Literacy Big 5

Phonemic Awareness

• Phonemic awareness centers around learning to utilize and understand each individual sound (phoneme) in spoken language.
• A good way to test someone's phonemic awareness, is to ask them what sound is in various parts of words. For example, "What is the last sound in dog?" "What is the middle sound in Fish?"

Phonemic Awareness vs. Phonics

• Phonemic awareness and Phonics are different! Phonemic awareness only pertains to spoken language, whereas Phonics applies to written language.
• Phonics teaches students to see the connection between graphemes and phonemes (graphemes are the letters that represent sounds in written language).

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• Phonemic awareness helps children learn to spell and improves reading comprehension.
• Phonemic awareness is most effective when a teacher utilizes small group instruction and provides letters that students can manipulate to create phonemes.

Phonics Instruction

• Phonics helps students to recognize and understand the correspondence between written and oral language.

Explicit and Systematic

• Phonics instruction is most effective when the instruction is explicit (clear directions for teachers for how to explain the concepts).
• Phonics instruction is also most effective when it is systematic (the letter-sound relationships are studied in a logical order and carefully chosen).

Fluency Instruction

• Reading fluency is defined as the ability to read a text quickly and accurately.

Develop reading fluency by..

• Reading fluency should be taught using two strategies; modeling and repetition of oral readings.

Vocabulary Instruction

• Vocabulary includes reading and oral communication and is critical in being able to communicate and read effectively.

Vocabulary two ways

• Vocabulary can be taught directly or indirectly.
• Direct vocabulary instruction involves explicitly teaching specific words and strategies to decode words.
• Indirect vocabulary instruction happens naturally as children are read to, read on their own, and communicate orally.

Text Comprehension

• Comprehension of a text is the purpose of learning to read!
• Many students struggle with comprehension but instruction can help.

Text Comprehension continued..

• Utilizing comprehension strategies is an effective way to help students grow in their ability to comprehend texts.
• These strategies can be taught three ways, through explicit instruction, cooperative learning, and combining various strategies.