• What is Phonemic Awareness?

  “Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the individual sounds in spoken words” (Armbruster, Lehr, & Osborn, 2003, p. 10). It is the foundation for reading. It is the ability to detect individual speech sounds within words. This ability is a requirement for developing accurate decoding skills and strategies (McShane, 2006, p. 13). Phonemic awareness is often described as part of a broader category known as phonological awareness. Phonological awareness includes the ability to work with larger units in spoken language such as syllables and rhymes, which often include more than one phoneme. Children typically find it easier to work with these larger units (e.g., rhyming words) before proceeding to develop skills with individual phonemes (NICHHD, 2000, p. 2-10).

• What is “systematic and explicit” phonics instruction?

  Research recommendations favor phonics instruction that is “systematic and explicit.” An explicit approach includes specific directions to teachers for teaching letter-sound correspondences. A systematic approach is one that incorporates a planned, sequential set of phonetic elements to master. These elements must be explicitly and systematically introduced in meaningful reading and writing tasks.

   Systematic and explicit phonics instruction includes teaching a full spectrum of key letter-sound correspondences: not just major correspondences between consonant letters and sounds, but also short- and long-vowel letters and sounds, and vowel and consonant digraphs such as oi, ea, ou, sh, and th.

   Several different methods have been developed to teach phonics systematically and explicitly, including synthetic phonics, analytic phonics, embedded phonics, analogy phonics, onset-rime phonics, and phonics through spelling. Broadly speaking, these approaches are all effective (NICHHD, 2000, p. 2-89).

• What is fluency?

  Fluency is the ability to read text quickly, accurately, and with expression. It provides a bridge between word recognition and comprehension. “Fluency is vital to comprehension” (McShane, p. 14). Fluency includes word recognition but extends beyond knowledge of individual words to reflect the meaningful connections among words in a phrase or sentence. Fluent readers are able to recognize words and comprehend them simultaneously.

What is vocabulary?

Vocabulary is knowledge of the meaning, use, and pronunciation of individual words. It includes both oral vocabulary—words we use in speaking or recognize in listening—and reading vocabulary—words we use or recognize in print. Vocabulary is a key component of comprehension. Before readers can understand the meaning of spoken or written text, they must know what most of the words mean.

• What is text comprehension?

  Comprehension is often identified as the primary goal of reading: Children and adults read in order to understand. If children can “read” words but cannot understand them, they are merely decoding. Real reading requires understanding. Over the past 30 years, reading researchers have come to understand that such comprehension is not merely passive, but is the result of active involvement on the part of the reader.