Components of Reading - Resources (2024)

Oral language is the system of words and word combinations used to communicate with others through speaking and listening. We use oral language to express and comprehend knowledge, ideas, and feelings. Oral language allows us to connect words, to communicate, and to understand. It is the foundation on which all emergent literacy and later reading is built. Strong oral language skills are key to successfully communicating ideas, needs and goals, and to developing personal relationships with family and friends.

Phonological awareness is the understanding that spoken language can be broken down into parts and the ability to manipulate those parts at the word, syllable, onset-rime, and phoneme level. Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in spoken words. Phonemic awareness is a developmental level of phonological awareness. Think about the size of the unit of language you are focusing on--if you are working with a broad focus of words or syllables it is phonological awareness. If you are working with a narrow focus of individual sounds (phonemes), it is phonemic awareness. The ultimate goal of phonological awareness instruction is to help students develop an awareness that words are composed of individual sounds, or phonemes, and to develop the ability to manipulate individual sounds in words. Phonological awareness helps students benefit more from phonics instruction and is directly related to reading ability.

Phonological Awareness Resources

Student Progress Records, Information to Guide Instruction, and Instructional Routines

Progress monitoring data and teacher observation determine the type of phonological awareness instruction and practice individual students need. Use these Student Progress Records to record individual student progress in phonological awareness and to form groups for differentiated small group instruction. Some features in these documents will only function when opened in Adobe Acrobat 2020 or later versions.

The information in the tables below can help you learn more about the instructional needs of your students and guide your instruction with specific groups and/or individual students. If the student cannot demonstrate the skill, you can implement the aligned Instructional Routine during small group instruction.

Phonics is the relationship between graphemes (letters) and the phonemes (sounds) they represent. Phonics is also used to describe reading instruction that teaches these relationships (often referred to as sound-symbol correspondences). The goal of phonics instruction is to help children use sound-symbol correspondences to read and write words.

Phonics instruction helps students learn the alphabetic principle (the understanding that there are systematic and predictable relationships between written letters and spoken words). This helps students learn to read familiar words with accuracy and decode unknown words. This process proves true for regular (e.g., mat) and irregular (e.g., phone) words. Once students are able to read words quickly, reading connected text becomes more fluent, and more cognitive energy can be devoted to comprehension, and less on decoding words.

Student Progress Records, Information to Guide Instruction, and Instructional Routines

Progress monitoring data and teacher observation determine the type of phonics instruction and practice individual students need. Use these Student Progress Records to record individual student progress in phonics and to form groups for differentiated small group instruction.Some features in these documents will only function when opened in Adobe Acrobat 2020 or later versions.

The information in the tables below can help you learn more about the instructional needs of your students and guide your instruction with specific groups and/or individual students. If the student cannot demonstrate the skill, you can implement the aligned Instructional Routine during small group instruction.

Fluency is the ability to read out loud accurately, at an appropriate rate, and with prosody (proper phrasing, intonation, and expression). Fluency emerges gradually over time through supported and repeated practice in automatic word recognition and reading connected text. The successful development of fluency depends on an individual acquiring phonemic awareness, accurate letter-sound correspondence, sound blending, and spelling pattern and morpheme recognition. Oral reading practice with feedback from the teacher is necessary. The goal of fluent reading is to improve comprehension through the ability to recognize words automatically, accurately, and with prosody.

Eventually, all words become “sight words” as they are repeatedly read correctly in text. It is the students’ ability to recognize very large numbers of words “at a single glace” that is one of the most important factors underlying the development of reading fluency in the early elementary grades. When students read fluently, they are not focusing on decoding words, but instead they can actively construct meaning as they read.

Student Progress Records, Information to Guide Instruction, and Instructional Routines

Progress monitoring data and teacher observation determine fluency instruction and practice individual students need. Use these Student Progress Records to record individual student progress in fluency and to form groups for differentiated small group instruction.Some features in these documents will only function when opened in Adobe Acrobat 2020 or later versions.

The information in the tables below can help you learn more about the instructional needs of your students and guide your instruction with specific groups and/or individual students. If the student cannot demonstrate the skill, you can implement the aligned Instructional Routine during small group instruction.

Vocabulary refers to knowledge about the meanings, uses, and pronunciation of words. Vocabulary is often categorized as oral vocabulary (listening and speaking) and print vocabulary (reading and writing). The goal of vocabulary instruction is to provide students with an understanding of the meaning and use of words so that they can comprehend what they are reading and communicate effectively. The role of vocabulary instruction in the classroom is to expand the oral vocabulary while developing an extensive print vocabulary.

Student Progress Records, Information to Guide Instruction, and Instructional Routines

Progress monitoring data and teacher observation determine vocabulary instruction and practice individual students need. Use these Student Progress Records to record individual student progress in vocabulary and to form groups for differentiated small group instruction.Some features in these documents will only function when opened in Adobe Acrobat 2020 or later versions.

The information in the tables below can help you learn more about the instructional needs of your students and guide your instruction with specific groups and/or individual students. If the student cannot demonstrate the skill, you can implement the aligned Instructional Routine during small group instruction.

Comprehension refers to the understanding of the meaning of a passage and the context in which the words occur. Reading comprehension depends on various underlying components including decoding (the ability to translate words in print into speech), knowledge of word meanings (vocabulary), fluency, the ability to understand and interpret spoken language, and knowledge of text structure. Skills that support the development of reading comprehension include both language-comprehension skills as well as word-reading skills. Difficulty in word reading limits reading comprehension in the early stages of learning to read. However, as reading connected text becomes more fluent across the grade levels, students rely more on language comprehension to comprehend what is read. The goal of comprehension instruction is for students to gain understanding from written language.

Student Progress Records, Information to Guide Instruction, and Instructional Routines

Progress monitoring data and teacher observation determine comprehension instruction and practice individual students need. Use these Student Progress Records to record individual student progress in comprehension and to form groups for differentiated small group instruction.Some features in these documents will only function when opened in Adobe Acrobat 2020 or later versions.

The information in the tables below can help you learn more about the instructional needs of your students and guide your instruction with specific groups and/or individual students. If the student cannot demonstrate the skill, you can implement the aligned Instructional Routine during small group instruction.

Writingis one of the most complex processes and means of communication. It involves simultaneously applying multiple skills with the goal of using symbols to communicate thoughts and ideas. It is a fundamental part of engaging in professional, social, community,and civic activities. Writingis a skill that is learned with its own set of rules and structure. Writing skills are developed through systematic and explicit instruction.These skills include:

• Learningcapitalization, punctuation, spelling, and handwriting;
• Generating text (clearly expressing your thoughts, elaborating on details and word choice);
• Applying the writing process (planning, revising, and editing); and
• Writing knowledge (understanding your audience and how to clearly communicate with them).

Students should develop an early foundation in writing in order to communicate their ideas effectively and efficiently.

Student Progress Records, Information to Guide Instruction, and Instructional Routines

Progress monitoring data and teacher observation determine writing instruction and practice individual students need. Use these Student Progress Records to record individual student progress in writing and to form groups for differentiated small group instruction.Some features in these documents will only function when opened in Adobe Acrobat 2020 or later versions.