Program Expectations

The Once Curriculum consists of 200 cycles, or spiraling lessons, each of which is made up of fewer than ten tasks. You can preview the Once cycles by clicking “Instruction” at the top of the Once website.

All students start the Once curriculum at the beginning, or Cycle 0, regardless of their grade or prior knowledge. The program is designed to proceed at each student’s pace. Students with a strong foundation in early literacy skills will accelerate through the content quickly until they reach consistently new and more challenging content.

The Once instructors are trained and coached to move students forward in the curriculum only when students have mastered the current skill they are working on. In other words, Once is confident that students working on a given cycle have not simply been exposed to the material leading up to that cycle but have added to a solid foundation on which to build more reading skills.

Students will progress through the curriculum at different rates based on their skill level and the number of sessions they receive; therefore, different students will end the year on different cycles. There are 180 days in most school calendars. A committed, consistent implementation of Once will be able to deliver sessions to students on about 80% of those days due to student and instructor absences and planned deviations from the normal schedule (like field trips and assemblies). If a student were to receive 80% of scheduled sessions and cover one cycle each session, that student would reach Cycle 140.

For reference:

• Students who reach Cycle 84 will be reading on a first-grade level.

• Students who reach Cycle 166 will be reading on a second-grade level.

Comparing Once's Cycle 140 to End-of-First-Grade Assessments

Once Cycle 140

Sample reading passage:

Alice swam near another big rock. Then, when she was convinced that the star did not expect her, she pounced. "I got you!" she shouted, but she had to shade her face, because this was the brightest star yet.

• Avg. words per sentence: 9.75

• VCe: shade

• Non-phonetic words: another, she, was, the, I, you, to

• Vocabulary: convinced, pounced

• Longest Word: 9 letters; 3 syllables

• Syntax: simple, complex, compound-complex

DIBELS EOY 1st Grade

Sample reading passage:

The sun is rising, telling the bees it’s time to get busy. The worker bees leave the hive. They are looking for nectar, a sweet liquid, and pollen, a yellow dust. The bees use these things to make food and honey.

• Avg. words per sentence: 10.25

• VCe: time, hive, use, these, make

• Non-phonetic words: the, is, to, they, are, honey

• Vocabulary: liquid, pollen

• Longest Word: 7 letters; 2 syllables

• Syntax: simple, complex

Reading Mastery EOY 1st Grade

Sample reading passage:

Jean had found out fifteen rules. The last rule she found out told about making the wizard disappear. She needed only one more rule. So she sat down and began to think. Suddenly she jumped up.

• Avg. words per sentence: 7.2

• VCe: rule, more

• Non-phonetic words: the, she, only, one, so, to

• Vocabulary: disappear, suddenly

• Longest Word: 9 letters; 3 syllables

• Syntax: simple