“Welcome to Puzzle Piece Phonics. We are very excited to share our love of word study with you. We are three teachers who developed this comprehensive resource when we worked together through the transition from the North Carolina Standard Course of Study to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). It came about from a moment of near panic when we were sitting at a table in the library after school, and it seemed to hit us at the same time how much more the CCSS expected of students. We looked at each other and wondered, how are we ever going to get our students from “here” to “there”? But then we called on our various strengths—our creativity, our curricular understanding, our practicality, and our can-do personalities—and generated Puzzle Piece Phonics.

In the years since, each of us adapted Puzzle Piece Phonics to fit our classrooms and made sure it can work anywhere, to meet the needs of all our diverse students, and embodies the vision of Balanced Literacy. We enjoy making it our own, and we have seen success with all of our students. Now it’s your turn!”