Five Pillars of Reading Instruction
Five pillars of reading instruction
Decades of research have identified five critical skills necessary for children’s reading success: Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary, and Comprehension. These are the five pillars of reading instruction and one of the key frameworks of the Science of Reading.
The Science of Reading provides proven, evidence-based best practices for teaching reading to all students. It emphasizes the importance of structured literacy or the systematic and explicit approach to teaching reading and writing skills.
You will learn about one skill in each monthly newsletter and ways to incorporate learning at home with your child.
What is phonemic awareness?
Phonemic awareness is the ability to identify and manipulate the individual sounds in spoken words. While we use our eyes to read, children must learn to connect what they hear and say to the written letter on the page.
A phoneme is an individual sound in a spoken word. For example, the word “stop” has four phonemes: /s/ /t/ /o/ /p/. The word “kick” has three phonemes: /k/ /i/ /ck/.
While English has 26 letters, it has about 44 phonemes that we put together to form spoken words.
Building phonemic awareness at home
Match spoken words with their initial sounds (“stop and score both begin with /s/”)
Separate the sounds in a word (k-i-ck)
Blend separate sounds into a word (“I say k-i-ck, what word is that?”)
Sing songs/nursery rhymes, read aloud books, and expose children to as much spoken language as possible.
ReferencesEhri, L. C. (2022). What teachers need to know and do to teach letter–sounds, phonemic awareness, word reading, and phonics. The Reading Teacher, 76(1), 53-61.
Melby-Lervåg, M., Lyster, S. A. H., & Hulme, C. (2012). Phonological skills and their role in learning to read: a meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 138(2), 322.
National Reading Panel (US), National Institute of Child Health, & Human Development (US). (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction: Reports of the subgroups. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.
