5 Essential Components of Reading

5 Essential Components of Reading:

• Phonemic Awareness - Children need to be taught to hear the smallest parts of words.

• Phonics - Children need to understand the relationships between written letters and spoken sounds.  Knowing the relationships between letters and sounds helps children to recognize familiar words accurately and automatically, and decode new words.

• Reading Fluency - Children must develop the ability to read a text accurately and quickly in order to understand what is read.  Readers who are weak in fluency read slowly, word by word, focusing on decoding words instead of comprehending meaning.

• Vocabulary Development - Children must learn the meaning and pronunciation of words.  They must actively build and expand their knowledge of written sand spoken words, what they mean and how they are used.

• Reading Comprehension Strategies - Children need to be taught comprehension strategies, or the steps good readers use to make sure they understand text.  Students who are in control of their own reading comprehension become purposeful, active readers.