Frog Street Pre-K - Criterion 2.3

Frog Street Pre-K materials meet expectations for supporting receptive and expressive language (2.3a). 

The materials provide frequent, developmentally appropriate opportunities for children to listen, speak, respond, question, and elaborate within structured and play-based contexts. Oral language instruction is reinforced through explicit teacher strategies, interactive routines, and meaningful peer interactions that align with research-based practices and support diverse learners.

Receptive and expressive language development is supported through a range of integrated instructional experiences across Frog Street Pre-K materials. Daily interactive read-alouds promote listening comprehension, vocabulary development, and expressive responses, as seen in Theme 3 (Teacher Guide, p. 18, Quinito’s Neighborhood), where children identify settings, describe characters, and connect experiences to their own lives. The Welcome Guide (p. 26) outlines questioning and prompting strategies aligned to dialogic reading practices. 

Teacher talk and modeling strategies, such as Repeat, Expand, and Model, along with Parallel Talk and Self-Talk, are embedded in routines like Morning Message and writing lessons (e.g., Theme 2, p. 8; Theme 4, p. 10), with strategy cards and icons prompting language modeling. Language use is further supported in small groups, centers, and STEAM activities, where children explain ideas, collaborate, and engage in problem-solving discussions (e.g., Theme 8, pp. 24–25), with open-ended questions included to extend conversation.

Dramatic play and peer interactions also promote expressive language, such as in Theme 6 (p. 89), where children engage in role-based scenarios and respond to prompts about personal experiences. Language-rich routines are embedded throughout the day, including Greeting and Closing Circles, Music and Movement, and inquiry activities, with songs and chants supporting auditory memory and expressive fluency (e.g., Theme 1, p. 12). 

Dual-language supports, such as bilingual vocabulary cards (e.g., bridge/puente), story summaries, and strategy cards encouraging gestures, cognates, and Total Physical Response (e.g., Theme 2, p. 15), are included to support participation and language development for a range of learners.

Overall, Frog Street Pre-K provides consistent, high-quality support for receptive and expressive language development through interactive read-alouds, explicit teacher modeling, peer collaboration, music, play, and inquiry-based learning. Oral language opportunities are intentionally embedded across all components of the daily schedule and reinforced through research-based instructional strategies. 

Frog Street Pre-K materials meet expectations for supporting vocabulary (2.3b). 

Vocabulary development is intentional and systematic, with new words introduced weekly, reinforced across daily routines, and applied in meaningful instructional and play-based contexts. Children are provided with frequent opportunities to hear, use, revisit, and deepen understanding of vocabulary across content areas.

The materials provide intentional weekly vocabulary instruction through each theme’s Getting Started page, which identifies focus vocabulary aligned to the theme. For example, Theme 6, Move, includes words such as actions, maneuver, obstacle, and personal space (Teacher Guide, p. 2). These vocabulary words span common, academic, and content-specific domains, helping children build language across a variety of contexts.

Vocabulary instruction is also supported through explicit teaching with child-friendly resources. Vocabulary Cards include visuals, printed words, and teacher scripting with accessible definitions. For example, in Theme 2 (Teacher Guide, p. 98), the teacher reviews the words friend and loyal using Vocabulary Cards and example sentences.

The materials provide multiple contexts and repeated exposure to vocabulary throughout the instructional day. Vocabulary is embedded across Greeting Circle, Morning Message, Read-Alouds, Practice Centers, Small Groups, STEAM, and Closing Circle. Words are revisited an average of three to five times per day and reinforced throughout the week, supporting repeated practice and deeper understanding.

Vocabulary learning is also active and multimodal. Gesture- and movement-based strategies help children connect physical actions to word meanings. For example, in Theme 1 (Teacher Guide, p. 35), children label body parts such as head, lungs, and toes using Vocabulary Cards and movements. In Theme 5 (Teacher Guide, pp. 18–19), children act out bulldozer movements during a read-aloud. These nonverbal supports also help make vocabulary more accessible for diverse learners.

The materials also support vocabulary development through dialogic read-alouds and oral language use. Teachers are prompted to pause during reading, define vocabulary, and ask children to connect words to their own experiences. For example, in Theme 2, during The Little Engine That Could, teachers explain the word determined and ask children when they have felt that way.

Vocabulary is also developed across content areas. Academic language includes words such as predict, compare, observe, and describe. In mathematics, children are introduced to terms such as equal, greater, and fewer (Theme 7, Teacher Guide, pp. 33–36). In science, vocabulary includes words such as sink, float, solid, liquid, and temperature (Theme 8, Teacher Guide, p. 45). In social studies, children encounter terms such as community, map, role, and responsibility (Theme 3, Teacher Guide, p. 22).

The materials also support children in exploring conceptual relationships among words. For example, in Theme 1 (Teacher Guide, p. 104), children discuss relationships among emotion words and connect those words to their own illustrations, helping deepen both vocabulary knowledge and conceptual understanding.

Teacher guidance and language strategy tools are embedded throughout the materials to support implementation. Vocabulary Cards, Language Strategy Cards, “Talk About It” icons, and Dual Language supports guide teachers in modeling, extending, and assessing vocabulary use. English-Spanish vocabulary pairings are also included to support dual-language learners.

Overall, Frog Street Pre-K provides frequent, intentional, and developmentally appropriate opportunities for children to learn and use common, academic, and content-specific vocabulary. Vocabulary instruction is explicit, multimodal, and reinforced across daily routines, content areas, and play-based learning. Teachers are well supported with clear tools and strategies to model, extend, and revisit vocabulary in meaningful contexts. 

Frog Street Pre-K materials meet expectations for supporting children in recognizing and manipulating sounds and words (2.3c). 

Phonological awareness is embedded in the Morning Message routine (Step 1 of 3), providing consistent, systematic opportunities for children to engage in listening, segmenting, blending, and manipulating sounds in spoken language. While phonemic awareness is more concentrated in Themes 7 and 9 and is primarily oral, the materials provide repeated practice, aligned strategy supports, and integration into shared writing routines, supporting skill development over time.

Phonological awareness skills are embedded daily in Morning Message and reinforced in Literacy Small Groups. The online Literacy Scope and Sequence outlines the following progression across themes:

• Theme 1–2: Auditory discrimination; segment sentences into words

• Theme 3: Review compound words; segment, blend, and delete syllables

• Theme 4: Recognize rhyming words

• Theme 5: Recognize and produce alliterative words

• Theme 6: Blend onset-rime

• Theme 8: Review sentence segmentation, syllable blending/deleting, rhyming

Examples include:

• Theme 2, Week 1, Morning Message (p. 14): The teacher says a sentence (e.g., “How is your fabulous family? ") and places a sticky note for each spoken word. Children repeat the sentence, count the words, and segment sentences into individual words.

• Theme 5, Week 4, Literacy Small Group (p. 98): Children generate additional rhyming words (rat, hat, ___) and identify alliterative words (map, mop).

• Strategy Cards in Teacher Resources provide structured support for sentence segmentation, rhyming, syllables, compound words, onset-rime, and alliteration, and are referenced within lessons.

Phonological awareness instruction is integrated into shared writing during Morning Message, where the teacher models writing while children repeat the sentence to focus on the target sound skill, connecting oral language work with print awareness, even though the writing component is primarily teacher-led.

Phonemic awareness is addressed in specific units and reinforced through oral blending and segmenting tasks:

• Theme 7, Week 2, Morning Message (p. 40): The teacher models blending phonemes (/t/ /o/) and invites children to listen for the blended word within the sentence.

• Theme 9, Week 3, Literacy Small Group (p. 72): Children segment phonemes in words (bee: /b/ /e/) using connecting cubes, pushing one cube for each sound.

Although phonemic awareness is primarily oral and limited to certain themes, children engage in structured blending and segmenting activities supported by visual phoneme cards and manipulatives. Writing opportunities in shared and guided writing, as well as the Writer’s Corner, reinforce literacy skills, though they are not always explicitly tied to phoneme-to-grapheme mapping.

Overall, Frog Street Pre-K materials provide consistent opportunities for phonological awareness development through daily Morning Message routines and reinforcement in Literacy Small Groups. Skills progress across themes, from auditory discrimination and sentence segmentation to rhyming, alliteration, and onset-rime blending, as outlined in the Literacy Scope and Sequence. Structured activities, Strategy Cards, and shared writing routines support practice and skill development, while phonemic awareness is addressed in specific themes through oral blending and segmenting activities using visual supports and manipulatives.

Frog Street Pre-K materials meet expectations for developing alphabet knowledge and concepts of print (2.3d). 

The materials provide consistent, structured, and developmentally appropriate opportunities for children to develop foundational literacy skills through Morning Message, Literacy Small Groups, Practice Centers, guided writing, and family engagement activities.

Alphabet Knowledge Standards:

A. Names letters B. Recognizes letter sounds C. Produces letter sounds D. Recognizes and produces syllables (Spanish)

Print Concepts Standards:

A. Distinguishes between letters, words, and pictures B. Understands print directionality C. Identifies punctuation and letter case D. Understands sentences are comprised of words separated by spaces E. Recognizes some familiar words

Examples of Evidence:

Alphabet Knowledge

• Theme 2, Week 1, p. 21: Children identify the letters within their names and build Ff, Mm, and Gg using Letter Builder, Play-Doh, or Wiki Stix (Names letters; Recognizes letter sounds).

• Theme 2, Week 1, p. 3: Families engage in “I Spy Letters” to identify target letters F, G, and M in environmental print (Name letters).

• Theme 4, Week 3, p. 66: Students review target sounds /b/, /k/, /m/, /s/, and corresponding letter cards throughout the week (Recognizes and produces letter sounds).

• Theme 7, Week 3, p. 73: Students match uppercase and lowercase letters (Ss, Tt, Uu, Vv), discuss alphabetical order, and practice printing/forming letters on dry-erase boards (Names letters; Recognizes letter case).

• Theme 6, Week 2, p. 40: During Morning Message, students locate displayed letters and practice writing them (Names letters; Produces letter sounds).

• Theme 8, Week 4, p. 99: Children identify the first sound in a word and determine which letter represents that sound, with scaffolding as needed (Produces letter sounds).

Print Concepts

• Theme 5, Week 3, p. 66: During Morning Message, students recall each word in a sentence as the teacher writes, identify punctuation marks, and circle ending punctuation (Identifies punctuation; Understands sentences are comprised of words separated by spaces).

• Theme 3, p. 66: Teacher models spacing between words and explains that sentences begin with an uppercase letter (Understands spacing; Identifies letter case).

• Theme 7, p. 92: Children identify the first and last word in a sentence and name the punctuation mark (Distinguishes words; Identifies punctuation).

• Theme 3, Week 2, p. 34: Students create “Get Well” or “Missing You” cards in the Writer’s Corner (Recognizes familiar words; Distinguishes letters and words).

• Theme 9, Week 1, p. 10: Students write uppercase letters during a timed partner activity (Recognizes and names letters; Recognizes letter case). 

Overall, Frog Street Pre-K consistently embeds alphabet knowledge and print concepts into the daily Morning Message routine, providing structured, repeated exposure to foundational literacy skills. During Morning Message, teachers guide children in reviewing target letters and sounds, identifying uppercase and lowercase forms, and locating specific letters in written sentences. Children are often invited to highlight or circle focus letters, practice letter formation, and connect sounds to printed words. At the same time, print concepts are reinforced through teacher modeling and student participation as children identify the first word in a sentence, recognize that sentences begin with an uppercase letter, note ending punctuation, and observe word spacing. Through this predictable routine, children engage in meaningful, contextually rich practice of both alphabet knowledge and concepts of print within authentic shared writing experiences.

Frog Street Pre-K materials meet expectations for supporting children’s comprehension (2.3e). 

The materials intentionally incorporate literary and informational texts into daily instruction and provide explicit teacher guidance to support comprehension before, during, and after reading. These texts are developmentally appropriate and integrated across themes and content areas.

The materials include a broad range of texts and comprehension supports. The program features 104 core texts, including 74 literary texts that support narrative comprehension, oral language, and social-emotional learning, and 30 informational texts that build early content knowledge. An additional set of 10 Pre-K Emergent Readers supports early decoding, print concepts, and thematic understanding. Overall, the collection places a stronger emphasis on literary texts for read-aloud instruction, while informational texts support learning in science, math, and social studies.

The authorship and illustration data suggest that the collection is predominantly created by White authors and illustrators, with more limited representation from Latinx/Hispanic and Black/African American creators. The materials include a mix of female and male authors and illustrators, with several recurring contributors and some informational texts credited to teams rather than individuals. Across the text set, protagonists often include boys, girls, mixed-gender groups, families, classrooms, and community settings. Many texts focus on shared childhood experiences, emotional development, and social interaction, which makes them accessible to preschool learners.

The texts are developmentally appropriate, accessible, and integrated across themes. Representation within texts includes some instances of children with disabilities, such as a book featuring a child with Down syndrome on the cover (Feelings Are Real, Theme 1, Teacher Guide, pp. 94–95), though the character is not featured within the text, as well as a small number of books depicting children using wheelchairs. 

Daily read-aloud instruction is a consistent feature of the curriculum. Each day includes two read-aloud experiences aligned with the weekly theme, and fiction and nonfiction texts are intentionally paired within each theme. For example, Theme 6 includes The Numeral Dance and Samantha on a Roll alongside How Do We Get There and Traveling Across a Tundra. These read-alouds are embedded consistently within whole-group instruction.

The materials also include explicit guidance to support comprehension. Teacher Guides provide structured prompts for before-, during-, and after-reading discussions, and the questions are aligned to multiple levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy to support recall, inference, application, and reflection. For example, in Theme 2, Teacher Guide pp. 18–19, teachers use A Chair for My Mother to connect story content to children’s family roles and classroom community.

Genre and text-feature instruction are also addressed in the materials. Informational text features are explicitly taught and reinforced. For example, in Theme 7, Teacher Guide (p. 16), children use Crawling Creatures to explore the table of contents and identify features such as labels, captions, glossary, index, and headings. Teachers also reinforce genre distinctions through tools such as the “Fiction or Nonfiction” poster.

Overall, Frog Street Pre-K provides consistent support for children’s comprehension and understanding through daily exposure to a range of literary and informational texts. The materials include structured teacher guidance, repeated opportunities for discussion and reflection, and explicit attention to genre and text features. The texts are developmentally appropriate, accessible, and integrated across themes. Representation within texts includes some inclusion of children with disabilities, and this area could be further strengthened.