Our Literacy Block

Phonics includes instruction in basic letter/sound identification to more complex skills such as decoding multisyllabic words.

Students benefit from practicing letter/sound relationships in isolation as well as applying phonics skills in context by reading decodable texts.

Students benefit from opportunities to practice irregular words and high-frequency sight words during phonics instruction.

Being able to read fluently is important because it allows readers to focus their attention on the meaning of the text rather than on decoding individual words and phonemes.

Guided repeated oral reading with teacher feedback is an effective strategy for improving the reading fluency and word recognition skills of elementary school students.

Students learn new vocabulary both through direct instruction as well as through conversations with peers and adults.

When directly teaching vocabulary, teachers provide student-friendly definitions and connect the word to the text that is being read.

Students are provided opportunities to use word learning strategies including the analysis of word parts and use of context clues.

Explicitly teaching reading comprehension strategies helps students recognize and apply ways of thinking that strong readers use to understand text (Shanahan et al., 2010).

These strategies help students become more purposeful and active when they read and can be used before reading, during reading, and after reading.

Reading comprehension strategies include activating prior knowledge and making predictions, self-monitoring for understanding, asking and answering questions, making inferences, and summarizing or retelling.