Open Court Reading

The instructional materials for Kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2 partially meet the expectations of alignment and building knowledge. Although texts are of high quality, not all texts are appropriately complex for the grade level. Due to the preponderance of reading strategy instruction, the materials do not consistently provide standards-aligned reading, writing, speaking and listening, and language practice. Foundational skills instruction includes a research-based synthetic approach with systematic and explicit instruction; however, there is a lack of daily encoding instruction which may hinder orthographic mapping. Materials also include decodable texts aligned to the program’s scope and sequence for phonics and high-frequency words.

The instructional materials for Grades 3, 4, and 5 partially meet the expectations of alignment and building knowledge. Although texts are of high quality, the materials do not consistently provide standards-aligned reading, writing, speaking and listening, and language practice.