This is the 2nd post in a series exploring the Science of Reading and how to bring it to the teacher table!
In the last post I gave a brief overview of the components of the essential components of the Science of Reading:
Phonemic Awareness: the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words.
Phonics: the relationship between sounds (phonemes) and their corresponding letters or groups of letters (graphemes).
Fluency: Fluency is the ability to read text accurately, quickly, and with proper expression. Fluent readers recognize words automatically and can focus on comprehension rather than decoding each word.
Vocabulary: Vocabulary refers to the words a child knows and understands. A strong vocabulary is so important for reading comprehension because it allows students to make sense of what they read.
Comprehension: Comprehension is the ability to understand what is being read, and the ability to use that understanding to answer questions, write about what they read, and make connections.
Today I want to dive deeper into how understanding each of these components and how they work together.
These components are based on Scarborough’s Reading Rope, and while I would love to give an in depth overview of that here, the truth is there are so many fantastic resources that really go in depth much better than I ever could - I will link them at the bottom of this post. The simple view is that there are many strands woven together to create skills readers.
The Reading Rope (Scarborough, 2001)
Ok, so lets explore each of these components a little more in depth and talk about what that might look like in your classroom.
Phonemic Awareness
What Is Phonemic Awareness? Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. It's all about the sounds we hear, not the letters we see.
Why Is It Important? This skill is so important because it forms the foundation for learning to read. Without phonemic awareness, students can struggle with decoding words, which may slow their reading progress.
Classroom Activities:
Sound Sorting: Use pictures of different objects and have students sort them by their initial sound.
Rhyming Games: Here are a few ways to engage students in rhyming activities. You can orally present three words—two that rhyme and one that doesn't—and ask students to identify the rhyming pair. For example, if you say "cat, mat, bug," students would choose "cat" and "mat." Alternatively, you can say a word and have students come up with a rhyme. Another option is to use pictures and have students group together pictures of words that rhyme.
Phoneme Blending and Segmentation: Practice blending sounds to make words and segmenting words into individual sounds using Elkonin boxes and some sort of chip or tile to represent the sound.
Phonics
What Is Phonics? Phonics involves the relationship between sounds (phonemes) and their written symbols (graphemes). It teaches students to connect letters with sounds and blend them to read words.
Why Is It Important? Phonics instruction helps students decode new words and understand the alphabetic principle (the relationship between sounds and letters).
Classroom Activities:
Letter-Sound Flashcards: Practice letter-sound correspondences with flashcards. I add in gestures for some sounds- including vowels, digraphs, and glued sounds.
Word Building: Use letter tiles or magnetic letters to build and read words. You can build off phonemic awareness activities here. First, provide a word for the students. They tap the word on their fingers, segmenting it into individual sounds, then they say how many sounds they heard. Next, students slide a tile or chip for each sound as they repeat the sounds again. Finally, they write the corresponding letters where the chips were placed.
Decodable Books: Read simple books with decodable text to reinforce phonics skills.
Fluency
What Is Fluency? Fluency is the ability to read with speed, accuracy, and proper expression. It's like the bridge between decoding words and understanding their meaning.
Why Is It Important? Fluent readers can focus on comprehension because they read effortlessly and automatically. This frees up cognitive resources for understanding the text.
Classroom Activities:
Repeated Reading: Have students read the same text multiple times to build fluency and confidence in their reading.
Performance Reading: Encourage students to read aloud with expression, like they are performing. You can begin this as a warm up: read a sentence with expression and see if students can tell you which punctuation you used. Then, move on to reading a sentence with no expression and see if students can repeat it back with the proper expression. Move onto reading short sentences with expression, and finally build up to reading passages with expression.
Fluency Drills: Use short, timed readings to practice reading quickly and accurately.
Vocabulary
What Is Vocabulary? Vocabulary is a set of familiar words that a person knows and understands. Knowing the meaning of words helps students to understand text.
Why Is It Important? A strong vocabulary helps students make sense of what they read.
Classroom Activities:
Word Walls: Create a word wall in your classroom where you can add new vocabulary words. Often we think of a word wall as a way of providing spelling help to students, but you can also create a vocabulary wall that goes along with your current classroom themes. This provides students both spelling support, and vocabulary support.
Frayer Model: Use the Frayer Model, a graphic organizer with four sections. Students write the word in the center, then fill in the definition, characteristics, examples, and non-examples. In younger grades this can make a great whole group activity with students providing the examples and the teacher creating the model on an anchor chart. As students become more familiar with the model, they can begin to create their own.
Vocabulary Bingo: Make bingo cards with vocabulary words. Call out definitions, and students have to mark the corresponding word on their card.
Comprehension
What Is Comprehension? Comprehension is the ability to understand written words, make connections to prior knowledge, and make inferences. This is different than recognizing words. Recognizing words, but not understanding them does not help to fulfill the goal of reading.
Why Is It Important? Understanding the text is the ultimate goal of reading. Once students can understand what they have read, they are able to apply their reading in meaningful ways: answering questions, writing about their reading, or creating something new based on what they have read or learned.
Classroom Activities:
Retelling: After reading a story, ask students to retell the story in their own words. They can do this verbally, through drawings, or using puppets.
Sequencing: Provide students with pictures or sentence strips from the story and have them put them in the correct order.
Story Props: Use props related to the story to help students act out scenes. This can make the story more engaging and aid comprehension.
Connecting the Dots
These components are not isolated; they work together to build skilled readers. For example, phonemic awareness supports phonics, which in turn supports fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Integrating these elements in your teaching ensures that students develop a balanced set of reading skills.
So what could this look like in your classroom?
Small Group Lesson Integration:
Phonemic Awareness: Begin the lesson with a quick phonemic awareness activity. For example, have students segment and blend sounds in simple CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words. You might say the sounds /c/ /a/ /t/ and have students blend them to say "cat." I always pair this with tapping the sounds, or later moving tiles for the sounds, so students also have a visual reinforcement.
Phonics: Transition into a phonics lesson where students use their knowledge of letter-sound correspondences to decode new words. Provide them with word cards or magnetic letters to build and read words based on their focus skill. Using short a as a focus you might build words like "cat," "bat," and "sat."
Fluency: Practice reading these words in simple sentences. Use repetitive and predictable text to help students gain confidence and fluency. For example, "The cat sat." or "The cat sat on the mat."
Vocabulary: Introduce new vocabulary words from a decodable text that aligns with your focus skill. Discuss the meanings of these words, use them in sentences, and relate them to students' experiences. For example, if the new word is "mat," show a picture of a mat and talk about its uses, ask students if they have ever used a mat for anything. What might a cat use a mat for?
Comprehension: After reading the decodable, expand on the reading by asking comprehension questions to check student understanding. Questions can be about the main idea, details, and making connections to their own lives. In simple decodable texts you might ask a student to recall something: "What did the cat do on the mat?".
Once you start blending these 5 components into your daily teaching, you'll see a real shift in how your students (and you!) approach reading. Next up, we'll dive into tips for maximizing your small group teaching setup. Stay tuned!
