and assorted other print outs for putting on walls or making flash cards or whatever.
It actually pretty impressive how much they make available for free. The book itself is, by its nature, somewhat repetitive -- you're going to be doing basically the same activities every day for your literacy block. After the introduction and implementation guidance, you get roughly 300 pages of lesson plans. Each new lesson is split across two days and has blending drills, writing practice, explicit instruction of the new concept, practicing irregular words, reading connected text, a longer decodable text, and then some addition resources for group or individual practice (extra word chains, extra word lists).
The good: this is a pretty comprehensive one-stop package that is basically ready to use out of the box, offering explicit scripts on teaching each concept, letter formation for three full years of literacy instruction. If you're a tutor or an engaged parent or a Lone Ranger teacher trying to introduce a phonics curriculum you simply won't find a better value.
As a "not a plus, or a minus, just a lettin' you know" the approach here feels pretty "old school" by which I mean "not gamified or cutsied up in the slightest". There are no mascot characters for each letter, no handouts with gamified elements or hearts & unicorns & robots & dinosaurs ... the decodable texts aren't even illustrated (an approach I've personally come to prefer anyway). It is very much based on drills that don't have a ton of intrinsic "fun" so providing the motivation is mostly up to the teacher.
Some caveats: this is clearly targeted at teachers doing whole class instruction. If you're dealing with smaller groups or individual students (i.e. a tutor or parent) all of the material still works but the over all timings will need some rejiggering. The entire lesson won't take a full 30-minutes, as it would in a classroom. But trying to fit 2 lessons in a day will likely be too much, especially at the Foundation (Kindergarten) age. With a bit of trial & error you'll be able to find your own pacing but there is clearly room for someone to put together a bit more "ready out of the box" version for individual or small group usage.
I'm also pretty dubious about the first two weeks of Getting Ready Lessons which are going to be delivered to a group of kids sitting in Kindergarten for the first time ever and feel pretty dang technical. (It explains the technical difference between consonants and vowels and goes over the different places of articulation, e.g. tongue pulled back vs back of throat.) It is a lot of just the teacher talking non-stop. At least with my kids, I didn't feel like they took any of this in and I eventually cut it short and moved on to the main lessons.
If you're a teacher using this in a classroom the biggest drawback is there aren't really any "alternative activities" provided. If your students absolutely hate doing "word work with manipulative letters" and you wanted to cut that specific activity by 50% and throw in something else to practice the same skills....there's nothing. Or if you want some "game" other than three years of roll & read. If you like to custom-tailor your activities, you're pretty much on your own.
Still, all the alternatives -- especially covering all three years and not just one -- are generally $200+, so my quibbles are minor considering the value for money here.
edit to add: having now completed the entire "Foundation" scope & sequence (e.g. around 1/2 of the lessons) I'd update this to add: I've tried a few of the worksheet activities you can find on Teachers Pay Teachers for UFLI and have come to dislike all of them as mostly mindless busywork. I've come to appreciate the vanilla book. If you want to supplement then just do more word chains (which are provided).
I think the program has two big weaknesses: it provides zero instruction on spelling. Other programs, like Core Knowledge, at least tell you "hey, at this stage accept any spelling that is phonetically correct, so 'was', 'wus', 'wuz', 'waz' are all fine". Other programs like Logic of English will say "correct mistakes immediately" (though how you'd do this at a classroom level is a bit tricky). For a book that is pretty of not just explicit instruction but direct instruction, it is surprising there is zero guidance on what to do when students inevitably misspell things.
The other weakness is it doesn't give you great guidance on how to improve fluency. A decodable text is provided but the guidance on how to actually use it is very sparse. And what is just reading that once (or twice? or three times?) isn't enough? Other programs offer things like fluency pyramids (which, you can find on Teachers Pay Teachers for UFLI) and other guidance on interventions.
If you're not sold on buying UFLI then Core Knowledge provides a complete phonics curriculum (and full English Language Arts and Math and Science and ....) completely free. I don't like the scope & sequence quite as much as UFLI but it provides a lot of scaffolding around things like interventions and assessments. If I did it all over again, I'd be tempted to go with Core Knowledge as "good enough".
August 31, 2024
Full phonics curriculum at a low price! Can also be used for supplementation to other curricula. (I use it for extra practice for some of the weaker lessons in SIPPS.)
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews