The Big 5 components

Phonemic Awareness

• phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds -phonemes- in spoken words
• There are about 41 phonemes in the English langauge
• Phonemic awareness instruction both helps students read and improves comprehension.

Phonics

• Phonics is the understanding that there is a predictable relationship between phonemes and graphemes.
• writing words requires students to have a firm understanding of both phonemes and graphemes and how they relate.

Fluency

• Fluency is the ability to read a text accurately and quickly.
• Fluency allows students to practice using both word recognition and comprehension.

Vocabulary

• Vocabulary refers to the words we must know to communicate effectively
• You can't teach students every single word they encounter and you shouldn't. You should allow them to practice using context clues.

Comprehension

• The action or capability of understanding something.
• While some aspects of reading can be taught quickly, comprehension is not one of them and it will continue to develop one's entire life.