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Comprehension is the main goal of reading and it allows the reader to process and understand what is being read.  Comprehension is the purpose of reading and without it reading would be meaningless.  The National Reading Panel Report: 5 Essential Elements of Reading Instruction? says, " More than merely decoding words on a page, comprehension is the intentional thinking process that occurs as we read — it’s what reading is all about!". (p.3).

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Vocabulary is the understanding and meaning of words.  There are listening, speaking, and writing vocabulary. They all three contribute to a students knowledge of what words mean.

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Fluency is the ability to read with expression, rate, phrasing, and accuracy in order to process a text. Reading out loud sounds more like a natural speech pattern and less like a robot.

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Phonemic Awareness is the understanding and ability to hear and manipulate the smallest unit of sounds within spoken words. For example, does the student understand that "chick" has three sounds? /ch/ /i/ /ck/ Can they tell me the last sound they hear in the word "chick"? Can they change the ending sound to /p/ and tell me what new word we made?

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Phonics is learning how to representing speech with written letters and letter patterns. For example, learning the sounds of consonants, vowels, consonant digraphs, vowel digraphs, diphthongs, phonics rules, and irregular rules.

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An example would be teaching students that they typically use "ck" for the /k/ sound at the end of a one syllable word followed by a short vowel.

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With eyes closed segment, stretch out, and blend back the phonemes of a spoken word.
For example, listen to the sounds in the word "vest".  Repeat it back slowly by stretching out all the sounds you hear.  Good you said /v/ /e/ /s/ /t/. Next, listen to each sound and then blend it together. /m/ /a/ /s/ /k/. Great you said "mask"!

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There are several ways to reinforce fluency.  Once way is through oral repeated reading activities.  First the teacher models how to fluently read a short text or passage.  Then the students reads and reread a passage aloud several times.  Each time the teacher gives helps and gives feedback.  Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read: Kindergarten Through Grade 3 says that it usually takes 3-4 tries before they master the passage fluently. (p. 24).

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Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read: Kindergarten Through Grade gave an amazing example of how to strengthen vocabulary in the classroom.  Here is their example-

Teaching specific words a teacher plans to have his third-grade class read the novel Stone Fox, by John Reynolds Gardiner. In this novel, a young boy enters a dogsled race in hopes of winning prize money to pay the taxes on his grandfather’s farm. The teacher knows that understanding the concept of taxes is important to understanding the novel’s plot. Therefore, before his students begin reading the novel, the teacher may do several things to make sure that they understand what the concept means and why it is important to the story. For example, the teacher may: • engage students in a discussion of the concept of taxes; and/or • read a sentence from the book that contains the word taxes and ask students to use context and their prior knowledge to try to figure out what it means. To solidify their understanding of the word, the teacher might ask students to use taxes in their own sentences. (p. 31).

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Once important way to improve comprehension is through metacognition. Do you think about your thinking? Good readers do. They use thinking strategies to think about and direct their understanding. It's important to determine their purpose for reading and skim through the passage(s). While reading, they gage their understanding and adjust their fluency for maximum understanding. Finally, after reading they double check their knowledge of what they just read. (Bonnie, Lehr, & Osborn p. 42).

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When students learn phonics they are able to spell more words correctly. Others are able to understand their writing.

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Phonemic Awareness allows a student to hear each phoneme of a word before moving on to writing the letter sound associations.  The word may not be spelled correctly, but it can be sounded out to determine it's meaning.

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When students read fluently they are able to focus on the meaning of the text.  This in turn increases their comprehension of the text making it easier to start their writing by using thinking maps or answering questions.

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Students writing begin to blossom. Because they are learning new vocabulary, they are able to use their new words correctly when writing sentences, short stories, and essays.

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According to a meta-analysis carried out by Steve Graham and Michael Hebert in 2010, students who wrote about what they read in a variety of ways had improved comprehension and learning over students who read alone, reread for clarification, or participated in discussions after reading."

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Bonnie A., Lehr F., & Osborn J. (2006).  Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read: Kindergarten Through Grade 3. Diane Pub Co.

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Burgess, K.  (2018).  The Reading and Writing Connection.   (Reading Department Head at Landmark High School). http://www.ldonline.org/article/65647/

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Johnson, A. (2017, Oct 7).  National Reading Panel Report: 5 Essential Elements of Reading Instruction? Department of Special Education Minnesota State University, Mankato.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czLo0fD7k7Q

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The National Reading Panel: Five Components of Reading Instruction Frequently Asked Questions.  (Learning Landscape website).

URL:

http://www.learninglandscape.com/National_Reading_Panel_Reading_Instruction_FAQ.pdf

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Semingson, P.  (2014, May 9).  The Big Five of Literacy Instruction.  The University of Texas at Arlington.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCGXhIjvE1Y