Imagine a young student named Daniel, eyes wide with excitement as he picks up his brand new book, Chicken Little, to follow along as his teacher reads it aloud to his class. He thinks to himself, “This book has farm animals! I like to watch the chickens when we go to my grandmother’s house.” At his last school, Daniel never had his own copy of the books, let alone a brand new copy! Some of the letters on the pages of the book seem like a mystery to him, but with each new lesson activity in phonics and phonemic awareness, those letters begin to make more sense. They transform into sounds, words, and eventually, as he progresses through the year, stories.