Florida Grade 1 FAST Early Literacy Practice
Practice letters, spoken sounds, words, understanding and early numbers with short original activities and an adult.
Choose an activity domain and practice together. These independent activities cover familiarity with all ten Star Early Literacy subdomains. They are unscored adult observations, without official proficiency labels or score predictions. This is not a 27-item official test, an adaptive simulation or a reproduction of Star's audio delivery.
The adult opens the instructions, prepares any paper or objects and keeps listening words and answers out of the child's view. Say the spoken sounds without added vowels. Show actual printed words for decoding activities and let the child read them aloud. Early Numeracy is a Star Early Literacy subdomain; it is separate from ELA curriculum benchmark codes.
Activity domains
- Alphabetic Principle
- Concept of Word
- Visual Discrimination
- Phonemic Awareness
- Phonics
- Structural Analysis
- Vocabulary
- Sentence-Level Comprehension
- Paragraph-Level Comprehension
- Early Numeracy
Early Literacy with an adult
Unscored adult observations. Listen, speak, and practice together.
Match upper- and lowercase letters
Look at the letter cards your adult makes. Match partners and name them.
Activity 1 of 19
For the adult: instructions and observations
Write A, a, M, m, S, s, T and t on eight separate cards, one symbol on each. Mix them on the table. Ask the child to match each capital letter with its lowercase partner and name the letter. Then point to m and s and ask for a common sound each represents. Model after their attempt if needed; /m/ and /s/ should not have an added vowel.
Materials: Eight paper cards and pencil
Expected response: Matches A/a, M/m, S/s and T/t, names the four letters and gives /m/ and /s/ as common sounds for m and s.
Benchmarks:
Grade 1 FAST in 2026–27
FAST means Florida Assessment of Student Thinking. Grade 1 normally takes Star Early Literacy in PM1 and PM2 and must attempt Star Reading in PM3. An official Early Literacy Unified Scale Score of 852 or higher permits moving to Reading in the next period, including Grade 1 PM1 after a qualifying kindergarten result. A district may direct Grade 1 Reading in all periods. After two unsuccessful official Reading practice attempts, the district should administer Early Literacy for instructional information. These activities do not determine placement or predict that official score.
All official K–2 FAST assessments require headphones. Every Star Early Literacy item has audio. Our activities use a live adult for guided practice. The school follows official administration and IEP or 504 guidance. See the 2026–27 K–2 FAST fact sheet and official sample resources.