Scope & Sequence

This is the instructional map behind the Poppins Learning program, written for the people who have to answer "what does it actually teach, and does it match what I'm accountable for?"

• Skills are grouped by strand (phonological awareness, phonics and decoding, encoding, and vocabulary and comprehension) and ordered within each strand by the level at which they unlock.
• Levels are placement bands, not grades. L1 L2 L3 describe where a skill sits in the program’s own progression. A fourth grader who places into L1 gets L1 content. Placement sets a level for each strand separately, and two strands are practiced at a time.
• Every skill names the exercises that carry it. Most skills are practiced inside two to five different games, so the underlying task recurs without the surface getting stale; a few, mostly in vocabulary and comprehension, live in a single exercise.
• Notation. Slashes mark phonemes: /k/ /æ/ /t/. Highlighting marks the target grapheme the student must supply: bake, rain. A raised dot marks a syllable boundary: cat·er·pil·lar.
• Standards codes here are a summary. Each skill in section 05 carries the codes it addresses, marked for whether the match is full, partial or still under review. Marks: ●●● full match · ◐ partial match · ? under review. Standards alignment beyond these codes is in preparation as a companion document. Matches only: standards outside the program’s scope, such as handwriting, oral production, group discussion and extended composition, are not repeated here.

Four strands, three levels, one 20-minute daily session. The design follows the structured literacy sequence: explicit, systematic, cumulative, delivered through rhythm-based practice of the sound processing that reading draws on.

A daily session is five rhythm games (about 8.5 minutes) and five reading exercises (10 minutes). This guide covers the reading exercises; the rhythm games are listed in Appendix C.

How the levels build

Plus one skill with content ready and not yet scheduled.

What the four strands do

The strands map onto the word-recognition and language-comprehension halves of the reading rope. Phonological awareness and decoding build automatic word reading; encoding runs the same knowledge in the opposite direction, which is where fragile phoneme–grapheme mappings surface first; vocabulary and comprehension carry the meaning side.

Twenty core exercises, listed by the level at which a student first meets them. Most carry skills across more than one level: the task stays constant while the content underneath it advances.

The terms used throughout this guide, in the vocabulary of structured literacy and the science of reading.

Phonological awareness

The ability to notice and manipulate the sound units of spoken language (words, syllables, onsets and rimes) independent of print.

Phonemic awareness

The narrowest and most predictive band of phonological awareness: isolating, blending, segmenting and manipulating individual phonemes in spoken words.

Onset and rime

The two parts of a spoken syllable: the consonant sound(s) before the vowel (/k/ in cat) and the vowel plus what follows (/æt/). The unit rhyme judgments run on.

Phoneme isolation

Identifying the sound in a specific position (initial, medial or final) within a spoken word.

Blending

Pushing separate phonemes together into a whole word: /k/ /æ/ /t/ → cat.

Segmenting

Breaking a spoken word into its constituent sounds: the inverse operation, and the one that underwrites spelling.

Phoneme–grapheme correspondence

The mapping between a speech sound and the letter or letter group that spells it, the core of phonics instruction.

Decoding

Applying those correspondences to convert print to speech and read an unfamiliar word.

Digraph

Two letters spelling one sound: sh, ch, th, wh, ph, ck, ng.

Consonant blend

Two or three adjacent consonants whose sounds are each still heard: bl, str, nd.

Vowel team

Two or more letters working together to spell one vowel sound: ai, ee, oa, ow.

Syllable types

The six patterns that make a vowel's sound predictable: closed, open, VCe (magic e), vowel team, r-controlled, and consonant-le. Poppins Learning teaches all six.

Syllable division

Splitting a longer word at predictable junctures (VC/CV, V/CV) so each part can be read.

Morphology

Knowledge of meaningful word parts (prefixes, suffixes, base words and roots) used to read and understand longer words.

Inflectional vs. derivational suffix

An inflectional suffix changes number or tense without changing the word's class (walk → walked); a derivational one builds a new word, often a new part of speech (teach → teacher).

Orthographic mapping

The process by which a decoded word becomes an instantly recognized sight word: bonding its spelling, pronunciation and meaning in memory.

High-frequency words

The words that make up the largest share of running text, taught for automatic recognition. Poppins Learning sequences them in two lists.

Encoding

Spelling: converting a spoken word into its written form by mapping each phoneme to a grapheme. The reciprocal of decoding, and a sharper diagnostic of whether a mapping is secure.

Spelling generalizations

The conditional rules governing what happens at a morpheme boundary: doubling (hop → hopping), drop-e (hope → hoping), and y-to-i (happy → happier).

Homophones

Words that sound alike but differ in spelling and meaning: to / too / two. Resolvable only from sentence context.

Academic vocabulary

The general-purpose words that appear across school texts but rarely in conversation: compare, describe, predict.

Semantic relationships

How word meanings relate to one another: synonyms, antonyms, categories.

Multiple meanings

Recognizing that a single word form carries different meanings across contexts: the bat you swing versus the one that flies.

Context clues

Using the surrounding sentence or passage to infer the meaning of an unfamiliar word.

Main idea and key details

Distinguishing what a passage is centrally about from the details that support it.

Text structure

Recognizing how a text is organized: sequence, cause and effect, compare and contrast, problem and solution.

Inferential comprehension

Drawing a conclusion the text supports but does not state outright.

Following directions

Reading a short written description, parsing its syntax and acting on it: a reading-comprehension task that loads working memory as the sentences lengthen and embed clauses.

Auditory processing

Interpreting and discriminating speech sounds presented in audio, including the timing distinctions that separate similar phonemes.

Working memory

Holding a target in mind, spoken or printed, while scanning, comparing or manipulating the choices on screen.

Attention

Sustaining focus on the target and rejecting the distractors deliberately placed alongside it.

Sequencing

Retaining and reproducing order: of phonemes within a word, of syllables within a longer word, of steps within an instruction.

Processing speed

Responding accurately within the time available in the activity.

All 62 skills, in teaching order within each strand. The number in the left column is the skill's position in its strand's progression, not a lesson number: students enter at the level their placement assigns and move through from there.

A parent code stands for its (a) clause; lettered sub-standards are cited separately.

Two bonus games appear inside the session about every other round of exercises. Their content is not tied to a single skill.

The placement step draws on a bank of 66 items (four warm-ups, 62 scored) across the four strands, tagged by grade, Pre-K through 4th. The student’s grade sets the highest level the placement can start at; in each strand it starts there and steps down when items are missed, and Level 1 is the floor. A student answers a subset, roughly 12 to 40 items.

Every session also includes five rhythm games, about 8.5 minutes in all. They carry no words, so they sit outside the skill sequence; they practice timing, auditory attention and auditory memory.

What this guide is built from, and what still needs review.

Program content

The US curriculum as it ships, read from the game’s data files, September 2026 edition.

Standards codes

The codes and verdict marks in section 05 are summarized from the K–4 Common Core alignment grid prepared for Poppins Learning. Standards alignment beyond these codes is in preparation as a companion document.

Scope of the program

Poppins Learning’s reading exercises are receptive and tap-to-answer. Handwriting, spoken retelling, group discussion and extended composition are outside its scope and are not claimed. Rhythm games use tapping, clapping, singing and device motion. The program is designed to amplify structured literacy instruction, not to deliver first instruction in it: the teacher or specialist introduces the rules, and the program gives them repeated practice.

What this document is not

A scope and sequence describes what a program teaches and in what order. It is not a statement of outcomes. Beyond the single trial reference on the cover, nothing here makes an efficacy claim; the trial is registered (NCT06592911); its results are not yet published.