Creating Materials to Get Started

To effectively use Road to Reading, you have to invest some time up front getting your materials ready.  You also need to manage your materials well as you use the program, organizing letter and word cards as well as decodable texts.  In this post, I'll give you some tips on creating materials to get started.

The essential materials you need to get started with Road to Reading are:

  • White and yellow colored card stock and/or white and yellow colored index cards
  • A color printer and/or black and red Sharpie markers
    • Large letter cards, small letter cards, and word cards will be made using the card stock/index cards and printer/Sharpies
  • A sound board (more on this below)
  • Decodable texts (see the Decodable Books blog page for more on purchasing and organizing these)
  • Notebook and/or primary lined paper
Road to Reading comes with a CD that has a ton of printable materials in PDF form.  I highly recommend starting here with your materials creation.  When I started with Road to Reading I got all of my Red Level materials ready first, and started working with a very beginning reader.  As that child progressed through the levels of Road to Reading, I created the materials needed for each additional level.  This made my initial materials creation process less daunting.

From left to right: sound pack for Step 1, small sound cards for use on a
sound board in Step 2, and phonetically regular word cards (PRWs) for Step 3.


Step 1 of Road to Reading reviews sound-symbol correspondences.  For this step, you need a sound pack (these cards simply have a letter, digraph, vowel pattern, or consonant + le syllable on them and are printed vertically).
  • Print pages 37-53 of the PDF labeled "RTRmain" on the CD and cut out the cards - be sure you are using a color printer because it is important that the vowels always appear in red.  Print all of these cards on white card stock.  Card stock is far more durable than other kinds of paper and can be purchased in large packages at Staples or Office Max.
  • If you don't have a color printer, you can hand write the vowel cards (or all the cards) using red and black Sharpies.  Just follow the CD PDF as a model.

Step 2 of Road to Reading teaches a new decoding skill by having students build words on a sound board.  For this step, you will need a sound board and a pack of smaller letter cards.  See page 56 of the PDF labeled "RTRmain" on the CD for a detailed description of how to make a sound board using large colored card stock and clear packing tape.  The smaller letter cards that are used on the sound board, however, can be printed from the CD.
  • Print pages 58-110 of the PDF labeled "RTRmain" on the CD and cut out the cards.  Again, use white card stock and be sure you're using a color printer so the vowels come out in red. 
    • ***Note that the PDF gives you a whole page of each letter/sound.  This is good if you'll be working with a group or sharing with a colleague, but if you're just working with one student, you certainly don't need 18 of each letter.  Instead, you can print a few copies of page 111 of the PDF labeled "RTRmain" on the CD which gives you blank sound board cards that are the right size.  Then, you can hand write the letters onto the cards (remembering to use black for consonants and red for vowels).  I recommend making at least 2 of each letter as some words will have doubles (e.g., stuff has a double f).  Use the PDF as a guide for what letter patterns you need.
  • If you don't have a printer, you can make your own cards.  These cards are supposed to be 3" tall and 1.25" wide with the letter written on the top half of the card.

A sound board for Step 2.


Step 3 of Road to Reading reviews phonetically regular words (PRWs) and high frequency words (HFWs).  For this step, you will need PRWs on white card stock and HFWs on yellow card stock.  The yellow card stock cues students that the word is one they need to see and know right away, and it may not be one that is phonetically regular and can be sounded out (e.g., said, were, and was are HFWs).  A starter set of PRWs for each level is provided on the CD as well as a list of 50 HFWs recommended for that level.  Start by printing these resources, and you can add more words to your starter set later.
  • For the Red Level PRWs, print pages 116-131 of the PDF labeled "RTRmain" on the CD on white card stock and cut out the cards.
  • For the Red Level HFWs, print pages 224-236 of the PDF labeled "RTRmain" on the CD on yellow card stock and cut out the cards.
  • If you don't have a color printer, you can use the PDF as a guide and hand write the PRWs on white index cards and the HFWs on yellow index cards.  Note that the vowels should be red on the PRW cards, but NOT on the HFW cards.  This is because HFWs often have irregular vowel sounds and the student should learn the word as one whole unit, not as a blending of the sounds.  Hence, the HFWs are printed all in black.

Step 4 of Road to Reading provides an opportunity for students to apply the decoding and word identification skills they have been developing in steps 1-3 to connected text.  See the page titled Decodable Books, where I discuss finding, buying, and organizing decodable texts.  For now, just know that you will need to gather texts that use controlled vocabulary to focus on a particular vowel/word pattern.


Decodable books for Step 4.


Step 5 of Road to Reading is where students practice producing the sound/pattern they have been learning by spelling words with that sound/pattern.  The program recommends providing each student with a dictation notebook.  Depending on the age and handwriting skills of the student(s) you're working with, it may be preferable to use primary-lined writing paper.  This paper can be hole-punched and put in a small binder to create a dictation notebook.
Primary writing paper set up for dictation for Step 5.

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