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Pictured here is a diagram showing the five components of reading and how they work together to shape proficient readers. You will notice that fluency, vocabulary, phonemic awareness, and phonics divide the circle into fourths and comprehension surrounds those four components.

To learn more about each of these components, click here

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Fluency and comprehension are strongly correlated. In most cases, fluency needs to be explicitly taught by teacher modeling, repeated reading, and progress monitoring. Click the link below to learn more about reading fluency?

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What Is Fluency?

Fluency is the ability to read "like you speak." Hudson, Lane, and Pullen define fluency this way: "Reading fluency is made up of at least three key elements: accurate reading of connected text at a conversational rate with appropriate prosody or expression." Non-fluent readers suffer in at least one of these aspects of reading: they make many mistakes, they read slowly, or they don't read with appropriate expression and phrasing.

​ Developing reading fluency with Read Naturally Strategy programs

Key Concepts

Why Is Fluency Important?

For many years, educators have recognized that fluency is an important aspect of reading. Reading researchers agree. Over 30 years of research indicates that fluency is one of the critical building blocks of reading, because fluency development is directly related to comprehension.

Here are the results of one study by Fuchs, Fuchs, Hosp, and Jenkins that shows how oral reading fluency correlates highly with reading comprehension.

To interpret this type of correlation data, consider that a perfect match would be 1.0. As you can see, oral recall/retelling, fill in the blank, and question answering are all above 0.6, which indicates there is a strong correlation. But oral reading fluency is by far the strongest, with a .91 correlation.

Many researchers, including Breznitz, Armstrong, Knupp, Lesgold, and Pinnell, have found that fluency is highly correlated with reading comprehension-that is, when a student reads fluently, that student is likely to comprehend what he or she is reading.

Why are reading fluency and reading comprehension so highly correlated? Dr. S. Jay Samuels, a professor and researcher well known for his work in fluency, put forth a theory called the automaticity theory. According to Dr. Samuels, people have a limited amount of mental energy. If you want to multitask or to become proficient at a complex task such as reading, you first need to master the component tasks so you can do them automatically. For example, a reader who must focus his or her attention on decoding words may not have enough mental energy left over to think about the meaning of the text. However, a fluent reader who can automatically decode the words can instead give full attention to comprehending the text. To become proficient readers, our students need to become automatic with text so they can pay attention to the meaning.

See also:

Challenges Faced by Non-Fluent Readers

Students become fluent by reading. Some students learn to read fluently without explicit instruction. For others, however, fluency doesn't develop in the course of normal classroom instruction.

Research analyzed by the National Reading Panel suggests that just encouraging students to read independently isn't the most effective way to improve reading achievement. Too often, simply encouraging at-risk students to read doesn't result in increased reading on their part. During sustained silent reading, at-risk readers may get a book with mostly pictures and look at the pictures, or they choose a difficult book so they will look like everyone else and then pretend to read.

Even if at-risk students do read, they read more slowly than the other students. In a 10-minute reading period, a proficient reader who reads 200 words a minute silently could read 2,000 words. In the same 10 minutes, an at-risk student who reads 50 words a minute would only read 500 words. This is equal reading time but certainly not an equal number of words read.

These students need to read more, but just asking them to read on their own often doesn't work. The National Reading Panel has concluded that a more effective course of action is for us to explicitly teach developing readers how to read fluently, step by step.

Research-Proven Fluency Strategies

How do we explicitly teach students to read fluently? The National Reading Panel found data supporting three strategies that improve fluency, comprehension, and reading achievement-teacher modeling, repeated reading, and progress monitoring.

Teacher Modeling

The first strategy is teacher modeling. Research demonstrates that various forms of modeling can improve reading fluency. Examples of teacher modeling include:

Teacher-assisted reading

Peer-assisted reading

Audio-assisted reading

Teacher modeling involves more than just listening to someone else read. Students must be actively involved 100 percent of the time and in a multisensory way.

Teacher modeling teaches word recognition in a meaningful context, demonstrates correct phrasing, and gives students practice tracking across the page. A child can benefit from teacher modeling once he or she knows at least 50 sight words and has a good sense of beginning sounds.

The reading rate of the model reader is important. Christopher Skinner, a reading researcher, found that students who read lists of words with him slowly were more fluent with the words than students who read with him at a faster rate. The slower rate enables students to learn new words and clarify difficult words. As students learn more words, they naturally become more fluent.

Another form of modeling is the neurological impress method. In the neurological impress method, a proficient and a struggling reader read together from a passage, with the more able reader reading near the rate of the struggling reader. Heckelman (1969) showed that after 29 15-minute sessions, 24 seventh- through ninth-grade boys, who were an average of 3 years behind in reading, gained an average of 1.9 years in reading based on the Oral Gilmore and the California Achievement Test.

Repeated Reading

Another technique that research has shown significantly builds reading fluency is repeated reading. In fact, the National Reading Panel says this is the most powerful way to improve reading fluency. This involves simply reading the same material over and over again until accurate and expressive.

In the 1970s, LaBerge and Samuels studied what happens when students read passages over and over again. They found that when students reread passages, they got faster at reading the passages, understood them better, and were able to read subsequent passages better as a result of the repeated reading.

Repeated reading is a form of mastery learning. The students read the same words so many times that they begin to know them and are able to identify them in other text. Besides helping students bring words to mastery, repeated reading changes the way students view themselves in relation to the act of reading.

Progress Monitoring

People who play video games are presented with a specific goal and with immediate, relevant feedback about their progress toward that goal. This combination of having a goal and getting feedback on progress can be very motivating.

Progress monitoring takes advantage of this combination to motivate students to read. You give students a specific, individual reading goal, and you tell them exactly how you're going to know they've met it. Then, you give them the means to measure how they're doing. Finally, you make it simple enough that they'll know they've met their goal even before you do. This progress monitoring is what motivates students to practice reading the same story over and over until achieving mastery.

​Developing Reading Fluency With Read Naturally Strategy Programs

The research-based Read Naturally Strategy combines these three strategies into highly effective programs that accelerate reading achievement. Students become confident readers by developing fluency, phonics skills, comprehension, and vocabulary while reading leveled text. The time-tested intervention programs engage students with interesting nonfiction stories and yield powerful results.

Learn more about the Read Naturally Strategy
Research basis for the Read Naturally Strategy

The Read Naturally Strategy is available in a variety of formats:

Choosing the right Read Naturally Strategy program

One Minute Reader®
Structured, supplemental reading program for developing literacy skills independently. Available in these formats:
One Minute Reader Live (component of web-based Read Live for supplemental reading at school)
One Minute Reader books/audio CDs (for a school-to-home checkout program)

Bibliography

Armstrong, S. W. (1983). The effects of material difficulty upon learning disabled children's oral reading and reading comprehension. Learning Disability Quarterly, 6, pp. 339-348.

Breznitz, Z. (1987). Increasing first graders' reading accuracy and comprehension by accelerating their reading rates. Journal of Educational Psychology, 79(3), pp. 236-242.

Fuchs, L. S., Fuchs, D., Hosp, M. K., & Jenkins, J. R. (2001). Oral reading fluency as an indicator of reading competence: A theoretical, empirical, and historical analysis. Scientific Studies of Reading, 5(3), pp. 239-256.

Heckelman, R. G. (1969). A neurological-impress method of remedial-reading instruction. Academic Therapy Quarterly, 5(4), pp. 277-282.

Hudson, R. F., H. B. Lane, and P. C. Pullen. (2005). Reading fluency assessment and instruction: What, why, and how. Reading Teacher 58(8), pp. 702-714.

Knupp, R. (1988). Improving oral reading skills of educationally handicapped elementary school-aged students through repeated readings. Practicum paper, Nova University (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 297275).

LaBerge, D., & Samuels, S. J. (1974). Toward a theory of automatic information processing in reading. Cognitive Psychology, 6, pp. 292-323.

Lesgold, A., Resnick, L. B., & Hammond, K. (1985). Learning to read: A longitudinal study of word skill development in two curricula. In G. Waller & E. MacKinon (eds.), Reading research: Advances in theory and practice. New York, NY: Academic Press.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Pinnell, G. S., Pikulski, J. J., Wixson, K. K., Campbell, J. R., Gough, P. B., & Beatty, A. S. (1995). Listening to children read aloud: Data from NAEP's integrated reading performance record (IRPR) at grade 4 (NCES Publication 95-726). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Educational Statistics.

Samuels, S. J. (2002). Reading fluency: Its development and assessment. In A. E. Farstrup & S. J. Samuels (eds.), What research has to say about reading instruction, 3rd ed., pp. 166-183. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Samuels, S. J. (1997). The method of repeated readings. The Reading Teacher, 50(5), pp. 376-381.

Samuels, S. J. (2006). Towards a model of reading fluency. In S. J. Samuels and A. E. Farstrup (eds.), What research has to say about fluency instruction. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Samuels, S. J. (1997). The method of repeated readings. The Reading Teacher, 50(5), pp. 376-381.

Skinner, C. H., Logan, P., Robinson, S. L., & Robinson, D. H. (1997). Demonstration as a reading intervention for exceptional learners. School Psychology Review, 26(3), pp. 437-447.

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What is fluency? Reading at a conversational rate with accuracy and expression. Why is fluency important? Fluency directly correlates to comprehension.

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Comprehension is the ability to determine meaning from a written text. Comprehension draws on background knowledge, challenges students to predict, draw inferences, and summarize the text. Click the link below to learn more about reading comprehension.

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Comprehension: The Goal of Reading

Comprehension, or extracting meaning from what you read, is the ultimate goal of reading. Experienced readers take this for granted and may not appreciate the reading comprehension skills required. The process of comprehension is both interactive and strategic. Rather than passively reading text, readers must analyze it, internalize it and make it their own.

In order to read with comprehension, developing readers must be able to read with some proficiency and then receive explicit instruction in reading comprehension strategies (Tierney, 1982).

​ Strategies for reading comprehension in Read Naturally programs

​General Strategies for Reading Comprehension

The process of comprehending text begins before children can read, when someone reads a picture book to them. They listen to the words, see the pictures in the book, and may start to associate the words on the page with the words they are hearing and the ideas they represent.

In order to learn comprehension strategies, students need modeling, practice, and feedback. The key comprehension strategies are described below.

Using Prior Knowledge/Previewing

When students preview text, they tap into what they already know that will help them to understand the text they are about to read. This provides a framework for any new information they read.

Predicting

When students make predictions about the text they are about to read, it sets up expectations based on their prior knowledge about similar topics. As they read, they may mentally revise their prediction as they gain more information.

Identifying the Main Idea and Summarization

Identifying the main idea and summarizing requires that students determine what is important and then put it in their own words. Implicit in this process is trying to understand the author's purpose in writing the text.

Questioning

Asking and answering questions about text is another strategy that helps students focus on the meaning of text. Teachers can help by modeling both the process of asking good questions and strategies for finding the answers in the text.

Making Inferences

In order to make inferences about something that is not explicitly stated in the text, students must learn to draw on prior knowledge and recognize clues in the text itself.

Visualizing

Studies have shown that students who visualize while reading have better recall than those who do not (Pressley, 1977). Readers can take advantage of illustrations that are embedded in the text or create their own mental images or drawings when reading text without illustrations.

Strategies for Reading Comprehension: Narrative Text

Narrative text tells a story, either a true story or a fictional story. There are a number of strategies that will help students understand narrative text.

Story Maps

Teachers can have students diagram the story grammar of the text to raise their awareness of the elements the author uses to construct the story. Story grammar includes:

Setting: When and where the story takes place (which can change over the course of the story).

Characters: The people or animals in the story, including the protagonist (main character), whose motivations and actions drive the story.

Plot: The story line, which typically includes one or more problems or conflicts that the protagonist must address and ultimately resolve.

Theme: The overriding lesson or main idea that the author wants readers to glean from the story. It could be explicitly stated as in Aesop's Fables or inferred by the reader (more common).

​ Printable story map (blank)

Retelling

Asking students to retell a story in their own words forces them to analyze the content to determine what is important. Teachers can encourage students to go beyond literally recounting the story to drawing their own conclusions about it.

Prediction

Teachers can ask readers to make a prediction about a story based on the title and any other clues that are available, such as illustrations. Teachers can later ask students to find text that supports or contradicts their predictions.

Answering Comprehension Questions

Asking students different types of questions requires that they find the answers in different ways, for example, by finding literal answers in the text itself or by drawing on prior knowledge and then inferring answers based on clues in the text.

Strategies for Reading Comprehension: Expository Text

Expository text explains facts and concepts in order to inform, persuade, or explain.

The Structure of Expository Text

Expository text is typically structured with visual cues such as headings and subheadings that provide clear cues as to the structure of the information. The first sentence in a paragraph is also typically a topic sentence that clearly states what the paragraph is about.

Expository text also often uses one of five common text structures as an organizing principle:

Cause and effect

Problem and solution

Compare and contrast

Description

Time order (sequence of events, actions, or steps)

Teaching these structures can help students recognize relationships between ideas and the overall intent of the text.

Main Idea/Summarization

A summary briefly captures the main idea of the text and the key details that support the main idea. Students must understand the text in order to write a good summary that is more than a repetition of the text itself.

​K-W-L

There are three steps in the K-W-L process (Ogle, 1986):

1. What I Know: Before students read the text, ask them as a group to identify what they already know about the topic. Students write this list in the "K" column of their K-W-L forms.

2. What I Want to Know: Ask students to write questions about what they want to learn from reading the text in the "W" column of their K-W-L forms. For example, students may wonder if some of the "facts" offered in the "K" column are true.

3. What I Learned: As they read the text, students should look for answers to the questions listed in the "W" column and write their answers in the "L" column along with anything else they learn.

After all of the students have read the text, the teacher leads a discussion of the questions and answers.

Printable K-W-L chart (blank)

Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers provide visual representations of the concepts in expository text. Representing ideas and relationships graphically can help students understand and remember them. Examples of graphic organizers are:
Tree diagrams that represent categories and hierarchies Tables that compare and contrast data Time-driven diagrams that represent the order of events Flowcharts that represent the steps of a process​
​

Teaching students how to develop and construct graphic organizers will require some modeling, guidance, and feedback. Teachers should demonstrate the process with examples first before students practice doing it on their own with teacher guidance and eventually work independently.

Strategies for Reading Comprehension in Read Naturally Programs

Several Read Naturally programs include strategies that support comprehension:

Read Naturally Intervention Program

Strategies for Reading Comprehension

Prediction Step

Retelling Step

Quiz / Comprehension Questions

Graphic Organizers

One Minute Reader Live:
A component of web-based Read Live for supplemental, independent reading that develops fluency with support for vocabulary and comprehension.

Take Aim at Vocabulary: A print-based program with audio CDs that teaches carefully selected target words and strategies for independently learning unknown words. Students work mostly independently or in teacher-led small groups of up to six students.

Main idea

Literal

Vocabulary

Inference

Vocabulary: Clarify target words

Vocabulary: Study word parts and review target words

Vocabulary: Apply the target words

Bibliography

Honig, B., L. Diamond, and L. Gutlohn. (2013). Teaching reading sourcebook, 2nd ed. Novato, CA: Arena Press.

Ogle, D. M. (1986). K-W-L: A teaching model that develops active reading of expository text. The Reading Teacher 38(6), pp. 564-570.

Pressley, M. (1977). Imagery and children's learning: Putting the picture in developmental perspective. Review of Educational Research 47, pp. 586-622.

Tierney, R. J. (1982). Essential considerations for developing basic reading comprehension skills. School Psychology Review 11(3), pp. 299-305.

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To improve comprehension, students must have some reading proficiency and receive explicit instruction in skills and strategies for reading comprehension.

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Phonemic Awareness encompasses four different things: word awareness, syllable awareness, onset-rime awareness, and phonemic awareness. Generally, it refers to the knowledge that words can be broken into individual sounds. Click the link below to learn more about phonemic awareness.

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What Is Phonemic Awareness?

Phonological awareness is an umbrella term that includes four developmental levels:

Word awareness

Syllable awareness

Onset-rime awareness

Phonemic awareness

Phonemic awareness is the understanding that spoken language words can be broken into individual phonemes-the smallest unit of spoken language.

Phonemic awareness is not the same as phonics-phonemic awareness focuses on the individual sounds in spoken language. As students begin to transition to phonics, they learn the relationship between a phoneme (sound) and grapheme (the letter(s) that represent the sound) in written language.

To develop phonological awareness, kindergarten and first grade students must demonstrate understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds (phonemes).

​ Read Naturally programs that develop phonemic awareness

Why Phonemic Awareness Is Important

First of all, phonemic awareness performance is a strong predictor of long-term reading and spelling success (Put Reading First, 1998). Students with strong phonological awareness are likely to become good readers, but students with weak phonological skills will likely become poor readers (Blachman, 2000). It is estimated that the vast majority-more than 90 percent-of students with significant reading problems have a core deficit in their ability to process phonological information (Blachman, 1995).

In fact, phonemic awareness performance can predict literacy performance more accurately than variables such as intelligence, vocabulary knowledge, and socioeconomic status (Gillon, 2004). The good news is that phonological awareness is one of the few factors that teachers are able to influence significantly through instruction-unlike intelligence, vocabulary, and socioeconomic status (Lane and Pullen, 2004).

Many students (75%) enter kindergarten with proficient phonemic awareness skills. The 25% of students who have not mastered these skills are from all socio-economic backgrounds and need explicit instruction in phonemic awareness. When instruction is engaging and developmentally appropriate, researchers recommend that all kindergarten students receive phonemic awareness instruction (Adams, 1990).

Phonological Awareness Skills

The following table shows how the specific phonological awareness standards fall into the four developmental levels: word, syllable, onset-rime, and phoneme. The table shows the specific skills (standards) within each level and provides an example for each skill.

Less Complex

​

More Complex

Word Awareness

Syllable Awareness

Onset-Rime Awareness

Phoneme Awareness

Sentence Segmentation
Tap one time for every word you hear in the sentence:

Rhyme Recognition
Do these two words rhyme: ham, jam? (yes)

Isolation
What is the first sound in fan? (/f/)
What is the last sound in fan? (/n/)
What is the middle sound in fan? (/a/)

​

Rhyme Generation
Tell me a word that rhymes with nut. (cut)

Identification
Which word has the same first sound as car: fan, corn, or map? (corn)

Categorization
Which word does not belong: mat, sun, cat, fat? (sun)

Categorization
Which word does not belong? bus, ball, house? (house)

Blending
Listen as I say two small words: rain ... bow.
Put the two words together to make a bigger word. (rainbow)

Blending
Put these word parts together to make a whole word: rock*et. (rocket)

Blending
What word am I saying? /b/ ... /ig/? (big)

*Blending
What word am I saying
/b/ /ĭ/ /g/? (big)

Segmentation
Clap the word parts in rainbow. (rain*bow)
How many times did you clap? (two)

Segmentation
Clap the word parts in rocket. (roc*ket)

Segmentation
Say big in two parts.

(/b/ ... /ig/)

*Segmentation
How many sounds in big? (three)
Say the sounds in big.
(/b/ /ĭ/ /g/)

Deletion
Say mat.
Now say mat without the /m/. (at)

Substitution
The word is mug.
Change /m/ to /r/.
What is the new word? (rug)

*Integrated instruction in phoneme segmenting and blending provides the greatest benefit to reading acquisition (Snider, 1995).

Instruction should be systematic. Notice the arrow across the top. The levels become more complex as students progress from the word level to syllables, to onset and rime, and then to phonemes.

Notice the arrow along the left-hand side. Students progress down each level-learning increasingly more complex skills within a level.

For example, look at the Phoneme Awareness column. Students learn to isolate, identify, and categorize phonemes first. Then students are taught to blend phonemes to make a word before they are taught to segment a word into phonemes-which is typically more difficult. The most challenging phonological awareness skills are at the bottom: deleting, adding, and substituting phonemes.

Blending phonemes into words and segmenting words into phonemes contribute directly to learning to read and spell well. In fact, these two phonemic awareness skills contribute more to learning to read and spell well than any of the other activities under the phonological awareness umbrella (National Reading Panel, 2000; Snider, 1995).

So, as we plan phonological awareness instruction, our goal is to systematically move students as quickly as possible toward blending and segmenting at the phoneme level.

Consonant Phonemes

There are two types of consonant phonemes:

Continuous sounds*

A sound that can be pronounced for several seconds without any distortion.

/f/ * /l/ * /m/ * /n/ * /r/ * /s/ * /v/ * /w/ */y/ * /z/ * /a/ * /e/ * /i/ * /o/ * /u/

Stop sounds

A sound that can be pronounced for only an instant. Avoid adding /uh/.

/b/ * /d/ * /g/ * /h/ * /j/ * /k/ * /p/ * /t/

*Blending words with continuous sounds is easier than blending words with stop sounds.

The continuous sounds can be pronounced for several seconds without distortion. The stop sounds can be pronounced only for an instant. It is important to avoid adding /uh/ to a stop sound as it is pronounced-which confuses students. As new phonological awareness skills are introduced, using continuous sounds may be easier at first.

Read Naturally Programs That Develop Phonemic Awareness

Funēmics: A Phonemic Awareness Program for Small Groups

Read Naturally's Funēmics is a systematic, program for pre-readers or struggling beginning readers that teaches all of the phonological awareness standards. Each lesson builds on skills taught in previous lessons, adding just a few elements at a time. With minimal preparation, teachers or aides present scripted instruction to small groups of students, using an interactive display (with brightly illustrated pages and interactive widgets) viewed on a tablet or whiteboard. Fun ēmics is entirely pre-grapheme.

Learn more about how Fun ēmics teaches phonological awareness skills:

Read Naturally® GATE+: A Systematic, Direct-Instruction Phonics Program for Beginning Readers

Teach phonemic awareness, phonics, and other foundational reading skills to beginning readers with Read Naturally GATE+'s explicit reading instruction. This motivating program provides scripted, interactive phonemic awareness and phonics exercises based on scientific research. Students master high-frequency words and decoding skills as they improve their fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary.

Other Programs That Support Phonemic Awareness

The following programs do not focus on phonemic awareness but include phonemic awareness activities as part of a broader scope of instruction:

Signs for SoundsTM
Teacher-led, small-group instruction for teaching regular phonetic spelling patterns and high-frequency words through spelling. Focuses on spelling and phonics with additional support for phonemic awareness.
Learn more about Signs for Sounds

Bibliography

Adams, M. J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Blachman, B. A. (2000). Phonological awareness. In M. L. Kamil, P. B. Rosenthal, P. D. Pearson, and R. Barr (eds.), Handbook of reading research, 3, pp. 483-502. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Blachman, B. A. (1995). Identifying the core linguistic deficits and the critical conditions for early intervention with children with reading disabilities. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Learning Disabilities Association, Orlando, FL, March 1995.

Gillon, G. T. (2004). Phonological awareness: From research to practice. New York: The Guilford Press.

Lane, H. B., and P. C. Pullen. (2004). A sound beginning: Phonological awareness assessment and instruction. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

National Institute for Literacy. (1998). Put reading first. <http://lincs.ed.gov/publications/pdf/PRFbooklet.pdf>

National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction. Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Snider, V. A. (1995). A primer on phonemic awareness: What it is, why it's important, and how to teach it. School Psychology Review, 24(3), pp. 443-456.

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Phonemic awareness ability is a strong predictor of reading success. Students must develop an understanding of spoken words, syllables and sounds (phonemes).

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Phonics refers to the teaching of letters or groups of letters and how they correspond to their pronunciations. Phonics should be explicitly and implicitly taught. Click the link below to learn more about phonics instruction.

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The National Reading Panel recommends systematic and explicit phonics instruction. Children progress through a sequence of phonics skills as they learn to read.

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Vocabulary is the knowledge of words. Vocabulary knowledge affects reading ability because, the more words a student knows, the better their understanding of the text and reading fluency will be.
Click the link below to learn more about vocabulary.

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The Importance of Vocabulary Development

According to Steven Stahl (2005), "Vocabulary knowledge is knowledge; the knowledge of a word not only implies a definition, but also implies how that word fits into the world." We continue to develop vocabulary throughout our lives. Words are powerful. Words open up possibilities, and of course, that's what we want for all of our students.

​ Teaching words and vocabulary-learning strategies with Read Naturally programs

Key Concepts

Differences in Early Vocabulary Development

We know that young children acquire vocabulary indirectly, first by listening when others speak or read to them, and then by using words to talk to others. As children begin to read and write, they acquire more words through understanding what they are reading and then incorporate those words into their speaking and writing.

Vocabulary knowledge varies greatly among learners. The word knowledge gap between groups of children begins before they enter school. Why do some students have a richer, fuller vocabulary than some of their classmates?

Language rich home with lots of verbal stimulation

Wide background experiences

Read to at home and at school

Read a lot independently

Early development of word consciousness

Why do some students have a limited, inadequate vocabulary compared to most of their classmates?

Speaking/vocabulary not encouraged at home

Limited experiences outside of home

Limited exposure to books

Reluctant reader

Second language-English language learners

Children who have been encouraged by their parents to ask questions and to learn about things and ideas come to school with oral vocabularies many times larger than children from disadvantaged homes. Without intervention this gap grows ever larger as students proceed through school (Hart and Risley, 1995).

How Vocabulary Affects Reading Development

From the research, we know that vocabulary supports reading development and increases comprehension. Students with low vocabulary scores tend to have low comprehension and students with satisfactory or high vocabulary scores tend to have satisfactory or high comprehension scores.

The report of the National Reading Panel states that the complex process of comprehension is critical to the development of children's reading skills and cannot be understood without a clear understanding of the role that vocabulary development and instruction play in understanding what is read (NRP, 2000).

Chall's classic 1990 study showed that students with low vocabulary development were able to maintain their overall reading test scores at expected levels through grade four, but their mean scores for word recognition and word meaning began to slip as words became more abstract, technical, and literary. Declines in word recognition and word meaning continued, and by grade seven, word meaning scores had fallen to almost three years below grade level, and mean reading comprehension was almost a year below. Jeanne Chall coined the term "the fourth-grade slump" to describe this pattern in developing readers (Chall, Jacobs, and Baldwin, 1990).

Incidental and Intentional Vocabulary Learning

How do we close the gap for students who have limited or inadequate vocabularies? The National Reading Panel (2000) concluded that there is no single research-based method for developing vocabulary and closing the gap. From its analysis, the panel recommended using a variety of indirect (incidental) and direct (intentional) methods of vocabulary instruction.

Incidental Vocabulary Learning
Most students acquire vocabulary incidentally through indirect exposure to words at home and at school-by listening and talking, by listening to books read aloud to them, and by reading widely on their own.

The amount of reading is important to long-term vocabulary development (Cunningham and Stanovich, 1998). Extensive reading provides students with repeated or multiple exposures to words and is also one of the means by which students see vocabulary in rich contexts (Kamil and Hiebert, 2005).

Intentional Vocabulary Learning
Students need to be explicitly taught methods for intentional vocabulary learning. According to Michael Graves (2000), effective intentional vocabulary instruction includes:

Teaching specific words (rich, robust instruction) to support understanding of texts containing those words.

Teaching word-learning strategies that students can use independently.

Promoting the development of word consciousness and using word play activities to motivate and engage students in learning new words.

Research-Supported Vocabulary-Learning Strategies

Students need a wide range of independent word-learning strategies. Vocabulary instruction should aim to engage students in actively thinking about word meanings, the relationships among words, and how we can use words in different situations. This type of rich, deep instruction is most likely to influence comprehension (Graves, 2006; McKeown and Beck, 2004).

Student-Friendly Definitions

The meaning of a new word should be explained to students rather than just providing a dictionary definition for the word-which may be difficult for students to understand. According to Isabel Beck, two basic principles should be followed in developing student-friendly explanations or definitions (Beck et al., 2013):

Characterize the word and how it is typically used.

Explain the meaning using everyday language-language that is accessible and meaningful to the student.

Sometimes a word's natural context (in text or literature) is not informative or helpful for deriving word meanings (Beck et al., 2013). It is useful to intentionally create and develop instructional contexts that provide strong clues to a word's meaning. These are usually created by teachers, but they can sometimes be found in commercial reading programs.

Defining Words Within Context

Research shows that when words and easy-to-understand explanations are introduced in context, knowledge of those words increases (Biemiller and Boote, 2006) and word meanings are better learned (Stahl and Fairbanks, 1986). When an unfamiliar word is likely to affect comprehension, the most effective time to introduce the word's meaning may be at the moment the word is met in the text.

Using Context Clues

Research by Nagy and Scott (2000) showed that students use contextual analysis to infer the meaning of a word by looking closely at surrounding text. Since students encounter such an enormous number of words as they read, some researchers believe that even a small improvement in the ability to use context clues has the potential to produce substantial, long-term vocabulary growth (Nagy, Herman, and Anderson, 1985; Nagy, Anderson, and Herman, 1987; Swanborn and de Glopper, 1999).

Sketching the Words

For many students, it is easier to remember a word's meaning by making a quick sketch that connects the word to something personally meaningful to the student. The student applies each target word to a new, familiar context. The student does not have to spend a lot of time making a great drawing. The important thing is that the sketch makes sense and helps the student connect with the meaning of the word.

Applying the Target Words

Applying the target words provides another context for learning word meanings. When students are challenged to apply the target words to their own experiences, they have another opportunity to understand the meaning of each word at a personal level. This allows for deep processing of the meaning of each word.

Analyzing Word Parts

The ability to analyze word parts also helps when students are faced with unknown vocabulary. If students know the meanings of root words and affixes, they are more likely to understand a word containing these word parts. Explicit instruction in word parts includes teaching meanings of word parts and disassembling and reassembling words to derive meaning (Baumann et al., 2002; Baumann, Edwards, Boland, Olejnik, and Kame'enui, 2003; Graves, 2004).

Semantic Mapping

Semantic maps help students develop connections among words and increase learning of vocabulary words (Baumann et al., 2003; Heimlich and Pittleman, 1986). For example, by writing an example, a non-example, a synonym, and an antonym, students must deeply process the word persist.

Word Consciousness

Word consciousness is an interest in and awareness of words (Anderson and Nagy, 1992; Graves and Watts-Taffe, 2002). Students who are word conscious are aware of the words around them-those they read and hear and those they write and speak (Graves and Watts-Taffe, 2002). Word-conscious students use words skillfully. They are aware of the subtleties of word meaning. They are curious about language, and they enjoy playing with words and investigating the origins and histories of words.

Teachers need to take word-consciousness into account throughout their instructional day-not just during vocabulary lessons (Scott and Nagy, 2004). It is important to build a classroom "rich in words" (Beck et al., 2002). Students should have access to resources such as dictionaries, thesauruses, word walls, crossword puzzles, Scrabble® and other word games, literature, poetry books, joke books, and word-play activities.

Teachers can promote the development of word consciousness in many ways:

Language categories: Students learn to make finer distinctions in their word choices if they understand the relationships among words, such as synonyms, antonyms, and homographs.

Figurative language: The ability to deal with figures of speech is also a part of word-consciousness (Scott and Nagy 2004). The most common figures of speech are similes, metaphors, and idioms.

Once language categories and figurative language have been taught, students should be encouraged to watch for examples of these in all content areas.

Teaching Words and Vocabulary-Learning Strategies With Read Naturally Programs

Take Aim at Vocabulary: Build Vocabulary in the Middle Grades

These intentional vocabulary learning strategies can be efficiently and effectively implemented using Read Naturally's program Take Aim! at Vocabulary. Take Aim is appropriate for students who can read at least at a fourth grade level. Take Aim is available in two formats:

The semi-independent format provides differentiated instruction for students working mostly independently.

The small-group format is designed for small-group instruction-up to six students.

Each Take Aim level teaches 288 carefully selected target words in the context of engaging, non-fiction stories. The target words are systematically taught using the research-based strategies described above. The intensive and focused lesson design helps students learn the target words and internalize the skills and strategies necessary for independently learning unknown words.

Learn more about how Take Aim teaches vocabulary and word-learning strategies:

Splat-O-Nym: Vocabulary Word Game for iPad

Read Naturally also offers a Splat-O-Nym app for iPad that teaches vocabulary using game-based technology. Splat-O-Nym quizzes students with synonym questions, antonym questions, and meaning-from-context questions and awards points for correct answers.

Learn more about the Splat-O-Nym app:

Other Programs That Support Vocabulary Development

These other Read Naturally programs do not focus on vocabulary but include activities that support vocabulary development:

Read Naturally® Live
Cloud-based software that develops fluency and phonics and also provides support for vocabulary with audio-supported definitions of key words.
Learn more about Read Naturally Live

Bibliography

Anderson, R. C., & Nagy, W. E. (1992). "The vocabulary conundrum," American Educator, Vol. 16, pp. 14-18, 44-47.

Baumann, J. F., Edwards, E. C., Boland, E., Olejnik, S., & Kame'enui, E. (2003). "Vocabulary tricks: effects of instruction in morphology and context on fifth grade students' ability to derive and infer word meanings," American Educational Research Journal, Vol. 40, No. 2, pp. 447-494.

Baumann, J. F., Edwards, E. C., Font, G., Tereshinski, C. A., Kame'enui, E. J., & Olejnik, S. (2002). "Teaching morphemic and contextual analysis to fifth-grade students." Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 37, pp. 150-176.

Baumann, J. F., Kame'enui, E. J., & Ash, G. E. (2003). "Research on vocabulary instruction: Voltaire redux," in J. Flood, D. Lapp, J. R. Squire, and J. M. Jensen (eds.), Handbook of research on teaching the English language arts, 2nd ed., Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, pp. 752-785.

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2002). Bringing words to life. Robust vocabulary instruction, New York: Guilford Press.

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Kucan, L. (2013). Bringing words to life. Robust vocabulary instruction, 2nd ed., New York: Guilford Press.

Biemiller, A. & Boote, C. (2006). "An effective method for building meaning vocabulary in the primary grades," Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 98, No. 1, pp. 44-62.

Chall, J. S., Jacobs, V. A., & Baldwin, L. E. (1990). The reading crisis: Why poor children fall behind, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Cunningham, A. E. & Stanovich, K. E. (1998). "What reading does for the mind," American Educator, Vol. 22, pp. 8-15.

Graves, M. F. (2000). "A vocabulary program to complement and bolster a middle-grade comprehension program," in B. M. Taylor, M. F. Graves, and P. Van Den Broek (eds.), Reading for meaning: Fostering comprehension in the middle grades, New York: Teachers College Press.

Graves, M. F. (2004). "Teaching prefixes: As good as it gets?," in J. Baumann & E. Kame'enui (eds.), Vocabulary instruction, research to practice, New York: Guilford Press, pp. 81-99.

Graves, M. F. (2006). The vocabulary book, New York: Teachers College Press, International Reading Association, National Council of Teachers of English.

Graves, M. F. & Watts-Taffe, S. M. (2002). "The place of word consciousness in a research-based vocabulary program," in A. E. Farstrup and S. J. Samuels (eds.), What research has to say about reading instruction, Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Hart, B. & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children, Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.

Heimlich, J. E. & Pittleman, S. D. (1986). Semantic mapping: Classroom applications, Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Kamil, M. L. & Hiebert, E. H. (2005). "Teaching and learning vocabulary: Perspectives and persistent issues," in E. H. Hiebert and M. L. Kamil (eds.), Teaching and learning vocabulary: Bringing research to practice, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

McKeown, M. G. & Beck, I. L. (2004). "Direct and rich vocabulary instruction," in J. Baumann & E. Kame'enui (eds.), Vocabulary instruction, research to practice, New York: Guilford Press, pp. 13-27.

Nagy, W. E., Anderson, R. C., & Herman, P. A. (1987). "Learning word meanings from context during normal reading," American Educational Research Journal, Vol. 24, pp. 237-270.

Nagy, W. E., Herman, P. A. & Anderson, R. C. (1985). "Learning words from context," Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 233-253.

Nagy, W. E. & Scott, J. A. (2000). "Vocabulary processes," in M. L. Kamil, P. Mosenthal, P. D. Pearson, and R. Barr (eds.), Handbook of reading research, Vol. 3, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of the scientific research literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction (NIH Publication No. 00-4769), Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, pp. 13-14.

Scott, J. & Nagy, W. (2004). "Developing word consciousness," in J. Baumann & E. Kame'enui (eds.), Vocabulary instruction, research to practice, New York: Guilford Press, pp. 201-215.

Stahl, S. A. (2005). "Four problems with teaching word meanings (and what to do to make vocabulary an integral part of instruction)," in E. H. Hiebert and M. L. Kamil (eds.), Teaching and learning vocabulary: Bringing research to practice, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Stahl, S. A. & Fairbanks, M. M. (1986). "The effects of vocabulary instruction: A model-based meta analysis," Review of Educational Research, Vol. 56, pp. 72-110.

Swanborn, M. S. & de Glopper, K. (1999). "Incidental word learning while reading: A meta-analysis," Review of Educational Research, Vol. 69, pp. 261-285.

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Vocabulary development supports reading and increases comprehension. Students need to be explicitly taught words and vocabulary learning strategies.

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Below is a link to 15 meaningful vocabulary activities that can be used for multiple grade levels.

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30 Meaningful Vocabulary Activities for Every Grade

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Learning new words is like adding to your writing toolbox.

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Below is a link to 5 meaningful phonemic awareness activities to use with primary grades.

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"Phonological awareness," "phonemic awareness," and "phonics," are literacy terms we often hear used simultaneously, and maybe even interchangeably! However, as we work with children, helping them to develop a strong foundation of literacy and language skills, we must realize the important distinction between these terms.

What is Phonemic Awareness?

Phonological Awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate parts of spoken language. Skills are at a listening/auditory and spoken/verbal, level - NO print - spoken words requiring ears only!

It is a broad term and comprised of a group of skills that progress developmentally, but of course, overlap as children mature. As phonological awareness skills develop, children will begin to attend to, discriminate, remember, and manipulate (segment/blend) words and sounds at these levels or chunks:

Sentence
Understanding that the sentence they hear, "Thecatisfat" is comprised of four separate words "The cat is fat".

Word

Understanding the words "cat" and "fat" rhyme.

Understanding two words become one in a compound word: cat + fish = catfish

Syllable
Understanding the word "cat" as one syllable.

Phonemic Awareness
Understanding and manipulating the three sounds in "cat" = /k/ /a/ /t/

Let's take a closer look at phonemic awareness. It is a specific skill under the broad category of phonological awareness. If we put phonological awareness skills on a continuum, phonemic awareness is the most sophisticated and last to develop.

The following is a list of specific phonemic awareness skills. Keep in mind, all of these are done at the auditory/spoken level, NO print:

Recognize words in a set begin with the same sound (cat, cake, kite all begin with the /k/ sound)

Isolate and say the first/last/middle sound/s in a word (cat begins with the /k/ sound and ends with the /t/ sound, etc.)

Blend separate sounds (phonemes) into words (/k/- /a/ - /t/ = cat)

Segment words into sounds (cat = /k/- /a/ - /t/)

Delete/manipulate sounds in spoken words (What is "cat" without the /k/? - "at"

Basically, phonemic awareness skills include learning how to break apart (segment) and combine (blend) the sounds in words. Phonemic awareness should begin in Pre-K with the focus on the simpler phonemic awareness skills of isolation and identifying beginning and ending sounds. Because phonemic awareness is a more advanced phonological awareness skill, development continues into kindergarten and early elementary.

Why are phonemic awareness skills so important?

Well, children who cannot hear and manipulate the phonemes of spoken words will have a very challenging time learning how to relate phonemes to letters when they see them in written words, Phonics. Therefore, Phonological Awareness skills are foundational for Phonics.

What is Phonics?

Phonemic awareness, however, is not phonics.

Phonics skill development focuses on helping children understand the relationship between sounds of written letters, letter combinations, and words. Phonics deals with written language, therefore we need to use our ears AND eyes, where as Phonological Awareness (and phonemic awareness) involves NO print, just listening and saying sounds and words. To keep this straight in my mind, I think about phonological awareness activities as those which can be completed with the eyes closed, while phonics activities require us to see the written letters and words, so, eyes need to be open.

Both phonemic awareness and phonics are interrelated, foundational skills and necessary for reading. However, it is important to understand a foundation of all phonological awareness skills should built before intense concentration is given to phonics.

The Benefits of Phonemic & Phonological Awareness

PreK is the time to begin to lay the foundation for strong reading skills, and it is important to begin by concentrating on phonological awareness skill development. In addition, if we do not help children gain the foundational understanding of sounds that phonemic awareness brings, phonics (assigning a letter a sound, spelling, and reading) will make little sense. And research supports this.

In summary, Phonemic Awareness is critical for reading. It primes readers for mapping speech to print, connecting sounds with written symbols, and also gives children a way to approach sounding out, blending sounds to make and read new words.

Phonological Awareness Activities & Strategies

In Pre-K, Phonological Awareness skills most certainly need to be taught explicitly, but fun extra practice can be woven in anytime.
Activity 1: Games to Play While Lined Up
Here are a few ideas for some simple games to play while children wait in line:

1. Sentence game: say a sentence, "The cat is fat". Tap the first 4 children on the head as you say each word of the sentence. Ask, "How many words?", four! Repeat the sentence, or say a different sentence, as you go down the line of children.

2. Rhyme game: Say a few words that rhyme, "cat, fat, bat". Prompt children to join in the game. You may need to prompt by saying some initial sounds: /p/ - at, /s/ - at, etc. Include silly words (/z/ - at) and blends (/th/ - at)!

3. My Turn/Your Turn syllable count game: (My Turn) Model clapping/stomping/tapping the syllables for objects you see in the classroom (Ceil-ing, floor, ta-ble, com-pu-ter). (Your Turn) Prompt children to imitate you. Ask after each word, "How many syllables?"

4. Repeat the beginning sound game: /c/ - /c/ - cat, /c/ - /c/ - cake, /c/ - /c/ - car. Prompt children to join in with other words.

The Get Set for School curriculum offers many activities that support early Language and Literacy skill development for children in your Early Childhood classrooms.

Here are some additional sample activities and products to explicitly instruct young learners in some key Phonological Awareness skills.
Activity 2: Discriminate rhymes
Each of the four Mat Man books features the beloved character, Mat Man. Rhyming verses in all the books help children discriminate and learn about rhymes.

Mat Man helps students learn about shapes, professions, rhymes, while expanding their imaginations, exploration, and community awareness.

Click here to see more sample pages from the Mat Man Book Series.
Activity 3: Discriminate between environmental sounds and speech sounds
Children learn important social, math, literacy & language concepts as they move and sing to upbeat songs on the Sing, Sound, and Count with Me Music Album

For example, the song "Syllable Sound Off" helps to develop children's understanding of syllables as they listen for and move to identify 2, 3 and 4 syllable words... all in one song!

Rhymes are taught in a fun playful way in the song "Rhyming Riddles". In fact, most songs on the music album include verses with rhyming words!
Activity 4: Identify Sounds and their sources
The Sound Around Box is a versatile classroom tool that will help you teach early language and literacy concepts in a fun and hands-on way. It provides the opportunity for many group activities which will help children develop important social skills as they engage in multisensory play with rhymes, syllables, beginning sounds, alphabet knowledge, letters, word parts, and test their memory skills!
Activity 5: Develop early language, literacy, motor, and social skills
Line It Up engages children in fun interactive activities that develop early language, literacy, motor, and social skills. The set includes a mountable magnetic display bar to hold the Story, Letter, and Coloring Cards.

The 26 Coloring Cards each have simple picture. The picture can be colored, but also used to facilitate a "Syllable Chant" activity. For example, on the "A" card: al-li-ga-tor.

The 26 Picture Cards can be used for phonemic awareness activities as children name each picture and identify those that begin with the target sound. For example:

Show picture side of Letter Card A. Name each picture.

Alligator begins with /ă/. Say it with me, /ă/, alligator.

Does violin begin with /ă/? No, violin begins with /v/.

Does astronaut begin with /ă/? Yes, /ă/, astronaut.

Continue with banana and apple.

Let children circle beginning /ă/ pictures.

All of the Get Set for School products support a variety of learning opportunities for your developing children. The products and activities highlighted shown here are just a snapshot of the many skills these products can facilitate.

To learn more about these and other Get Set for School activities and products, visit our website.

A-Z for Mat Man and Me

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5 Phonological & Phonemic Awareness Activities

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"Phonological awareness," "phonemic awareness," and "phonics," are literacy terms we often hear used simultaneously, and maybe even interchangeably! However, as we work with children, helping them to develop a strong foundation of literacy and language skills, we must realize the important distinction between these terms.

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Below is a link to multiple explicit reading fluency instructional strategies.

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Guidelines for instruction

Provide children with opportunities to read and reread a range of stories and informational texts by reading on their own, partner reading, or choral reading.

Introduce new or difficult words to children, and provide practice reading these words before they read on their own.

Include opportunities for children to hear a range of texts read fluently and with expression.

Suggest ideas for building home-school connections that encourage families to become involved actively in children's reading development.

Encourage periodic timing of children's oral reading and recording of information about individual children's reading rate and accuracy.

Model fluent reading, then have students reread the text on their own.

What students should read

Fluency develops as a result of many opportunities to practice reading with a high degree of success. Therefore, your students should practice rereading aloud texts that are reasonably easy for them – that is, texts containing mostly words that they know or can decode easily. In other words, the texts should be at the students' independent reading level.

A text is at students' independent reading level if they can read it with about 95% accuracy. If the text is more difficult, students will focus on word recognition and will not have an opportunity to develop fluency.

The text your students practice rereading orally should also be relatively short – probably 50-200 words, depending on the age of the students. You should also use a variety of reading materials, including stories, nonfiction, and poetry. Poetry is especially well suited to fluency practice because poems for children are often short and they contain rhythm, rhyme, and meaning, making practice easy, fun, and rewarding.

Model fluent reading

By listening to good models of fluent reading, students learn how a reader's voice can help written text make sense. Read aloud daily to your students. By reading effortlessly and with expression, you are modeling for your students how a fluent reader sounds during reading.

Repeated reading

After you model how to read the text, you must have the students reread it. By doing this, the students are engaging in repeated reading. Usually, having students read a text four times is sufficient to improve fluency. Remember, however, that instructional time is limited, and it is the actual time that students are actively engaged in reading that produces reading gains.

Have other adults read aloud to students. Encourage parents or other family members to read aloud to their children at home. The more models of fluent reading the children hear, the better. Of course, hearing a model of fluent reading is not the only benefit of reading aloud to children. Reading to children also increases their knowledge of the world, their vocabulary, their familiarity with written language ("book language"), and their interest in reading.

Activities for students to increase fluency

There are several ways that your students can practice orally rereading text, including student-adult reading, choral (or unison) reading, tape-assisted reading, partner reading, and readers' theatre.

Student-adult reading

In student-adult reading, the student reads one-on-one with an adult. The adult can be you, a parent, a classroom aide, or a tutor. The adult reads the text first, providing the students with a model of fluent reading. Then the student reads the same passage to the adult with the adult providing assistance and encouragement. The student rereads the passage until the reading is quite fluent. This should take approximately three to four rereadings.

Choral reading

In choral, or unison, reading, students read along as a group with you (or another fluent adult reader). Of course, to do so, students must be able to see the same text that you are reading. They might follow along as you read from a big book, or they might read from their own copy of the book you are reading. For choral reading, choose a book that is not too long and that you think is at the independent reading level of most students. Patterned or predictable books are particularly useful for choral reading, because their repetitious style invites students to join in. Begin by reading the book aloud as you model fluent reading.

Then reread the book and invite students to join in as they recognize the words you are reading. Continue rereading the book, encouraging students to read along as they are able. Students should read the book with you three to five times total (though not necessarily on the same day). At this time, students should be able to read the text independently.

Tape-assisted reading

In tape-assisted reading, students read along in their books as they hear a fluent reader read the book on an audiotape. For tape-assisted reading, you need a book at a student's independent reading level and a tape recording of the book read by a fluent reader at about 80-100 words per minute. The tape should not have sound effects or music. For the first reading, the student should follow along with the tape, pointing to each word in her or his book as the reader reads it. Next, the student should try to read aloud along with the tape. Reading along with the tape should continue until the student is able to read the book independently, without the support of the tape.

Partner reading

In partner reading, paired students take turns reading aloud to each other. For partner reading, more fluent readers can be paired with less fluent readers. The stronger reader reads a paragraph or page first, providing a model of fluent reading. Then the less fluent reader reads the same text aloud. The stronger student gives help with word recognition and provides feedback and encouragement to the less fluent partner. The less fluent partner rereads the passage until he or she can read it independently. Partner reading need not be done with a more and less fluent reader. In another form of partner reading, children who read at the same level are paired to reread a story that they have received instruction on during a teacher-guided part of the lesson. Two readers of equal ability can practice rereading after hearing the teacher read the passage.

Readers' theatre

In readers' theatre, students rehearse and perform a play for peers or others. They read from scripts that have been derived from books that are rich in dialogue. Students play characters who speak lines or a narrator who shares necessary background information. Readers' theatre provides readers with a legitimate reason to reread text and to practice fluency. Readers' theatre also promotes cooperative interaction with peers and makes the reading task appealing.

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Fluency: Instructional Guidelines and Student Activities

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The best strategy for developing reading fluency is to provide your students with many opportunities to read the same passage orally several times. To do this, you should first know what to have your students read. Second, you should know how to have your students read aloud repeatedly.

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Below is a link to multiple effective reading comprehension activities that can be used with multiple grade levels.

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1. Cudd, E.T., & Roberts, L.L. (1987). Using story frames to develop reading comprehension in a first grade classroom The Reading Teacher, 41, 75-79.

2. Stauffer, R.G. (1975). Directing the reading-thinking process. New York: Harper & Row.

3. Ogle, D.M. (1986). K-W-L: A teaching model that develops active reading of expository text. The Reading Teacher, 39, 564-570. and Ogle, D.M. (1989). The know, want to know, learn strategy. In K.D. Muth (Ed.), Children's comprehension of text: Research into practice (pp. 205-233). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

4. Beck, I.L., McKeown, M.G., Hamilton, R.L., & Kucan, L. (1997). Questioning the author: An approach for enhancing student engagement with text. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

5. Palincsar, A. S., & Brown, A. L. (1984). Reciprocal teaching of comprehension fostering and comprehension-monitoring activities. Cognition and Instruction, 2, 117-175.

6. Brown, R., & Coy-Ogan, L. (1993). The Evolution of transactional strategies instruction in one teacher's classroom. The Elementary School Journal, 94, 221-233; Pressley, M., El-Dinary, P.B., Gaskins, I., Schuder, T., Bergman, J., Almasi, L., & Brown, R. (1992). Beyond direct explanation: Transactional instruction of reading comprehension strategies. The Elementary School Journal, 92, 511-554.

7. Hoffman, J.V. (1992). Critical reading / thinking across the curriculum: Using I-Charts to support learning. Language Arts, 69, 121-127.Language Arts, 69, 121-127.

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Based on research and effective practice, these strategies help students learn how to coordinate and use a set of key comprehension techniques before, during, and after they read a variety of texts.

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Below is a link to a guide on phonics instruction with a few activities too.

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An Introduction to Phonics and learning to read

Throughout this article, I aim to provide you with a clear understanding of teaching phonics effectively in the classroom and offer a variety of strategies and proven ideas to teach phonics.

WHAT IS PHONICS? A DEFINITION FOR TEACHERS AND PARENTS.

Phonics can be defined as a body of knowledge and skills regarding how the alphabet works.

In the context of this article, phonics refers to the method of teaching a student to read by developing their phonemic awareness and an understanding of the links between these sounds and how we use the letters of the alphabet to represent them.

This understanding is essential not only to read well but to bridge the gap between reading and writing.

With a good foundation of phonics knowledge, students can quickly become confident readers and independent solid writers.

PHONEMIC AWARENESS IMPROVES READING FLUENCY

When students develop phonemic awareness, it dramatically enhances their reading fluency which is a reading "superpower", allowing students to read with speed, accuracy and expression. Reading fluency dramatically enhances students' ability to read with intonation and energy that translates into expressive writing skills.

A COMPLETE DIGITAL READING UNIT FOR STUDENTS

How To Teach Reading Using Phonics

The use of phonics, or synthetic phonics as this method is technically known, is an effective and efficient means of teaching young students how to read. For this reason, phonics is the primary methodology for teaching reading in the school systems of many English-speaking countries.

In English, there are around 44 sounds or phonemes. Given that there are only 26 letters used in the language and that many sounds have more than one possible spelling, it is helpful that students learn the relationships between the letters and sounds in a straightforward and explicit manner.

To achieve this, phonics centers on the relationship between sounds and how they can be spelled.

It focuses on the letter and sound correspondences to enable students to break written words down into their component sounds before later recombining them to read the whole word. This process is known as segmenting and blending.

SEGMENTING AND BLENDING

Rather than allowing students to struggle to recognize complete words, as in the whole word method, or to look for contextual clues to figure out what is being said in a text, phonics teaches students to look at the letters of a word and segment it into its component sounds, before blending these sounds back together to read the entire word.

For example, when faced with the word cat, a student might run their finger under the first letter and make the initial /k/ sound, then /a/, and, finally, /t/.

Once they have successfully segmented these individual sounds, they then blend them together to say the word /kat/.

With practice, the speed with which students can look at a word, segment the sounds, and then blend these sounds together to read the word rapidly increases. This makes learning to read through the phonics method the most efficient way for most children to learn not just to read but to write too.

DECODING AND ENCODING: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN READING AND WRITING

Initially, phonics reaps rich rewards for students in terms of the passive skill of reading. This is also known as decoding.

Later, the student's knowledge of phonics can help them develop the active skill of writing or encoding.

For this reason, teachers will often weave emergent writing skills, such as letter formation, into their phonics lessons to take advantage of the opportunity to bridge this gap between reading and writing skills.

WHAT ABOUT SIGHT WORDS?

As effective as synthetic phonics are in teaching students to read, they won't be enough on their own to unravel all the opaque mysteries of English orthography.

English is something of a mongrel language. Over the centuries, it has been influenced by the German, Latin, French, Greek, and Celtic languages, among others.

This fact has led to many inconsistencies in spelling surviving in the modern language. Sometimes phonics won't be enough to decode these words. That's why students need to learn to read some words by sight alone.

Sight words, or high-frequency words as they are also known, are those extremely common words used time and again in most texts. Many of them are phonetically irregular and follow no conventional spelling rules. For children's reading books, sight words can account for up to 75% of the words in the text.

Therefore, it's best to combine the study of phonics with the learning of these sight words for maximum effectiveness. This is something to consider when engaged in your long-term planning.

The most effective strategy for learning these sight words is for discussion another day; for the remainder of this article, we will focus exclusively on the teaching of phonics.

THE STAGES OF PHONICS TEACHING

Before beginning to teach phonics, it is helpful to have a broad overview of the various stages that comprise a comprehensive synthetic phonics program. The following outline can serve as a practical general guide.

1. THE PRE-PHONICS STAGE

Before beginning to learn phonics in earnest (e.g. sound/letter correspondences), certain prerequisite skills need to be developed, including:

LISTENING SKILLS:

Children must be able to listen carefully to the sounds of speech. They must learn to filter speech sounds from other unrelated environmental sounds. This is usually best achieved by playing various listening games. When children have developed good aural comprehension, the game Simon Says is a fun way to further develop listening skills.

SOUND REPRODUCTION SKILLS:

Once the children have learned to discriminate between various sounds, they should learn to reproduce these themselves. This is usually achieved by modelling the sounds carefully for the children and encouraging them to copy these with particular attention paid to the shape of the mouth when making each sound. The popular fun game Telephone is excellent for this.

SEQUENCING SKILLS:

It is essential for children learning to read to be able to sequence not only the events of a story but the individual sounds of the words they hear. They must be able to recognize which sound comes before or after another. They should also be familiar with sequencing language such as first, second, before, after, then etc.

We have a complete guide to sequencing for teachers and students here.

2. SOUNDS AND ACTIONS

With our younger kids, it can be challenging to give them an anchor to 'hold on to the sounds of language.

To help build such an anchor to these sounds, which will later help link sounds to written letters, actions are often connected to each sound to aid in memorizing them. This is especially useful in the early stages as it works well for the most basic of sounds.

For example, when making the /m/ sound, children could be taught to rub their tummies as if they have eaten something delicious while saying " mmmmm ".

Or, they could open their mouths wide as if they were eating an apple while saying the /a/ sound.

It is easy to devise customized actions to go along with the various sounds of English and then teach these to your class. Ensure you consistently use the same actions every time for a specific sound to avoid confusion.

Later, when students come to segment words into their individual sounds, they can use these actions to help recall them.

3. THE LETTER AND SOUNDS CORRESPONDENCES

Explicitly teaching the letter and sound correspondences lie at the heart of good phonics teaching.

It is essential to understand a little of the theory of synthetic phonics to be effective here. Here are a few important points to consider:

● Letter Names vs. Letter Sounds

It is crucial that children understand the difference between the names of the letters of the English alphabet and the sounds, as these are two very different things. For example, the letter c is called / see/ but the letter itself usually denotes either a /k/ or /s/ sound. It may seem obvious, but many teachers not trained in the teaching of phonics overlook this distinction and unwittingly make learning to read much more difficult for their students as a result.

● Letters Don't Make The Sounds

As the limited letters used in English are needed to represent many different sounds, it's important to point out to students that letters don't make the sounds; they are simply an option for showing the sound. Often there will be more than one way to show the same sound; for example, the sound /s/ can be encoded in several different ways, including as s, c, and ps. When you are asking your students to write something, you can make the sound and ask them what letter they could use to show this sound. This type of phrasing reinforces the correct relationship between the letters and sounds.

● Avoid The Lazy Vowels

It is also important to remember that when teaching the letters and sounds to avoid making the lazy vowel or schwa sound at the end of a sound. For example, when pronouncing the /k/ sound, make it crisp and short, rather than adding in an extra -uh sound at the end. This will make it much easier for the students to blend sounds together later.

HOW TO PLAN A PHONICS LESSON FOR YOUR CLASS

The detail and delivery of your phonics lessons will depend greatly on the specific situation of your students. However, some general points will be helpful to consider when planning a phonics lesson for your class.

● Keep Phonics Lessons Short and Sweet

To avoid getting bogged down and boring your kids, keep phonics lessons short. In and around 10 to 15 minutes is ideal and no more than 20 minutes. Remember, we want our kids to be lifelong readers, and that means they need to enjoy it!

● Be Consistent

There is a lot of ground to cover here, and consistency is key. If your students are learning to read, they'll need to practice and study their phonics every day - preferably at the same time each day too.

● Keep on Moving

While a lot of reinforcement will be required over the course of the year, research has shown that keeping a brisk pace through a phonics program achieves the best results. Don't get bogged down waiting for everyone to get everything before moving on. You will be revisiting the material.

● Keep Things Fun!

Learning to read should be a positive experience, particularly as learning to read means acquiring one of the most empowering skills a child will ever have. To keep things fun, be sure to incorporate lots of enjoyable activities and games into your phonics lessons.

TEACHING ACTIVITIES FOR ANY TEXT - GREAT FOR GUIDED READING

Phonics Games and Activities
I Spy
This perennial classic is a fun way to get some phonics practice in. You can adapt it to say, "I spy with my little eye something beginning with..." and say a sound rather than a letter. If you wish to work on letter recognition rather than sound, simply hold up the letter itself quietly.
Sorting Activities
Sorting activities are a great way for students to practice their phonics knowledge and can take on an almost infinite number of variations. For example, younger kids may enjoy sorting objects into two hula hoops on the floor, which are labelled with their initial consonant sounds, while older kids might work on consonant blends.
Bingo
Bingo is another very versatile game that can be used to practice sound and letter recognition. Simply decide what you want to work on and place those into suitably sized grids (9×9 works well). These could be initial consonants, vowel digraphs, or pictures of nouns. If you set up some blank grids on laminated sheets, you can save yourself a lot of prep time too. Simply write a broad selection of sounds you are working on onto the whiteboard. Students can select 9 of them to fill in their laminated grid. Now each student will have their own unique bingo card!
Partner Reading
Partner reading is a great way to practice listening skills, as well as reading. Organize students into pairs and provide them each with a copy of the same text. One partner reads the text while the other follows closely with their own copy. The listening partner helps the reader decode difficult words when they have trouble. After a time, partners switch roles. This usually works best when partners are of a similar ability. You can further differentiate here by choosing different texts to suit the abilities of each pair.
Shared Writing
Shared writing is an effective means of introducing independent writing activities. For beginning students, it may take the form of simply spelling a basic CVC word together. For example, to work on the spelling of the word cat, you could draw three cradles on the whiteboard and say each sound; in turn, challenge the students to come up and write the corresponding letter in the cradle until they have written the word - -.

As we can see, the teaching of phonics is a highly efficient and effective means of teaching our children to read and, ultimately, write. It works on training students to be able to hear the various sounds of English, identify these sounds, and link these sounds to the symbols we call letters.

While there are other methods of learning to read employed with emergent readers in the classroom, in two decades of teaching, I've never seen another methodology come anywhere close to phonics for overall effectiveness.

And, best of all, phonics can be a lot of fun to learn and teach too!

OTHER GREAT ARTICLES RELATED TO PHONICS

The content for this page has been written by Shane Mac Donnchaidh. A former principal of an international school and English university lecturer with 15 years of teaching and administration experience. Shane's latest Book, The Complete Guide to Nonfiction Writing, can be found here. Editing and support for this article have been provided by the literacyideas team.

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Teaching Phonics: A Complete Guide for Parents and Teachers

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A guide to teaching phonics to students including phonemic awareness, reading fluency, phonics sounds for reading and, phonics games and activities. Teach kids to read through a logical research based method.

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Reading Fluency Strategies for K-2 Students

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Reading Fluency Strategies for K-2 Students

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In this video, Mrs. Jones explains tips and tricks for teaching primary students to read fluently.

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Reading Fluency Strategies for K-2 Learners | TIPS TO PROMOTE READING FLUENCY

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In this video, the teacher explains to her students reading comprehension strategies in lesson.

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Sing Those Strategies!:  Engaging Students in Reading Comprehension Strategies

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In the article, Susan Brady explains the science behind phonics instruction and how it benefits both fluent and struggling readers.

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A 2020 Perspective on Research Findings on Alphabetics.pdf

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In the article, Jan Hasbrouck explains what reading fluency is and how the importance of reading fluency has shifted over the past few years.

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In the video, Mary Dahlgren discusses vital vocabulary lessons for students in all grade levels.

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Tim Shanahan discusses meaningful fluency instruction that will leave a lasting impact on students.

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Blast from the Past: This entry was first posted on September 17, 2017 and was re-posted on March 2, 2019. This entry isn't from very long ago, but the guidance it provides appears to be timely given some of the recent questions that I have received. Test preparation season seems to be in full swing, so many of my correspondents are questioning both the value and the approaches taken to oral reading fluency. Research is clear-many of the boys and girls who don't do well on their state tests are disfluent and that undermines their ability to comprehend well. Oral reading fluency is not tested directly on those tests, but it is indexed. This enty explains how to teach fluency effectively--which should enhance students' silent reading comprehension. Teacher question: I have a question regarding my school's reading program. My question today is about the reading portion of our literacy block and most specifically the partner reading and independent reading. I'm finding that my homogenous group of fourth-grade students aren't fluent readers. The routine expectation is that partners take turns reading a paragraph at a time. The partner who is following along and not reading aloud is to provide a brief summary of what was read by the partner before reading the next paragraph. I love this, except that my students aren't fluent readers, so I feel that first the comprehension is low because of non-fluent reading, and second the time is a bit wasted because of the lack of fluency and therefore comprehension. After students do their partner reading, they read the next couple pages independently. Again they aren't fluent, so it's taking quite awhile. I feel that comprehension is low.
Shanahan response:

Fluency instruction can be valuable with fourth-graders (and with lots of other kids in grades 1-12)-it can help them to decode better, read more fluently, and improve reading comprehension.

What you describe is not likely to have much impact on kids' learning. Fluency instruction requires, well, instruction.

Text selection. Good reading instruction requires appropriate texts. On this, it sounds like you're doing fine-that often isn't the case. Fluency practice is best carried out with texts that students will struggle with, and with fourth-graders this is most likely to mean that the kids won't recognize all the words.

I would shoot for texts in which kids would make about 10 mistakes per hundred words. Given that your boys and girls are struggling to read the texts well enough to understand them, it sounds like you are using texts are hard enough to be effective for this teaching.

But while you want to use texts that difficult for these lessons... you don't want to end there.

If kids aren't reading the text fluently by the end of the lesson, then the lesson itself is ineffective. (Unlike you, many teachers try to teach fluency with texts that are too easy. That doesn't help the kids learn anything because they are already sufficiently fluent when they start.)

Purpose setting. Fluency lessons are no different from any others; students need to understand the purposes of the lesson.

I usually start out with a discussion of what oral reading should sound like. You might consider making a poster or bulletin board based on the kids' insights about oral reading. Perhaps read a text to them to show what reading should sound like, and then do some less than terrific readings (e.g., making mistakes, reading too slow or too fast, pausing badly, reading choppily).

Tell kids upfront that you are starting them with texts that they will probably not read well the first time through. Explain that you want them to work on that text until they can read it well.

Before each day's fluency work, remind the kids what they are trying to accomplish and what reading should sound like.

Modeling. There are some studies of fluency instruction in which teachers read the texts to the students before the students do their own oral reading. That can be helpful because it tips kids off to some of the unknown words and gives them some clues about the content. (Sometimes audio recording provides the modeling).

However, there are also many studies in which there is no such modeling.

I tend to put myself in the "don't model" group. Experience tells me that it only helps if you read a very short portion of the text, like a sentence, and then immediately have kids try to read the same sentence. Verbatim memory in these circumstances doesn't last longer than that, so modeling tends not to be a big help.

If a student tries to read something and makes a real mess of it (e.g., lots of mistakes, poor phrasing, etc.), then I might read that sentence aloud and have the child try it again. In other words, I'd provide modeling only when I think the students are struggling so much with a sentence that they are not likely to improve on a second (or third) reading without that extra boost.

Partners. Research suggests that lots of people can be effective reading partners. Teachers, parents, volunteers, cross-age tutors, computers, and classmates have all been tried in one study or another and they have all been effective. In your case, you have kids partnered up, but you told me nothing about how these pairings were made and what training was provided to them to enable them to be effective.

Studies (and personal experience) tell me that not all kids are great partners. Some are careful and supportive and others could care less. If you get Mariel as a partner, there is a good chance that your reading will improve; if you're paired with Bobby-not so much.

In some studies, children are paired on the basis of ability, and that can be successful, at least generally. In such pairings, the bottom students are placed with the top ones. This makes sense: The better readers can certainly help with errors, but that means they get no help and just because someone is a good reader, that doesn't make them patient or helpful.

I believe in sharing the pain, sharing the gain.

Match kids with a different student partner every day. That way, if getting to work with Mariel is a great opportunity, everyone will enjoy that opportunity every few weeks. If Bobby is a dud, everyone suffers that occasionally, too.

Feedback. Partners should be trained to give beneficial feedback. In all of the studies that have found fluency instruction to have a positive impact on reading, the readers received feedback.

I'm a fan of the "Pause, Prompt, Praise" system. If a student errs, the partner waits until the end of the phrase or sentence. The idea of that is to give the reader a chance to fix the mistake. If the reader doesn't take it on, then the partner should stop him/her.

The partner should then try to help by offering a prompt. There are three kinds of prompts: (1) encourage the reader to sound out the word (e.g., look at that more closely; sound it out; try to break it apart, etc.); (2) encourage the reader to use meaning to figure out the word (e.g., does that make sense? what should that say?). Or, (3) you can tell the reader the word.

Never give more than two cues. If the reader doesn't get the word right, then tell him/her the word.

If neither partner knows the word, they should write it down and the teacher can guide then guide the whole group to decode these words at lesson's end.

Rereading. Your letter does not mention it, but research suggests that the single most important step in fluency practice is rereading. Your students are reading a text badly, and your lesson seems to go on.

What should be happening is that the students should be asked to reread those portions of the text again. And, they should sometimes do so even a third time.

That's where the learning is. By reading and rereading a text the students transform it from one they can't read well to one that they have read well. In some schemes, they read the text again and again until they can do so, and in others, 3 readings seem to be sufficient.

Having kids taking turns reading paragraphs aloud poorly is not effective teaching. Whereas, having kids read and re-read a text gives them an opportunity to figure out unknown words and how to make the text sound meaningful.

Teacher's role. The teacher plays a very important role in this process. Teachers should supervise these paired readings. Teachers should coach readers through the partners (this is part of partner training). For example, I would eavesdrop on a pair, listen to the reader read and wait to see what the partner does. If the reading was weak I'd ask the partner, "What do you want her to do?" or tell the partner, "I'd tell him to read that again."

Make your way around the group, making sure that you hear several kids reading each lesson and that you add your feedback and modeling as needed.

Comprehension. In some studies, comprehension is handled in the way you described. In others, comprehension is not dealt with a fluency lesson. It might not be absolutely necessary, but I would encourage you to continue with the summarization practice as described. But have the students delay doing it until the paragraph has been read reasonably fluently.

Amount of Fluency Instruction. Schedule anywhere from 30 minutes to 45 minutes per day for fluency teaching (about 25% of the reading instruction time).

If kids finish the text prior to the end of the lesson time, then have them switch places, reading the paragraphs that their partners read the first time.

If you want kids to learn from fluency instruction, you need to teach fluency. Try that and let us know how it goes.

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How to Teach Fluency So That It Takes | Shanahan on Literacy

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Fluency instruction can be valuable. It can help them to decode better, read more fluently, and improve reading comprehension. This blog entry proposes specific effective ways to build oral reading fluency. This blog entry gives advice on how to teach fluency effectively.

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On this website is an interactive practice guide to help educators teach reading comprehension to students. By clicking through the tabs, you can find evidence of strategy's effectiveness and additional resources to support instruction.

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WWC | Improving Reading Comprehension in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade

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Students who read with understanding at an early age gain access to a broader range of texts, knowledge, and educational opportunities, making early reading comprehension instruction particularly critical. This guide recommends five specific steps that teachers, reading coaches, and principals can t…

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On this page is a comprehensive overview of phonemic awareness with strategies for teaching and assessing.

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What the experts say about phonemic awareness:

Without phoneme awareness, students may be mystified by the print system and how it represents the spoken word.
~ Louis Cook Moats & Carol Tolman

No matter the level of phonemic awareness, to make use of it he or she [the student] must learn to visually identify the individual letters.
~ Marilyn Jager Adams

Explicit instruction in sound identification, matching, segmentation, and blending, when linked appropriately to sound-symbol association, reduces the risk of reading failure and accelerates early reading and spelling acquisition for all children.
~ Learning First Alliance

Read more about phonemic awareness!

Test your Understanding of Phonemic Awareness

Test 1

Test 2

OVERVIEW of phonemic awareness

Phonemic awareness is an oral language ability that students demonstrate when they can play with the sounds in words. For example, they can change a sound in word to make a new word, blend sounds together to make a word, or break words into individual sounds. Phonemic awareness helps students read by sounding out and blending letter sounds together, and to spell by breaking apart the sounds in a word.

TEACHING phonemic awareness

Teachers can use a number of brief and engaging activities such as songs and games to facilitate students' phonemic awareness. Teachers can model key skills and provide opportunities for review. They can start with simple phonological awareness activities, including rhyming words, and move toward those that involve the identification and/or manipulation of the sounds in words.

ASSESSING phonemic awareness

Teachers can assess phonemic awareness in many ways. They can observe how their students respond to various phonemic awareness tasks and complete informal assessments of important phonemic awareness skills such as blending and segmenting. Gathering this information can aid in lesson planning and the identification of students at risk for reading difficulties.

Featured Videos

Push That Sound: Foundations for Phonemic Awareness

Pound and Sound: Helping Students Hear and Blend Phonemes

Phonemic Awareness Read Aloud: Using Stories to Develop Phonemic Awareness Skills

All Phonemic Awareness Recipes

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Without phoneme awareness, students may be mystified by the print system and how it represents the spoken word. ~ Louis Cook Moats & Carol Tolman No matter the level of phonemic awareness, to make use of it he or she [the student] must learn to visually identify the individual letters.

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A phonics activity to build phonemic awareness in young learners.

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Push That Sound!: Blending Sounds into Words to Build Phonemic Awareness

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This is an activity that helps students hear and blend phonemes.

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Pound and Sound: Helping Students Hear and Blend Phonemes

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An activity to help build students phonemic and phonological awareness.

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Playing with Word Sounds: Stretch and Shorten

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Blending (combining sounds) and segmenting (separating sounds) are phonological awareness skills that are necessary for learning to read. Developing your child's phonological awareness is an important part of developing your child as a reader. Learn how working on phonological awareness can be fun and easy below.

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An activity that uses initial letter sound patterns to build phonemic awareness.

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Activity Description

Preparation:

1. Choose several letter-sounds to focus on

2. Create cards that show the letter or letter pattern that corresponds to each of your chosen letter-sounds

3. Find small objects or pictures that begin with your chosen letter sounds
You may also wish to include some objects that do not match your letter-sounds as an added challenge

Implementation:

1. Explain to students the meaning of alliteration

1. Alliteration usually refers to a series of words all starting with the same sound, for example: Sammy slyly sneaks some snacks.

2. In this recipe, the word alliteration is used to refer to finding a series of objects that all start with the same sound

2. Introduce your letter-sound cards and review each letter-sound

3. Show students your selection of objects and have them name each one with you

4. Explain the activity

1. Some students will hold up letter-sound cards

2. Other students will be invited to choose objects and stand behind the card that has the same letter-sound as the first sound they hear in the name of the object

5. Invite up students to hold each letter-sound card
As you give them the card, have them say the letter-sound clearly

6. Invite students up one at a time

1. Say the name of each object you distribute as a class

2. Have the class identify the first sound

3. Have the student stand behind the correct letter-sound card

7. After all of the objects have been distributed, review each letter-sound and the objects that go with it

Adaptations For

English Language Learners/ESL:

- Review the names of each object, exaggerating pronunciation

LD/Reading & Writing Difficulties:

- Give students additional practice with each letter-sound, both before and after the activity

Cultural Appropriateness & Diversity:

- Choose objects that all students are familiar with

Differentiated Instruction:

- Provide students with extra support in segmenting the first sound if necessary

Related References

Evidence: Armbruster, B. B., Lehr, F., & Osborn, J. (2003).Phonics instruction. In Put reading first: The research building blocks for teaching children to read kindergarten through grade 3 (pp. 11-17). Jessup, MD: National Institute for Literacy.

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BALANCEDLITERACYDIET :: index :: Balanced Literacy Diet

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Choose several letter-sounds to focus on Create cards that show the letter or letter pattern that corresponds to each of your chosen letter-sounds Find small objects or pictures that begin with your chosen letter sounds You may also wish to include some objects that do not match your letter-sounds as an added challenge Explain to students the meaning of alliteration Alliteration usually refers to a series of words all starting with the same sound, for example: Sammy slyly sneaks some snacks.

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An overview of letter-sounds and phonics

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What the experts say about letter-sounds & phonics:

By understanding the link between speech sounds in spoken words and alphabet letters and letter combinations in written words, children learn to read and spell.

The goal of phonics instruction is to help children learn and use the alphabetic principle - the understanding that there are systematic and predictable relationships between written letters and spoken sounds. Knowing these relationships will help children recognize familiar words accurately and automatically, and decode new words.
Put Reading First

By the age of six, most children already have about 6,000 words in their listening and speaking vocabularies. With phonics they learn to read and write these and more words at a faster rate than they would without phonics.
Jeanne Chall

Go to Reading Rockets and learn more about letter-sounds & phonics!

Test your Understanding of Phonics

Practical resources for teaching letter-sounds & phonics

OVERVIEW of letter-sound knowledge & phonics

Learning how to read in English is like cracking a secret code. Students must learn which letters or letter combinations stand for the 40 or so sounds of spoken English. Once they understand the code, students are able to use their knowledge to read and spell new words. Teaching the connection between letters and the sounds they represent is an important part of early literacy instruction.

TEACHING letter-sound knowledge & phonics

Phonics refers to instruction in letter-sound associations. It is helpful to teach phonics explicitly and systematically. Begin with a set of letters, such as s, a, t, p, that can be combined to create two or three letter words so that students can immediately start reading and spelling words. Have students practice reading using books that contain familiar letter-sounds and words that can be easily sounded out.

ASSESSING letter-sound knowledge & phonics

Teachers can informally assess students' knowledge of letter names and sounds. They can observe students' ability to use letter-sound knowledge to sound out words when reading and represent sounds in words when spelling. It is very helpful to look at young students' inventive spelling because it provides a window into students' understanding of the relations between letters and sounds.

Featured Videos

Drive Through Blending: Practicing Early Decoding Skills in First Grade

Making Word Families: Developing Letter-Sound Associations

Alphabet In My Mouth!: Reviewing Alphabet Letter-Sounds with a Fun Song

All Letter-Sounds & Phonics Recipes

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BALANCEDLITERACYDIET :: Letter-Sounds Phonics :: Balanced Literacy Diet

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By understanding the link between speech sounds in spoken words and alphabet letters and letter combinations in written words, children learn to read and spell. The goal of phonics instruction is to help children learn and use the alphabetic principle - the understanding that there are systematic and predictable relationships between written letters and spoken sounds.

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An explicit phonics instruction activity to do with young learners.

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Drive-Thru Blending in First Grade: Practicing Early Decoding Skills

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A mini course for educators to learn more about the science of reading.

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Reading 101: Self-Paced Learning Modules

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Core knowledge about reading is a key to effective literacy instruction. Our free, self-paced learning modules can help you deepen your understanding of the building blocks of reading and writing.

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Affects of Phonics Instruction and Development of Phonemic Awareness

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Affects of Phonics Instruction and Development of Phonemic Awareness

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In this case study, the McGraw Hill phonemic awareness program was studied to find the similarities and differences of students with students with phonemic awareness and students who are lacking that foundation.

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Susan Jones explains easy, fun and engaging phonemic awareness activities.

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Phonics and Phonemic Awareness Activities for Kindergarten, First, & Second Grade!

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Teaching Phonics in a First Grade Classroom

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Teaching Phonics in a First Grade Classroom

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In this video, Susan Jones models and gives examples of teaching phonics in a first grade classroom.

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PHONICS INSTRUCTION: How I Teach Explicit Phonics in My Classroom

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This article examines the effects of phonics instruction on struggling readers.

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A real and nonsense word activity that involves blends and combining letters to make words.

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A guide to five comprehension strategies that can be used by both in-person and distance learners.

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While many teachers are still finishing up a couple more weeks of distance learning, I wanted to share 5 easy comprehension activities that can be used remotely, at home, or in a classroom!

I shared this information in a recent video so if you would like to watch or listen to it, just click below. Otherwise, scroll on to see more.

1. activating our schema

The first comprehension strategy you can practice through distance learning is to have students activate their schemas before reading nonfiction texts. You can either record yourself reading a nonfiction book, have them listen to a nonfiction book of your choice on YouTube or a site like Epic books, or have them choose any nonfiction book of their own at home! You would want to remind students first that our schema is our background knowledge or what we already think we know about a topic! Students would activate their schema first by recording some of what they know on a sheet, like this one:

After they're finished, they would record anything new they learned from reading the book! Lastly, I review with students that often as we learn more information, our schema changes and grows. They will reflect on what they read to see if their schema has changed in any way! Here is an example from reading a dolphin passage:

2. making inferences

I love having students make inferences through looking at photographs since there aren't any words in a photograph. To do this, I usually have them use a sentence stem like this:

I can infer _____ because I can see ______.

Photographs are easy to find and share through distance learning, so you have students take a look through some photos and make inferences while providing their evidence!

3. questioning before, in the middle, and after

During distance learning, you may want to remind students to keep their attention on their text while reading by asking questions! I usually teach that we can ask questions at three different times throughout the story. We ask questions before we read, while we are reading, and at the end. I actually created 6 mini books that are meant to elicit questioning awhile ago that I shared on my blog and these would be great to send home or share online with your students!

4. retelling

One of my favorite strategies to use when teaching retelling is called, "stop and sketch." For this strategy, you can simply read any book and stop at three different parts throughout the story. When you stop, students will sketch or draw what has happened so far in the story. This helps them practice choosing only the important parts to draw since there is only one box. Once they are done, they can use their illustrations to retell the story!

5. visualizing

Lastly, I love using poems to have students practice visualizing what they hear happening. There are plenty of poems online you can find and read aloud to students. You could send them along for students to read and draw their visualization or you could send an audio recording of you reading them. If you happen to be able to meet in whole group or small group lessons virtually, you can have your students bring the visualizations and compare!

I went ahead and compiled all these sheets, poems, mini-books, etc. in a free file you can go ahead and grab here if you want to use any of these with your class: Free Comprehension Activities

How are you practicing comprehension strategies at home, in the classroom, or through distance learning?!

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5 Comprehension Activities to use during Distance Learning! - Susan Jones

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While many teachers are still finishing up a couple more weeks of distance learning, I wanted to share 5 easy comprehension activities that can be used remotely, at home, or in a classroom! I shared this information in a recent video so if you would like to watch or listen to it, just click below.

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This page gives an overview on vocabulary and its importance in building strong, fluent readers.

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BALANCEDLITERACYDIET :: Vocabulary :: Balanced Literacy Diet

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Students need to develop both their speaking and listening vocabulary. The first refers to those words a student can use when speaking and the latter refers to the spoken words that a student can understand. Each type of vocabulary supports literacy development, as well as learning in other subject areas.

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An insight to teaching important vocabulary to be assessed. What does it mean to REALLY know a word?

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Classroom Vocabulary Assessment for Content Areas

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What are some ways that we can gauge vocabulary development in the content areas? In this article, the authors explain how the intricacies of word knowledge make assessment difficult, particularly with content area vocabulary. They suggest ways to improve assessments that more precisely track studen…

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Dr. Tim Shanahan addresses word walls and gives his researched opinion on whether they should be in the classroom or not.

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What are your thoughts about sound walls and word walls? I don't necessarily think these would replace a word wall...do you? The video and training can be found here for sound walls. My response was this: I think for oral language, phonemic awareness and phonics the sound walls are awesome, and very helpful visually for beginning readers to unlock how sounds, symbols and words are put together. I think these types of walls would be seen more in PreK, K and maybe 1st grade in the first semester. A word wall can be a broad term that can include multiple ways of highlighting words in the classroom. They can be used to highlight word families, word meaning, word patterns for spelling and for affixes, or even vocabulary terms students have learned. Usually when I think of word walls, one of the main focuses is either patterns, or meaning. Shanahan's response:
Word walls?... man, I saw a lot of word walls during the 1990s. Patricia Cunningham's "four block" was very popular and many teachers (and administrators) thought the epitome of high quality teaching was best demonstrated by lists of alphabetized high frequency words hanging from the classroom walls (Cunningham, 1991).

To tell the truth, while I like many of Pat's instructional approaches (like "breaking words"), I was not a big fan of word walls. The two major ways I saw them being used made no sense to me. Teachers, for instance, had students "reading" the words in unison to reinforce sight vocabulary. I put reading in quotes there because I'd watch the kids while they put on these performances. Often, they were mouthing without even looking at the words. Those word walls were an opportunity for the good readers to show off and for the poor readers to languish, a time waster at best.

The other popular use of the word walls was as spelling aides. During writing the kids could look up words they weren't sure how to spell. In K-2 (the grades in which word walls were so popular), that's not the best kind of spelling support. I'd much rather have kids try to spell words as they think they are spelled. That gives them a lot of practice with phonemic sensitivity and decoding/encoding and provides the teacher with diagnostic information. Copying spellings does little for building word knowledge.

Then I started to see some other uses for the word wall idea, often with older students. Those newer word walls focused on word meanings and I liked those a whole lot.

Your question, and those sound walls that you asked about got me thinking. As usual, my first concern was, "What does the research have to say?" That's easy. Research is mute on this issue.

Although word walls have come in and out of fashion for 30 years, there isn't a single published study on their effectiveness and the handful of relevant doctoral dissertations aren't particularly helpful. I can't tell you - based on any direct study - whether word walls, used in any way, are beneficial or not.

That's important. What I will offer here will be opinions which may or may not be better than anyone else's.

Let's think about what a word wall may provide to learners.

A word wall can be just another display of information. Typically, such presentations list important points or reveal relationships (think of a list of classroom rules, a map of the United States with the states labeled, or a diagram revealing the parts of a cell or atom). That kind of thing can be a useful teaching tool, better than a whiteboard since it doesn't have to be erased.

That, of course, was not what Pat Cunningham was going for. One of the ideas of the word wall was that it was developmental. It accumulated as kids learned - providing a motivational bump ("look at all the words you've learned").

Teachers can provide a list of high-frequency words (e.g., the, of, is, are, to) or lists of words that demonstrate particular spelling/ pronunciation patterns (e.g., can, man, pan, fan), morphological elements (e.g., s, es, ed, ing), or semantic relationships (e.g., transportation, air, land, water, boat).

Such displays have value but no more than a typical bulletin board or chalkboard display.

I suspect those sound boards that you asked about are mainly useful as an accompaniment to teacher-delivered instruction (more on that in minute).

Another possible value is that word walls may serve as memory supports; lists of information students might need to turn to in a pinch. The use of word walls as spelling resources are an example of that, as are the manuscript and cursive alphabets that have decorated classrooms over the past couple of hundred years.

Word walls tend to be pretty lousy memory aids when it comes to word reading because they don't pronounce the words for the kids. If I come to "the" and can't remember what t-h-e says, looking to the T part of the list and seeing "the" on the wall probably won't ring any useful bells.

The "sound walls" you asked about are proposed as memory supports, reminders to kids about how to articulate the proper phonemes (language sounds) for the proper graphemes (letters and letter combinations).

They are certainly more supportive of turning letters into sounds than a traditional word wall.

But as a practical memory aid, they're weak (more useful for the teacher as a guide to presentation than to the kids as a guide to reading words).

I guess the idea would be that when a student comes to a challenging word, he/she could go to the word wall, find the right combination of graphemes and examine the pictures of the articulatory apparatus in the hopes that replicating that shape would lead to proper sounding out of that word.

My take?

That's far too cumbersome as a memory aid - about as practically useful as the lists of 3-cueing clues that some teachers provide: "if you come to a word you don't know, look at the picture. If that doesn't work, read to the end of the sentence ..."

The problem is that these steps are neither much like real reading nor practical as efficient scaffolds.

Memory aids need to be easy to access or people just don't use them.

I love reading French novels on my Kindle because I can look up definitions just by touching the words. I don't like reading the paper versions of those books because I can get no flow - having to look things up online or in a paper dictionary is likely more efficient than a "sound wall" but even then, too distracting and downright unmotivating.

I'd rather that kids keep track of words that gave them a hard time. Then I can guide them to decode those words successfully.

Beyond being displays that can accompany teacher presentations or memory aids that kids can turn to when in need, word walls have one more possible benefit; a possibility noted in your letter.

Word walls can provide valuable opportunities for learning or self-teaching, if you will. Usually this use of word walls has been reserved for vocabulary (word meaning) learning.

The distinguishing characteristic of this third type of word wall is not between word meanings and word reading, however. No, the feature that makes this third type of word wall so interesting and potentially valuable is the children's role in constructing them.

These word walls not only develop or grow as new information is presented to the children, but the children do much of the construction work themselves.

A couple of examples should suffice.

The first I observed in a classroom in Joliet, Illinois. Many vocabulary programs introduce words as semantic sets (e.g., words that describe walking or talking or transportation). That approach requires a program with lessons structured in that way. This teacher wanted to emphasize those semantic relationships but didn't have such a program. She found a way to use word walls to get the kids to structure that knowledge themselves.

Each week as the kids learned vocabulary from their reading anthology, the teacher had her students determine the categories the words belonged to. They posted the words in those categories and as new words were added, they either grouped them into the existing categories or came up with new ones.

This system was terrific because it required students to constantly review the vocabulary they were learning and to make decisions about word relationships (a lot of thesaurus work took place!).

Although the teacher could use this display as part of a teaching presentation or kids could employ it as a memory aid to improve the diction of their writing, its real use was as an opportunity to socially-construct and reconstruct knowledge across a school year.

(In case you wanted to do something like this, the teacher did not have the kids list the words, but they used manila folders as the categories and affixed those to a bulletin board.)

The second example I drew from a journal on science teaching (Jackson & Narvaez, 2013; Thomas, 2016). These word walls are essentially graphic organizers; visual scaffolds that demonstrate the relationships among concepts. Originally, the idea of a graphic organizer was as a previewing technique in which the teacher (or author) would introduce the big ideas and their interconnections prior to having the students read about those ideas. Research back in the 1960s and 1970s found that those kinds of organizers didn't support comprehension much, but having students construct their own organizers after the reading was more effective.

These science word walls are just that, graphic post organizers constructed by the students as they learn the science content. Thus, the teacher provides categories that organize the information (such as REFRACT - REFLECT, or a MATTER wall that has columns for mass, magnetism, density, physical state). The kids then add visual information to those categories to provide definitions, examples, and explanations of those categories or concepts. They do this by writing their own definitions, drawing pictures, making three-dimensional physical models and the like - using the wall to construct a science vocabulary that structures their understanding of the underlying relationships.

What sense do I make of all of that?

The original idea of word walls and sound walls is to help kids to read words. However, neither research nor logic is very supportive of the ways those tend to be used.

When teachers transform the word wall into a construction site that allows students to explore and demonstrate their understandings of word meanings and their relations, the result is more in line with research.

I suspect that teachers could easily develop those more productive kinds of word walls with a focus on decoding and word reading. By guiding students to build sets of words organized by spelling patterns (e.g., cone, bone, phone, tone), complete with exceptions (e.g., one, done). You might turn to Words Their Way for ideas on how that might work (Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, & Johnston, 2019). Or, you could use the kinds of morphological analysis devices (word sums and work matrices) proposed by Peter Bowers since they appear to provide a useful structure for helping kids to think about word pronunciations and meanings.

Word walls that give kids an opportunity to structure their understanding of a domain (including the domains of spelling, word recognition, and word meaning) - are special and well worth investing in. If you use word walls that way, then build that wall!

References

Bear, D., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (2019). Words their way: Word study for phonics, vocabulary and spelling instruction (7th ed.). New York: Pearson.

Cunningham, P.M. (1991). Phonics they use: Words for reading and writing. San Francisco: Addison-Wesley.

Jackson, J., & Narvaez, R. (2013). Interactive word walls. Science and Children, 51(1), 42-49. Retrieved April 12, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/43176074

Thomas, A. (2016). Naming the solar system: Implementation of vocabulary strategies to improve scientific literacy. Science Scope, 39(8), 45-52. Retrieved April 12, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/43827316

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Should We Build a (Word) Wall or Not? | Reading Rockets

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Teacher question: What are your thoughts about sound walls and word walls? I don't necessarily think these would replace a word wall...do you? The video and training can be found here for sound walls.

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Putting meaning to action words by using movement.

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Dramatic Vocabulary: Introducing Action Words

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Using this cooperative learning model, students work together to define, explain and use vocabulary words.
Lesson plan: https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/balancedliteracydiet/Recipe/00128/

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Four Square Vocabulary Cards: Providing a Rich Context for New Words

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Using plumbers pipes as "phones" for students to use during whisper reading.

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Fluency Phones: Amplifying Students' Voices in Oral Reading (Virtual Tour)

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Using reader's theater to build fluency.

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Reader's Theater: Building Fluency in Third Grade

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Using audio books is a proven strategy to build student's reading fluency.

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You are welcome to print copies or republish materials for non-commercial use as long as credit is given to Reading Rockets and the author(s). For commercial use, please contact [email protected].

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Audiobooks are a wonderful way to expose your child to complex language, expressive reading, and fantastic stories. Listening to audiobooks also gives kids the valuable and enjoyable experience of using their own imaginations to visualize the people and places they're hearing about.

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A five step approach to teach reading comprehension

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Collaborative reading is one of several strategies at Concourse Village Elementary School (CVES) that are meant to incorporate literacy into all aspects of the curriculum. The approach, spearheaded by Alexa Sorden, the school's founding principal and a former literacy coach, is a marriage of shared reading-students read a text together, guided by the teacher-and close reading, which has students work independently and in small groups to produce a critical analysis of a text.

Classes in all grades in the pre-K to 5 school spend 15 to 20 minutes every day deconstructing an above-grade-level text of up to 150 words. The approach breaks down the reading process into five phases that emphasize repeated exposure to the text to drive deep comprehension: understanding the main idea, annotating the text, identifying key ideas and details, dissecting the author's craft, and summarizing ( download a PDF of the five phases). Because the reading of a single, challenging text is scaffolded over five days, students gradually develop a rich, portable methodology for decoding difficult materials.

Getting Started

Choosing a text: Collaborative reading texts-decided in advance by teacher teams for every six-week module-are either excerpts from fiction books or nonfiction texts that impart information.

Fiction passages highlight literary elements that may be challenging, like figurative language or themes. In kindergarten, teachers choose nursery rhymes to focus on rhyming, as well as particular messages, like optimism-a core value of the school.

Informational texts are often supplemental texts related to the other subjects that students are studying. For example, it can be difficult for fifth-grade students to understand how the Age of Exploration led to the development of capitalism, so fifth graders analyze a supplemental text on the subject through the collaborative reading process.

At the beginning of the week, K-5 students receive a handout with the collaborative reading text, along with a list of vocabulary words and questions that get students thinking critically about their materials.

Peer learning and student facilitators: Every K-5 class has a student facilitator for the year, chosen for his or her strong reading fluency. Student facilitators take the collaborative reading text home a few days prior to reading it at school so that they're able to support their peers-guiding them to "use extra evidence" or asking them why they chose a certain answer. In kindergarten, instead of one student facilitator for all five phases of the collaborative reading process, there is one student facilitator for each phase.

"Students tend to listen more when it's one of their peers who is actually providing support," says Raquel Linares, a fifth-grade teacher.

Understanding the Gist

In the first phase of deconstructing the chosen piece, students skim the text and put a question mark next to words they don't understand. The student facilitator introduces the focus: understanding the gist of the text.

Next, the teacher models what fluent reading looks like in front of the class, reading aloud with a focus on intonation and elocution. Students identify and discuss the meaning of unknown words.

CVES students outpace the state average on the New York English exam by more than 40 percent.

The class reads the text aloud in unison followed by the student facilitator reading the phase one question: "Which sentence best describes the main idea of the excerpt?" After students discuss and answer the question in small groups, they share their responses with the whole class.

The opportunity to discuss the core of the text multiple times with their peers creates confidence in new readers, demonstrates that all readers sometimes struggle, and enables individuals to gather knowledge and new perspectives from the whole group.

"My favorite thing about collaborative reading is that we all hear other people's ideas, and we have a chance to build up on a bigger idea," says fifth-grade student Mia.

Annotating

The student facilitator introduces the focus of phase two of the reading process: annotating the text and highlighting details that support the main idea. Asking questions and highlighting important information-students need to learn how to discriminate crucial information from secondary information-promote a deeper understanding of the language.

The whole class then reads the text aloud in unison-a step they repeat in each phase. Students annotate the text on their own, discuss in their group, and share with the class.

When annotating a fictional story, students focus on elements like plot, character, and conflict. When annotating informational texts, they look at things like illustrations and captions. Students focus on using one main annotation marking per week but can use others as well. For example, the focus might be to highlight details that answer a critical question or that support the main theme; they would mark those details with a "D" on the reading materials.

Identifying Key Details

After the student facilitator kicks off the task, phase three focuses on identifying key details and ideas, aligning with the New York State Next Generation ELA Learning Standards, which require students to make inferences, support claims with textual evidence, and summarize.

The students read the text together, discuss the critical-thinking question in groups, and then share with the class. Daily group discussions allow students to build their communication and collaboration skills.

In kindergarten, students might develop and answer questions about the text, while in fifth grade, students might make inferences based on textual evidence. For example, when fifth-grade students read an excerpt from the novel Jazmin's Notebook, they are asked to make inferences about the guidance counselor and her perception of Jazmin. Making claims supported by evidence is an important critical thinking and writing skill.

Analyzing the Author's Craft

In phase four, students focus on deconstructing the author's craft and motivations for writing.

In groups, students look at why the author chose certain words, phrases, or pictures and what messages those choices convey. Fifth-grade students, for example, are asked to consider how irony is being communicated in Jazmin's Notebook through the name of the guidance counselor: Lillian Wise. In an informational text, students might look at what information the photos or infographics convey to add context to the material.

Deconstructing the writing process from the viewpoint of the author helps students understand how word choice, imagery, themes, and sentence structure inform the work. By focusing on word choice, students see that different words carry different connotations that affect the meaning and tone of the text. Group discussion allows students with a deeper understanding of the material to provide support to peers who may be struggling and exposes all students to perspectives they might not have considered.

Summarizing and Drawing Conclusions

The final phase centers around the second core standard: "Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas." Each student writes a short summary of the text and draws conclusions. Summarizing helps students articulate their understanding in their own words. They also draw conclusions about the text in several ways, including examining the author's motivations for the writing, making personal connections to the text, or answering questions about the text-skills that students need for all classes.

For example, fifth-grade students read a passage from Jazmin's Notebook in which Lillian Wise, the guidance counselor, has enrolled a black student in classes that are not college preparatory courses, saying, "A person like yourself would be happier in the business world." The student, Jazmin, pushes back and asks why she should not be included in college prep classes.

The students are asked to consider the broader consequences of Miss Wise's expectations and Jazmin's response.

The question serves two purposes: Students summarize the central theme and point to textual evidence to support their claims, and they consider the importance of self-advocacy, a skill their teachers want them to develop as they leave Concourse Village for the next phase of their education.

"Reading is a lifelong skill across anything you do, anywhere you go," says Sorden. "It's important that our children are able to read very well when they walk out of here."

What makes this a SCHOOL THAT WORKS

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Driving Deep Reading Comprehension in K-5

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Collaborative reading is one of several strategies at Concourse Village Elementary School (CVES) that are meant to incorporate literacy into all aspects of the curriculum. The approach, spearheaded by Alexa Sorden, the school's founding principal and a former literacy coach, is a marriage of shared reading-students read a text together, guided by the teacher-and close reading, which has students work independently and in small groups to produce a critical analysis of a text.

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A list of fun, easy and free phonemic awareness activities for grades K-3

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Phonological awareness & Phonemic awareness activities

It has taken a while but we have finally completed our Phonological Awareness Activities Packet. This packet has been a huge undertaking but we wanted to accomplish a few things with it:

1. Align the phonemic awareness activities on this page below with the Common Core Standards.

2. Create new phonemic awareness activities for the standards we did not have existing activities for.

3. Put all the activities in one download!

What we ended up with is a 58 page Phonological Awareness Activities Download.
The file was so large that we could not upload it to our Download Central Page so we placed it in Katie's TpT Store. Here are some sample pics for you. Click any pic to enlarge.

This is our favorite part about the new download! You'll get a 30-page phonological awareness progression for ways to help your students at the word, syllable, and sound level. Simply cut the page down the middle, punch a whole in the corner, and bind with a metal ring! It's perfect to do with your students when you have a few free minutes...and it's super handy. Click to enlarge the pics.

Head on over to Katie's TpT Store to purchase this packet for just $3 or keep scrolling down for all of our FREE phonemic awareness activities.

Want an easy and effective way to track multiple students' phonological awareness skills? Print off this template! List the names of students in the left hand column and place check marks under the skills when a child has mastered them!

Syllable: Phonemic Awareness Activities

Using different items such as hand clappers, drums, or tennis rackets you can have children determine the number of syllables in a given word. For example, you would tap a drum two times for the word "sister" because it has two syllables. For increased difficulty, tap the drum (any number of times) and have your child think of a word that contains that same number of syllables.

Using the lyrics to "Hickety Pickety," have your child say, clap the syllables, and whisper their name to you.

Write the names of students in your classroom or members of your family. Have you child color a smiley face for each syllable in a given name and make a tally mark for each syllable.

Copy a "Classroom Syllable Graph" for each student in your classroom. Say the name of a student and have them color a square above the correct number of syllables. A fun way to combine phonemic awareness activities and math practice!

Help your child find items in different rooms in your home. Sort them by syllables. Write words (or draw pictures) for each object.

Beginning & Ending Sounds: Phonemic Awareness Activities

Tell your child you are going to teach them a song that will help them discover new words by taking off parts (sounds) of the word. Teach this song and let them fill in the last word. After a few verses using new words, invite the children to sing along. Other possible words to use include:

Beginning Sounds: boat (oat), farm (arm), meat (eat), bus (us), sled (lead), hand (and), & sit (it).

Ending Sounds: hammer (ham), soap (so), little (lit), meat (me), & boat (bow).

Segmenting & blending: phonemic awareness activities

Use these sound boxes to help children segment sounds in words. Simply print, laminate, and cut in half each card. Place one game chip under each box. Students say the name of each picture and then push up a chip for each sound in that word. Great for small group instruction!

Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes

Give students a word with 1-4 phonemes (sounds). Have them stand up and touch their head, shoulders, knees, and toes as they are saying the sounds in words. For example, the word "cat" would be /c/ (head), /a/ (shoulders), and /t/ (knees). A great active, phonemic awareness activity for helping students with segmenting!

Tell your child that you are going to teach them a song that will help them hear all of the sounds in a word. Teach this song and let them blend the sounds together to make a word. Sing the song a couple times, substituting a new word each time. Scroll down on this page to open a list of words with 4-6 phonemes (sounds) for ideas!

Place the cards face-up in random order on a flat surface. Have your child put the pictures together. Say a sound for each picture part while slowly sliding the parts away from each other. Then have your child say a sound for each picture part while slowly sliding the parts together. Once they are back together, say the whole word and continue with other picture cards

Using the above template, write words with 1-5 sounds in the left-hand column. Have students count how many sounds they hear in each word and write that number in the middle column. Give your child 5 bean bags and place a basket in front of them (distance depends on their ability to throw). Children throw a bean bag for each sound they hear in a given word. A point is received for each bean bag that makes it into the basket. (Make sure your child is saying the sounds they hear as they throw the bean bag). When they are finished throwing, have them count up their points to determine the grand total.

Place a green, yellow, and red mat on the floor (in that order). Begin by giving your child a word with 1-3 sounds. Have your child say the sounds they hear as they jump from mat to mat. For increased difficulty, move the mats so they are further apart.

This template can be used similar to those of Elkonin boxes for segmenting words into sounds. Give your child a word with 1-5 sounds and have them move a token into a box for each phoneme. It's a good idea to use different colored tokens and make sure your child is moving from left to right, just as if they were reading a word.

Have your child look at each picture and determine the number of sounds in that word. Color a box for each sound.

Here you will find a list of short and long vowel words with 4-6 phonemes (sounds). Before you use this list with your child/class, make sure they have mastered segmenting 1-3 phoneme words. These words can be used with the following phonemic awareness activities for segmenting:

This segmenting activity is easy to do and it doesn't require any materials but your hands! Have your child/class place their hands together. Give them a word. Each time they hear a sound in a word, have them say it and move their hands further apart.

This is the same concept as the segmenting activity above, only using silly putty to stretch the sounds in words. Using the silly putty helps children to visualize words that have a few sounds and words that have many sounds. (Children really get excited when they find words with many sounds, causing the silly putty to break apart).

This way of stretching words is great for students who like movement! Use a yoga mat and begin by explaining that it's important to stretch your body before you can stretch your brain. Give your child a set of directions to stretch their body. For example, tell them to slowly touch their toes, reach high in the air, place arms out to the side, and roll their head slowly. Once they have stretched their bodies, they are ready to stretch words! A fantastic multi-sensory phonemic awareness activity.

Using inexpensive night lights is a great way to help children learn to say sounds in words. Line up the night lights and say a word. Have your child say the sounds in the word as they turn the lights on. Repeat this process with the same word, but have your child say the sounds while they turn off the night lights. (It's always a good idea to teach your child to work from left to right! This typically is best to do in the small group setting when working on 1-4 phoneme words).

Using magnetic bingo chips and a cut-apart egg carton, place a chip in each slot. Give your child a word with 1-6 phonemes and have them pick up a chip while they say each sound. Like in the previous activity, it's best to teach your child to work from left to right.

Rhyming: Phonemic Awareness activities

Rhyme Time Bingo

Check out our new rhyming bingo game to play with children in the small group setting or at literacy centers. Directions are attached!

Want a fun way to help children learn to rhyme? Try this game with 2-4 children...Great for small group instruction and centers! Directions are attached.

By cutting and laminating the following cards, you can provide a fun and easy way to help children increase their rhyming skills.

Each week and new chant or poem is introduced. Students practice reading these poems through various activities and send them home each Thursday to share with family members.

Mystery Bag

Using an old book bag filled with random objects is a great way to help children with rhyming. Find things that are of meaning to you or place objects in the book bag that will make them laugh. See how many words you can think of that rhyme with that object, even if it is not a real word!

Track your class student rhyming progress using the "Rhyming Groups Folder". Glue the following four tabs on the inside of a manila folder, laminate, and use Post-Its to move individual students' rhyming progression.

Can't Hear/Can't Produce Rhymes

Can Hear/Can't Produce Rhymes

Can Hear/Can Produce Some Rhymes

Can Hear/Can Produce Rhymes Consistently

Learning the Difference between letters, sounds, syllables, & sentences: phonemic awareness activities

By enlarging and laminating this template your students can determine the letters, sounds, and syllables in new words you are working on in the classroom. (Kinkos is a great place to have documents enlarged). This helps children visualize that some words might have a lot of letters, but not a lot of sounds and vice versa.

Letter, Sound, Syllable, Word, & Sentence Poster Template

Cut out the cards and glue each to the top of a large poster. Provide your students/child with old magazines and newspapers. Help them cut out uppercase and lowercase letters, sounds, syllables, words, and sentences and glue of the appropriate poster. For "sounds" and "syllables" have your child use pictures of objects. Cut the objects according to the number of sounds and syllables. For example, the word "cat" would be cut into three pieces to represent the sound /k/ /a/ /t/. A great multi-sensory phonemic awareness activity.
Return from Phonemic Awareness Activities Page to Home

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Free downloads for phonemic awareness activities

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A list of fun, easy, and free phonics activities to engage young learners.

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14 Phenomenal Phonics Activities for Preschoolers

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Phonics activities are a tried-and-true method for building literacy skills in little learners. Take advantage of this handy list of our favorite educational and entertaining activities to try

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Why is Phonics Important When Learning How to Read?

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Why is Phonics Important When Learning How to Read?

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This article says that phonics is the most important reading skill. Here is why:

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Phonics: The Most Important Skill that Beginning Readers Learn - Parents' Corner

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Phonics is at the heart of how children learn to read. If you have a young reader, you might remember how exciting it was when he or she started learning letters, or how proud your child felt the first time he or she sounded out a word.

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Engaging and interesting list of reading comprehension activities that can be used with students in a variety of grades.

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Ask anyone about engaging and effective Reading Comprehension activities and you will get a myriad of replies and suggestions. I know, because I asked! I asked educators and non-educators to send me either activities they used or remember being used when they were students. The good news, there are countless recommendations! The bad news, there are countless recommendations. How does one sift through all of them and find the most effective one for their group of scholars? My father always wants to know "What is the bottom line?" The bottom line is you don't have to choose just one and you do not have to reinvent anything... but you can!

Teaching has dramatically changed during my tenure. When I started, we were given the Teacher's Editions with reading materials, reading comprehension activities and told to follow them explicitly. The challenge was that it did not always fit your specific class. Let's be honest, some of it was just really bad teaching and were anything but effective or engaging and fun was nowhere to be found. More good news is that education has transitioned into a collaborative, creative, and dynamic bundle of unlimited resources that provides the most effective reading comprehension activities for your amazing scholars!

Academic Research

For those of us who want evidence from academic research of proven Reading Comprehension activities, there is no end to exploring this path. Using a guideline or litmus test for effective Reading Comprehension activities is helpful. According to Institute of Education Sciences's Find What Works , there are six strategies that improve Reading Comprehension. The six strategies are:

1. Activating Prior Knowledge

2. Asking Questions While Reading

3. Visualizing

4. Monitor/Check For Understanding

5. Drawing Inferences

6. Summarize/Retell

( Improving Reading Comprehension in Kindergarten Through Third Grade )

If the Reading Comprehension activity has one or more of these strategies, then the likelihood of success is high. Their research also finds that practice reading with peers, teachers and independently is a key factor for effectiveness. In addition, there needs to be a gradual release of responsibility to the learner. The goal is for the learner to have more ownership in their reading growth and success. Therefore, choice of text is important in this process as well.

Transactional Strategy Instruction

One example that follows these strategies is Transactional Strategy Instruction. According to , "Transactional Strategy Instruction (TSI) is a procedure that involves teaching students to construct meaning as they read by emulating good readers' use of comprehension strategies." TSI also helps students (1) set goals and plan for reading, (2) use background knowledge and text cues to construct meaning during reading, (3) monitor comprehension, (4) solve problems encountered during reading, and (5) evaluate progress. The learners use specific strategies such as predicting based on prior knowledge, generating and asking questions, visualizing, summarizing, and others which all are in direct line with the aforementioned six strategies. This activity is done in a small group setting that encourages dialogue between peers and the instructor. TSI's objective is, "to have students independently use the comprehension strategies as they read any text and this goal is for ALL students, not just a few."

L istening to the selection

Another Reading Comprehension activity that is simple and yet an effective strategy is listening to the selection. This is a powerful tool especially for complex texts that may be too difficult for the learner to read on their own. According to Nancy Wexler's article, Good News/bad News On How the Media Covers America's Reading Crisis , "The first step is to build students' knowledge of a topic, through a coherent curriculum that includes having them listen to engaging texts they can't yet read themselves and discuss them." Even though it is a difficult text for the learners, this provides an opportunity for the learners to become familiar with the material or text so that they can make sense of it. The key to this activity is having the discussion.

Too often a "listening comprehension" activity is something the learners do on their own, however the objective with this strategy is to provide some structure and guidance towards accessing the complex text and making it a more enjoyable process through an open discussion. This also connects to the six strategies by activating prior knowledge, asking questions during the activity and even summarizing the selection.

More research-based activities

Here are a few others that also fit the six strategies criteria:

Anticipation Guide -An anticipation guide is a comprehension strategy that is used before reading to activate students' prior knowledge and build curiosity about a new topic. Before reading, students listen to or read several statements about key concepts presented in the text; they're often structured as a series of statements with which the students can choose to agree or disagree. Anticipation guides stimulate students' interest in a topic and set a purpose for reading.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road Retelling - A fun activity for primary grades that uses pre-made yellow cards with the elements of a narrative (Characters, Setting, Problem, etc.) to help the learners retell the story. The students could literally "walk" on the cards or hang them up. It encourages discussion and open conversations about the narratives.

Listen-Read-Discuss - This strategy starts with the students listening to a lesson or presentation from the teacher and then reading a text about the same topic. After reading the selection, the class has a discussion about the presentation and text. It can be whole class or small group discussions and usually compare and contrast the information from the lesson and reading.

Story Maps - A graphic organizer is used to help identify the elements of a narrative. (Characters, Setting, Plot, Problem, Solution) Depending on the grade level, it can be a simple map or advanced that includes plot and character traits.

Game of Quotes - A fun game done after Silent Reading where the students choose their own book to read. When the Silent Reading time is over, the teacher displays a prompt. The students must find a quote from their own book that they think best applies to that prompt. Each round the class decides who has the best response. This encourages students to read carefully and often sparks interest in that book for other students to read it.

Sketch and Tell - A paper or digital activity that gives the students time to read the selection, draw a quick sketch about it, and then write a short description to tell what the sketch or selection is about. Often this is combined with the students sharing it with others in their group or whole class.

Picture Walks - Before the students read the selection, they examine the pictures and make some predictions and conclusions about the text. Typically this is a primary grade activity but can easily be done with upper grade students as well.

Proven Activities Shared by Teachers

Some of the best advice and suggestions comes from teachers using Reading Comprehension activities that work. We all studied about different activities in our credential program and many of them just didn't seem engaging or effective. Thanks to the internet and websites like Teachers Pay Teachers, Pinterest, and Instagram, we are enticed by many of these activities, but just aren't sure it is worth paying or trying it. As always, it is best to go straight to the source and hear directly from educators themselves who are not trying to add followers or make some extra income. (Sidebar: There is nothing wrong with either of those, but I think you get the point.)

Read in chunks & highlight

Kristal is a fifteen year veteran educator who currently teaches third grade. Her advice is to provide structure with the aid of CLOSE Reading strategies which includes reading the text multiple times with a purpose. She also recommends "read in chunks." This could be paragraph by paragraph or by heading. If possible, the learners should write the main idea in margins or even on sticky notes. This could be done whole class or small groups as the learners and teacher discuss each "chunk" one at a time. Kristal strongly recommends that you explicitly teach strategies to find the main idea. This is helpful for struggling readers to make sense of longer texts. Her final recommendation is teaching the learners to properly highlight. The key here is to guide them to only highlight the important parts or evidence, because many of the learners just highlight everything. A bonus idea is to use plastic sheet protectors cut open so they can underline in their textbooks. She states, "I start by teaching to underline based on guided questions."

Use visual supports

Michele just recently retired after more than twenty-five years as an educator and most of that time was in special education. She says that since she worked with students with learning challenges, her "go to" reading comprehension activities always included visual supports. She explains, "I often made black line copies of pictures or story parts and had students put in the correct sequence, then retell the story to the class." At one point in her career she even taught general education Kindergarten and she had them make masks that connected to the characters in the narrative and had the learners act out the story.

Ask them questions (SPED tip)

Pam is another recently retired special education teacher that taught in multiple states and different grade levels. She spent much of her time on decoding because that was what many of her learners needed. However, her reading comprehension activities always worked on finding connections that the students could form with the material. Pam would ask, "What would you do?" or "What do you think?" and many of the other "W" questions.

Learning buddies

Beth is a Kindergarten teacher who likes to put her class in "learning buddies." When she is introducing a book, she covers the title and words of the book so that all they can see are the pictures. She then wants them to develop questions based on the pictures. For example, "I wonder why there is a dog driving a car?" The "learning buddies" discuss this with each other and then she chooses a few to share. Her lessons also include discussing what they think will happen based just on the pictures. The next step is to go back and read the story and ultimately answer the questions they developed.

Student-led Book Clubs

Julie is a former second grade educator and current district instructional coach for teachers. Her suggestion is to create Book Clubs that are student led. She recommends using open ended discussion task cards. In her model, she never assigned roles but just established rules or guidelines. Julie says that "everyone participates and everyone gets to lead the discussion."

Gia is currently a veteran first grade teacher but has taught other grades including third. While in third grade she found using a "jigsaw" activity for reading a selection. This is when you give each learner a part or section to read and they write a short summary or the gist. Each person then presents their part to the group.

An essential question to guide the discussion

Kathy is a twenty five year seasoned teacher and a new teacher mentor. She has been teaching fourth grade for the past twenty years and provides general recommendations for improving reading comprehension. Kathy starts with building background knowledge, visualizing and making connections with the selection. Often she starts with an essential question to guide the discussion and it helps her assess their prior knowledge. As they read through the selection, she stops at certain main points of the story and the class shares with partners what scene they can visualize. She says, "Most kids have similar answers for this activity and this helps English learners get the gist better." After a couple of days on the story and using a journal and having many discussions, they use a graphic organizer for the learners to give more input to the original essential question. She finds that this is effective because they have now grasped more ideas and specific knowledge to the topic.

Literature Circles

Heather is a fourth year teacher who has taught the Read 180 program, third grade, and currently fifth grade. She strongly recommends using Literature Circles. The traditional Literature Circles is when students take on various roles (Discussion Director, Literary Luminary, Connector, etc.) to discuss and understand a topic or specific reading selections. Heather provides a worksheet for them to follow along with their group. They can gather vocabulary information along with answering comprehension questions. There is a built-in "check in" with the teacher at specific intervals. She explains that Literature Circles are "Super simple, but super effective."

Reading activities to use at home

Parents are an integral part of a child's education, especially because they are the child's first teacher! Getting their perspective and advice is always welcomed.

Cathleen is a mother of two girls who are both in college. When her youngest daughter was in elementary school, Cathleen struggled to find ways to motivate her daughter to read. After unsuccessful attempts to bribe her, the video game "Rockband" came out. Cathleen explains, "We always made her the singer. She would have to read the lyrics quickly to keep up." The daughter's teacher was ok with this and "so 'Rockband' was played in excess at our house."

Reading recipes

Michelle has several kids but her oldest was her most challenging to get to read and comprehend what was read. She decided to homeschool him. Neil had multiple challenges including ADHD, dyslexia and possibly on the autism spectrum. Michelle recalls, "The trick that finally helped him was cooking, which was part of his daily homeschooling routine." She used the recipes to get him to read and reread each step. The key was then putting each step into practice which was an enjoyable activity for him. Michelle also used the comic book "Calvin and Hobbes" to motivate and build his reading comprehension. The pictures really helped and, of course, made reading fun! She concludes with, "Several years later Neil went to high school reading at grade level. He still enjoys reading to this day."

Back to the Bottom Line

When planning Reading Comprehension activities, it is about finding what works best for your scholars. That only comes with spending time with each of them to find out their needs and interests.

Cori Orlando is an Instructional Services Specialist in her district and a blogger. In her blog post When You Know Better - Reading Edition , she writes, "we should spend time with students individually-listen to them read, talk to them about their reading and use that information to move them forward." Of course the challenge in every classroom is finding time. Cori continues, "We need to create the time. If we have students working on engaging and empowering collaborative activities, it frees us up to sit with kids. To talk with kids. This doesn't need to be long: 3-5 minutes can make all the difference!"

Choosing a Reading Comprehension activity that is engaging, effective and often fun is easier with any one of these recommendations. Using ReadTheory to support each learner's reading adds to their progress and provides real time data to see if the lessons and activities are working. ReadTheory data will document areas of success and challenges which in turn provides you as the educator to focus on which skills need more instruction.

Even if one activity doesn't work, there are so many others to try or even adjust to meet the needs of your scholar. The bottom line is to use what they enjoy to help them learn! My father would be so proud.

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Reading Comprehension Activities for K-12

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Ask anyone about engaging and effective Reading Comprehension activities and you will get a myriad of replies and suggestions. I know, because I asked! I asked educators and non-educators to send me either activities they used or remember being used when they were students. The good news, there are countless recommendations!

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The goal of reading is to take what you read and make sense of it all.

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Reading Worksheets, Spelling, Grammar, Comprehension, Lesson Plans

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Imagine your employer has just handed you an important document to read and tells you he expects a summary of the material on his desk by tomorrow. You take a look and see it is written in a language totally foreign to you. After your initial confusion, you may try to make some sense of it and scan the document. While you may be able to phonetically decipher the words and sound them out, that's where your "reading" would end. You wouldn't have any idea what the words you just read actually meant. How would you feel? Upset? Discouraged?

The goal of reading is to derive meaning

Obviously, this is an extreme example but sadly, classrooms across the nation are interspersed with students who experience the same type of frustration every day. They don't possess adequate reading comprehension skills to do what is expected of them. Without comprehension, reading is simply following words on a page from left to right while sounding them out. The words on the page have no meaning. And while people read for many different reasons, the chief goal is to derive some understanding of what the writer is trying to convey and make use of that information - whether for fact gathering, learning a new skill, or for pleasure. That's why reading comprehension skills are so important. Without them the reader cannot gather any information and use it to efficiently function and enjoy the richness of life.

Reading is a multifaceted process that develops only with practice. There are certain aspects of reading, such as fluency and word recognition, which can be learned in a few years. These basics must be mastered but at the same time reading comprehension should be emphasized in the process. Students can parrot words on a page all day long but if they don't have the necessary comprehension skills they will not be able to make predictions about what will happen next, monitor their understanding of content, sequence or characters, clarify confusing parts of the text, or connect what they're reading to their own experience or prior knowledge. And that is what true comprehension is all about.

The dangers of functional illiteracy

There is a term known as functional illiteracy that has been discussed in academic and political circles for some time. The term basically describes reading and writing skills that make it very difficult to manage daily living and work in an environment that requires reading beyond the most elementary level. People with such skills may not be purely illiterate, meaning they can read and write in some capacity, but their reading comprehension level is so low they can't manage the every day aspects of life.

The lack of strong reading comprehension skills obviously affects a student's success in school. Academic progress depends on understanding, analyzing, and applying the information gathered through reading. But it goes much further than that. Poor reading comprehension skills have been also been linked to poverty and crime. Consider these facts:

Over 60% of inmates in the U.S prison system have reading skills at or below the fourth grade level.

85% of U.S juveniles in prison are functionally illiterate.

43% set of adults with extremely low reading skills live at or below the poverty line.

And even more alarming:

Nearly 2/3 of students who reach the fourth grade without proficient reading skills end up on welfare or in prison.

While these statistics are not meant to shock you, they do send a message that is loud and clear: developing strong reading comprehension skills is essential for a rich academic, professional, and personal life. Imagine trying to survive and thrive in a society where you couldn't comprehend the basic meaning of your cable bill, your mortgage agreement, or how to follow road signs. Even worse, imagine not being able to read the label on a bottle of medicine or a container of dangerous chemicals. Living safely and productively is only one of the many outcomes of proper reading comprehension skills. Being able to derive meaning from the written word also enables students to develop intellectually, socially, and emotionally - something we all want for our children.

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Imagine your employer has just handed you an important document to read and tells you he expects a summary of the material on his desk by tomorrow. You take a look and see it is written in a language totally foreign to you.

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A fun and creative strategy for practicing vocabulary words.

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Word Painting Using a Musical Technique to Enhance Vocabulary.pdf

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Fab Four Reading Comprehension Strategies

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Fab Four Reading Comprehension Strategies

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Four evidence based reading comprehension strategies that can be used in the virtual and in-person setting.

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The Fab Four Strategies Digital Tools.pdf

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A list of reading fluency strategies for upper elementary or middle school students.

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Reading fluency gets a lot of attention in the primary grades. Unfortunately, students in grades 4-8 who still struggle with fluency don't get the attention they need. Many of these students need explicit instruction and meaningful practice for fluency in order to become competent readers.
It's not easy for teachers who work with older students to fit fluency practice into their already tight schedules. Here are a few fluency activities that you can easily work into your day.

Audio-Assisted Reading

This is such an effective way for improving word recognition, as well as building proper phrasing and expression. This is also a great strategy to use in content areas such as science and social studies; often times, publishers include the audio version of the textbook for teachers to use. You can also record your own audio-versions of Audio-assisted reading is when you have a student follow along in a text while listening to an audio recording ( audio CD, audio book, or iPod). After the student gains confidence using the audio version, he/she can then transition to reading the text independently.

close reading passages or short stories for your students to use. If you're doing a novel study, check your public library for audio CDs for the title you are using. You can also make a listening center in your classroom using jack extenders, so that multiple students can read along at the same time.

Poetry Performances

Holding "poetry slams" is a perfect disguise for fluency practice. Find relatively long poems (haiku's might not be the best choice:-) from your favorite authors that are age-appropriate for your students. I love using work from There are several free resources if you're looking for scripts. Shel Silverstein or Jack Prelutsky for younger students. If you teach middle school students you may want to look into poems by Langston Hughes or Edgar Alan Poe. Poetry offers smaller, non-threatening text for students to work with, and more reluctant readers may be more motivated by the creativity and playfulness that the genre offers. The assonance and alliteration of poetry also make this medium perfect for fluency practice.
Gather a large selection of poems and have your students choose one they would like to practice and eventually "perform". Performances can take the place as simple readings in front of the class, in a small group, or with a partner. Students can also make a PowerPoint presentation that they narrate by reading the poem. Presenting options are endless; the most important thing is to get them reading and rereading the poem in order to improve fluency. Readers' Theater

Students LOVE readers' theater. They get so excited by the idea of performing in a play, even though this activity does not require students to memorize any text. Unlike a real play, there are no costumes, props, or sets needed. Dr. Chase Young has written several for younger students, and Aaron Shepard has some great scripts for older students. You can also write your own scripts, or even have your students write their own, based on picture books or a chapter from a novel. BONUS: Aaron Shepard's site has a video of The Chamber Readers reading one of his scripts; what a perfect way to provide a model for your students!

Partner Reading

This strategy pairs two readers together with the same piece of text. You can pair your students by listing your class in order from highest to lowest according to reading ability. Then divide the list in half. Place the top student on the first list with the top student in the second list. Continue until all students have been paired up.
Students in the pairs will take turns reading the text, by dividing it into paragraphs, subheadings, pages, etc. The students can also read the text simultaneously (choral reading). I really like this strategy for reading within science and social studies books, which can be particularly difficult for students. However, you can use parter reading for any text.

Timed Readings

I have several sets of close reading passages that include a format for timed reading with step-by-step instructions Timed readings are a systematic way for students to work on fluency, and it offers a great opportunity for students to monitor their own progress. Students are given a passage they have never read before. They will complete a "cold reading", where they read for exactly one minute. The total words read (minus certain errors) are counted and this is their "cold score", which they graph on a chart. They then practice reading the passage and have opportunities to listen to it read by a fluent model. Following practice and modeling, the students will then complete a "hot reading", which is another one-minute session. Again, they count the total words read (minus miscues) to find their "hot score". Their hot scores are then graphed above their cold scores.
HERE.

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Reading Fluency Activities for Older Students

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Reading fluency gets a lot of attention in the primary grades. Unfortunately, students in grades 4-8 who still struggle with fluency don't get the attention they need. Many of these students need explicit instruction and meaningful practice for fluency in order to become competent readers.

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Co-teachers use inference and modeling during interactive read aloud to help students comprehend the story.

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Teacher Read-Aloud That Models Reading for Deep Understanding

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Teacher models reading fluency and then leads class with echo reading with appropriate phrasing and accuracy.

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How to Teach Fluency  with Accuracy and Phrasing

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Making meaning of vocab words. Teacher models introducing vocab, teaching meaning and making sense of words.