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Learn the definitions of phonological awareness and phonemic awareness - and how these pre-reading listening skills relate to phonics.

Letter of completion

After completing this module and successfully answering the post-test questions, you'll be able to download a Letter of Completion.

Phonological awareness and phonemic awareness: what's the difference?

Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize and manipulate the spoken parts of sentences and words. Examples include being able to identify words that rhyme, recognizing alliteration, segmenting a sentence into words, identifying the syllables in a word, and blending and segmenting onset-rimes. The most sophisticated - and last to develop - is called phonemic awareness.

Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. This includes blending sounds into words, segmenting words into sounds, and deleting and playing with the sounds in spoken words.

Phonological awareness (PA) involves a continuum of skills that develop over time and that are crucial for reading and spelling success, because they are central to learning to decode and spell printed words. Phonological awareness is especially important at the earliest stages of reading development - in pre-school, kindergarten, and first grade for typical readers.

Explicit teaching of phonological awareness in these early years can eliminate future reading problems for many students. However, struggling decoders of any age can work on phonological awareness, especially if they evidence problems in blending or segmenting phonemes.

How about phonological awareness and phonics?

Phonological awareness refers to a global awareness of sounds in spoken words, as well as the ability to manipulate those sounds.

Phonics refers to knowledge of letter sounds and the ability to apply that knowledge in decoding unfamiliar printed words.

So, phonological awareness refers to oral language and phonics refers to print. Both of these skills are very important and tend to interact in reading development, but they are distinct skills; children can have weaknesses in one of them but not the other.

For example, a child who knows letter sounds but cannot blend the sounds to form the whole word has a phonological awareness (specifically, a phonemic awareness) problem. Conversely, a child who can orally blend sounds with ease but mixes up vowel letter sounds, reading pit for pet and set for sit, has a phonics problem.

44 phonemes

There are 26 letters in the English alphabet that make up 44 speech sounds, or phonemes.

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Learn the definitions of phonological awareness and phonemic awareness - and how these pre-reading listening skills relate to phonics. Letter of completion After completing this module and successfully answering the post-test questions, you'll be able to download a Letter of Completion. Phonological awareness and phonemic awareness: what's the difference?

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Phonics is the relationship between letters and sounds. Phonemic awareness , decoding, and spelling are part of phonics (Hollihan- Allen and McKnight, 2018).

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Fluent readers read quickly, accurately, and effortlessly. Fluency is driven by phonological awareness, decoding and vocabulary. In turn, fluency drives comprehension (Hollihan- Allen and McKnight, 2018).

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Words are fundamental to language use, including listening, speaking, reading and writing. A wide vocabulary is an essential component of comprehension and cognition (Hinchman and Sheridan-Thomas, 2014).
Morphology is the study of how words are formed. Understanding these nuances can make the difference for many struggling readers and writers (Hinchman and Sheridan-Thomas, 2014).
We  must give readers the tools they need to make up their mind about unknown words without our help and input (Hollihan- Allen and McKnight, 2018).

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Ownership/ Choice
Purpose/ Relevance
Success
Collaboration/ Social
Preferred Modality
Mastery of Content

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Supporting adolescent comprehension is tricky. They want to know why they need to learn something. Setting a purpose for learning and modeling your own thinking are two important teacher centered strategies that also link with motivation (Hollihan- Allen and McKnight, 2018).

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This article defines phonological awareness and discusses historic and contemporary research findings regarding its relation to early reading. Common misconceptions about phonological awareness are addressed. Research-based guidelines for teaching phonological awareness and phonemic awareness to all children are described. Additional instructional design guidelines are offered for teaching children with learning disabilities who are experiencing difficulties with early reading. Considerations for assessing children's phonological awareness are discussed, and descriptions of available measures are provided.

Row, row, row your boat
gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily;
Life is but a dream

Bow, bow, bow your boat
bently bown the beam.
Berrily, berrily, berrily, berrily;
Bife is but a beam.

Sow, sow, sow your soat
sently sown the seam.
Serrily, serrily, serrily, serrily;
Sife is sut a seam.

Activities like substituting different sounds for the first sound of a familiar song can help children develop phonological awareness, a cognitive substrate to reading acquisition. Becoming phonologically aware prepares children for later reading instruction, including instruction in phonics, word analysis, and spelling (Adams, Foorman, Lundberg, & Beeler, 1998; Chard, Simmons, & Kameenui, 1998). The most common barrier to learning early word reading skills is the inability to process language phonologically (Liberman, Shankweiler, & Liberman, 1989). Moreover, developments in research and understanding have revealed that this weakness in phonological processing most often hinders early reading development for both students with and without disabilities (Fletcher et al., 1994).

No area of reading research has gained as much attention over the past two decades as phonological awareness. Perhaps the most exciting finding emanating from research on phonological awareness is that critical levels of phonological awareness can be developed through carefully planned instruction, and this development has a significant influence on children's reading and spelling achievement (Ball & Blachman, 1991; Bradley & Bryant, 1985; Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1989, 1991; O'Connor, Jenkins, Leicester, & Slocum, 1993). Despite the promising findings, however, many questions remain unanswered, and many misconceptions about phonological awareness persist. For example, researchers are looking for ways to determine how much and what type of instruction is necessary and for whom. Moreover, many people do not understand the difference between phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and phonics. Still others are uncertain about the relationship between phonological awareness and early reading.

The purposes of this article are to (a) clarify some of the salient findings from research on phonological awareness and reading and (b) translate those findings into practical information for teachers of children with learning disabilities or children who are experiencing delays in early reading. To this end, we answer three questions:

1. What is phonological awareness, and why is it important to beginning reading success?

2. What are documented effective principles that should guide phonological awareness instruction?

3. What principles should guide the assessment of phonological awareness?

What is phonological awareness?

Phonological awareness is the understanding of different ways that oral language can be divided into smaller components and manipulated. Spoken language can be broken down in many different ways, including sentences into words and words into syllables (e. g., in the word simple, /sim/ and /ple/), onset and rime (e. g., in the word broom, /br/ and /oom/), and individual phonemes (e.g., in the word hamper, /h/, /a/, /m/, /p/, /er/). Manipulating sounds includes deleting, adding, or substituting syllables or sounds (e.g., say can; say it without the /k/; say can with /m/ instead of /k/). Being phonologically aware means having a general understanding at all of these levels.

Figure 1. A continuum of complexity of phonological awareness activities

Operationally, skills that represent children's phonological awareness lie on a continuum of complexity (see Figure 1). At the less complex end of the continuum are activities such as initial rhyming and rhyming songs as well as sentence segmentation that demonstrates an awareness that speech can be broken down into individual words. At the center of the continuum are activities related to segmenting words into syllables and blending syllables into words. Next are activities such as segmenting words into onsets and rimes and blending onsets and rimes into words.

Finally, the most sophisticated level of phonological awareness is phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that words are made up of individual sounds or phonemes and the ability to manipulate these phonemes either by segmenting, blending, or changing individual phonemes within words to create new words. The recent National Research Council report on reading distinguishes phonological awareness from phonemic awareness in this way:

The term phonological awareness refers to a general appreciation of the sounds of speech as distinct from their meaning. When that insight includes an understanding that words can he divided into a sequence of phonemes, this finer-grained sensitivity is termed phonemic awareness. (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998, p. 51)

Throughout this article we will use the term phonological awareness to mean an awareness at all levels from basic rhyme to phonemic awareness. Only in some specific instances will we use the term phonemic awareness.

At this point, it is important to note that phonological awareness differs distinctly from phonics. Phonological awareness involves the auditory and oral manipulation of sounds. Phonics is the association of letters and sounds to sound out written symbols (Snider, 1995); it is a system of teaching reading that builds on the alphabetic principle, a system of which a central component is the teaching of correspondences between letters or groups of letters and their pronunciations (Adams, 1990). Phonological awareness and phonics are intimately intertwined, but they are not the same. This relationship will be further described in the following section.

Children generally begin to show initial phonological awareness when they demonstrate an appreciation of rhyme and alliteration. For many children, this begins very early in the course of their language development and is likely facilitated by being read to from books that are based on rhyme or alliteration, such as the B Book by Stanley and Janice Berenstain, 1997, or Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg, 1979, (Bryant, MacLean, Bradley, & Crossland, 1990). As children grow older, however, their basic phonological awareness does not necessarily develop into the more sophisticated phonemic awareness. In fact, developing the more complex phonemic awareness is difficult for most children and very difficult for some children (Adams et al., 1996). However, it is a child's phonemic awareness on entering school that is most closely related to success in learning to read (Adams, 1990; Stanovich, 1986).

Why is phonological awareness so important?

An awareness of phonemes is necessary to grasp the alphabetic principle that underlies our system of written language. Specifically, developing readers must be sensitive to the internal structure of words in order to benefit from formal reading instruction (Adams, 1990; Liberman, Shankweiler, Fischer, & Carter, 1974). If children understand that words can be divided into individual phonemes and that phonemes can be blended into words, they are able to use letter-sound knowledge to read and build words. As a consequence of this relationship, phonological awareness in kindergarten is a strong predictor of later reading success (Ehri & Wilce, 1980, 1985; Liberman et al., 1974; Perfetti, Beck, Bell, & Hughes, 1987). Researchers have shown that this strong relationship between phonological awareness and reading success persists throughout school (Calfee, Lindamood, & Lindamood, 1973; Shankweiler et al., 1995).

Over the past 2 decades, researchers have focused primarily on the contribution of phonological awareness to reading acquisition. However, the relationship between phonological awareness and reading is not unidirectional but reciprocal in nature (Stanovich, 1986). Early reading is dependent on having some understanding of the internal structure of words, and explicit instruction in phonological awareness skills is very effective in promoting early reading. However, instruction in early reading-specifically, explicit instruction in letter-sound correspondence appears to strengthen phonological awareness, and in particular the more sophisticated phonemic awareness (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998).

Many children with learning disabilities demonstrate difficulties with phonological awareness skills (Shaywitz, 1996). However, many other children have such difficulty without displaying other characteristics of learning disabilities. Although a lack of phonemic awareness correlates with difficulty in acquiring reading skills, this lack should not necessarily be misconstrued as a disability (Fletcher et al., 1994). More important, children who lack phonemic awareness can be identified, and many of them improve their phonemic awareness with instruction. Furthermore, although explicit instruction in phonological awareness is likely to improve early reading for children who lack phonemic awareness, most children with or without disabilities are likely to benefit from such instruction (R. E. O'Connor, personal communication, June 2, 1998).

In short, success in early reading depends on achieving a certain level of phonological awareness. Moreover, instruction in phonological awareness is beneficial for most children and seems to be critical for others, but the degree of explicitness and the systematic nature of instruction may need to vary according to the learner's skills (Smith, Simmons, & Kameenui, 1998), especially for students at risk for reading difficulties. With this in mind, we discuss documented approaches to teaching phonological awareness.

Teaching phonological awareness

There is ample evidence that phonological awareness training is beneficial for beginning readers starting as early as age 4 (e.g., Bradley & Bryant, 1985; Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1991). In a review of phonological research, Smith et al. (1998) concluded that phonological awareness can be developed before reading and that it facilitates the subsequent acquisition of reading skills. Documented effective approaches to teaching phonological awareness generally include activities that are age appropriate and highly engaging. Instruction for 4-year-olds involves rhyming activities, whereas kindergarten and first-grade instruction includes blending and segmenting of words into onset and rime, ultimately advancing to blending, segmenting, and deleting phonemes. This pattern of instruction follows the continuum of complexity illustrated in Figure 1. Instruction frequently involves puppets who talk slowly to model word segmenting or magic bridges that are crossed when children say the correct word achieved by synthesizing isolated phonemes. Props such as colored cards or pictures can be used to make abstract sounds more concrete. During the last few years, publishers have produced multiple programs in phonological awareness, some of which are based on research. Two of these programs are Ladders to Literacy (O'Connor, Notari-Syverson, & Vadasy, 1998) and Teaching Phonemic Awareness (Adams et al., 1996). Figures 2 through 4 are illustrations of phonemic awareness lessons that are based on examples from these programs.

Figure 2. Instructional activity that teaches synthesis of phonemes into words.

Guess-the-word game

Objective: Students will be able to blend and identify a word that is stretched out into its component sounds.

Materials Needed: Picture cards of objects that students are likely to recognize such as: sun, bell, fan, flag, snake, tree, book, cup, clock, plane

Activity: Place a small number of picture cards in front of children. Tell them you are going to say a word using "Snail Talk" a slow way of saying words (e.g., /fffffllllaaaag/). They have to look at the pictures and guess the word you are saying. It is important to have the children guess the answer in their head so that everyone gets an opportunity to try it. Alternate between having one child identify the word and having all children say the word aloud in chorus to keep children engaged.

Figure 3. An Instructional activity that teaches segmentation at multiple phonological levels.

Segmentation activities

Objectives: Students will be able to segment various parts of oral language.

Activity:

1. Early in phonological awareness instruction, teach children to segment sentences into individual words. Identify familiar short poems such as "I scream you scream we all scream for ice cream!" Have children clap their hands with each word.

2. As children advance in their ability to manipulate oral language, teach them to segment words into syllables or onsets and rimes. For example, have children segment their names into syllables: e.g., Ra-chel, Al-ex-an-der, and Rod-ney.

3. When children have learned to remove the first phoneme (sound) of a word, teach them to segment short words into individual phonemes: e.g., s-u-n, p-a-t, s-t-o-p.

Figure 4. An instructional activity that teaches phoneme deletion and substitution.

Change-a-name game

Objective: Students will be able to recognize words when the teacher says the word with the first sound removed.

Activity: Have students sit in a circle on the floor. Secretly select one child and change their name by removing the first sound of the name. For example, change Jennifer to Ennifer or change William to Illiam. As you change the name, the children have to identify who you are talking about.

Extension Ideas: As children become better at identifying the child's name without the first sound, encourage them to try removing the beginning sounds of words and pronounce the words on their own.

After children learn how to remove sounds, teach them to substitute the beginning sound in their name with a new sound. The teacher can model this, beginning with easier sounds (common sounds of consonant s, e.g., /m/, /t/, /p/) and advancing to more complex sounds and sound blends (e.g., /ch/, /st/).

Most early phonological awareness activities are taught in the absence of print, but there is increasing evidence that early writing activities, including spelling words as they sound (i.e., invented or temporary spelling), appear to promote more refined phonemic awareness (Ehri, 1998; Treiman, 1993). It may be that during spelling and writing activities children begin to combine their phonological sensitivity and print knowledge and apply them to building words. Even if children are unable to hold and use a pen or pencil, they can use letter tiles or word processing programs to practice their spelling.

Instruction in phonological awareness can be fun, engaging, and age appropriate, but the picture is not as simple as it seems. First, evidence suggests that instruction in the less complex phonological skills such as rhyming or onset and rime may facilitate instruction in more complex skills (Snider, 1995) without directly benefiting reading acquisition (Gough, 1998). Rather, integrated instruction in segmenting and blending seems to provide the greatest benefit to reading acquisition (e.g., Snider, 1995). Second, although most children appear to benefit from instruction in phonological awareness, in some studies there are students who respond poorly to this instruction or fail to respond at all. For example, in one training study that provided 8 weeks of instruction in phonemic awareness, the majority of children demonstrated significant growth, whereas 30% of the at-risk students demonstrated no measurable growth in phonological awareness (Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1994). Similarly, in a 12-week training in blending and segmenting for small groups (3-4 children) in 2-minute sessions four times a week, about 30% of the children still obtained very low scores on the segmenting posttest and 10 % showed only small improvements on the blending measures (Torgesen et al., 1994).

Torgesen et al. (1994) concluded that training for at-risk children must be more explicit or more intense than what is typically described in the research literature if it is to have a substantial impact on the phonological awareness of many children with severe reading disabilities. Therefore, we recommend two tiers of instruction. The first tier of instruction is the highly engaging, age-appropriate instruction that we introduced earlier. The second tier of instruction includes more intensive and strategic instruction in segmenting and blending at the phoneme level (e.g., Snider, 1995).

Beside content, another issue that requires attention in phonological awareness instruction is curriculum design. From research, we are able to deduce principles for effectively designing phonological awareness instruction. These design principles apply for all students but are particularly important for students who respond poorly to instruction. In the design of phonological awareness instruction, the following general principles increase students' success (Chard & Osborn, 1998):

Start with continuous sounds such as /s/, /m/, and /f/ that are easier to pronounce than stop sounds such as /p/, /b/, and /k/;

Carefully model each activity as it is first introduced;

Move from larger units (words, onset-rime) to smaller units (individual phonemes);

Move from easier tasks (e.g., rhyming) to more complex tasks (e.g., blending and segmenting); and,

Consider using additional strategies to help struggling early readers manipulate sounds. These strategies may include using concrete objects (e.g., blocks, bingo chips) to represent sounds.

Research suggests that by the end of kindergarten children should be able to demonstrate phonemic blending and segmentation and to make progress in using sounds to spell simple words. Achieving these goals requires that teachers be knowledgeable about effective instructional approaches to teaching phonological awareness and be aware of the ongoing progress for each of their students. In the next section, we describe effective ways to assess phonological skills and monitor progress in phonological awareness.

Assessing phonological awareness

Assessment in phonological awareness serves essentially two purposes: to initially identify students who appear to be at risk for difficulty in acquiring beginning reading skills and to regularly monitor the progress of students who are receiving instruction in phonological awareness. The measures used to identify at-risk students must be strongly predictive of future reading ability and separate low and high performers. Measures used for monitoring progress must be sensitive to change and have alternate forms (Kaminski & Good, 1996). In this section, we discuss only measures that have been demonstrated to be valid and reliable. We report the technical adequacy of the measures in the Appendix, rather than in the narrative description of the measure.

As stated earlier, screening measures must be strongly predictive of future reading ability and must separate high from low performers. Measures of automatized color, object, number, or letter naming meet these criteria (Torgesen, Wagner, Rashotte, Burgess, & Hecht, 1997; Wolf, 1991). Segmentation is a second skill that is highly predictive of future reading ability (e.g., Nation & Hulme, 1997; Torgesen et al., 1994; Vellutino & Scanlon, 1987; Yopp, 1988). Unlike rapid naming, segmentation is a skill that can be taught, and the instruction of segmentation benefits reading acquisition.

Screening measures must also separate high from low performers. This means that they must address skills that are developmentally appropriate. Phonological awareness skills seem to develop along a continuum from rhyme to segmenting. Typically, students develop the ability to segment words into onset and rime during kindergarten and to segment words into separate phonemes between kindergarten and first grade. Therefore, most first-grade students perform well on an onset-rime measure, whereas most kindergarten students do poorly on a measure of segmenting into individual sounds. In either case it is difficult to separate low and high performers. Although we know a great deal about identifying students at risk for reading difficulties, many questions remain unanswered. We recommend that teachers use a variety of screening measures, including one that measures automatized rapid naming and one that measures phonemic awareness sensitivity or segmenting.

Typically, kindergarten students are screened for risk factors in acquiring beginning reading skills in the second semester of kindergarten. Appropriate screening measures for the second semester of kindergarten include measures that are strong predictors of a student's successful response to explicit phonemic awareness instruction or beginning reading acquisition. Such predictors of successful response to segmenting and blending instruction are the Test of Phonological Awareness-Kindergarten (TOPA-K; Torgesen & Bryant, 1993), a Nonword Spelling measure (Torgesen & Davis, 1996), and the Digit Naming Rate (Torgesen & Davis, 1996). Predictors of the successful acquisition of beginning reading skills include automatized naming of colors, objects, numbers, or letters (e.g., Wolf, 1991) and segmenting ability (e.g., Nation & Hulme, 1997; Torgesen et al., 1994; Vellutino & Scanlon, 1987; Yopp, 1988). Other measures used during the second semester of kindergarten to identify students at risk for not acquiring beginning reading skills include measures of phoneme deletion.

The measures appropriate for identifying first-grade students at risk for not acquiring reading skills overlap those used in kindergarten. The TOPA-K and onset-rime are no longer appropriate, as students should have developed these skills by the end of kindergarten, whereas segmenting is still an emerging skill. However, tasks such as automatized naming of colors, objects, numbers, or letters remain predictors for students at risk for not acquiring beginning reading skills, as do measures to determine whether students lag behind their peers in phonological awareness, such as measures of segmenting.

When using screening measures, the teacher must establish decision rules for identifying students requiring phonological awareness instruction. The decision rules vary. The TOPA-K has normed scores and provides information to help a teacher decide whether to provide phonemic awareness instruction to students who score one or two standard deviations below the mean. However, there is little research evidence to guide decision making about which children should receive the more intensive phonological awareness instruction.

A second use of measures is to monitor students' progress. Unlike the screening measures, progress-monitoring measures must be sensitive to growth and require multiple forms. The Dynamic Indicators of Early Literacy (Kaminski & Good, 1996) fit this requirement and are appropriate for kindergarten and first grade. After the first semester of first grade, teachers may also be interested in monitoring their students' progress in generalizing phonemic awareness to reading and spelling. Two other measures of reading that are sensitive to growth and have alternative forms are oral reading fluency (tasks) and nonsense word reading fluency (Tindal & Marston, 1990).

As with screening measures, teachers must establish decision rules about how to gauge the progress of their students. One way is to establish a baseline by graphing three measurement points before the start of instruction, adding each subsequent data point to the graph, and checking the slope of students' progress. If many students are making slower progress than necessary to reach the level of their average-achieving peers, the teacher can modify the instruction by increasing one or more of the elements in the instructional guidelines. For example, if students are not acquiring segmenting, the teacher may decide to add more scaffolds, such as cards that the students can move as they segment words, thereby making segmenting instruction more explicit, or provide students with more guided practice. If most students successfully respond to instruction but a few respond poorly or not at all, the teacher may decide to place these students in a flexible group to receive more intense instruction. The teacher could also choose to provide some individuals with more intense instruction throughout the day to keep them up with their peers. If the progress-monitoring measures indicate that the first-grade students receiving instruction in phonological awareness lag behind their peers in reading or spelling, the teacher may choose to increase the integrated instruction in letter- sound correspondence and to make stronger the links between segmenting and blending skills and reading. Brief descriptions of the screening and monitoring measures that have demonstrated validity and reliability through research follow. For each measure, we indicate the grade and purpose for which the measure is appropriate. Note that some measures are appropriate for more than one grade level and for both screening and monitoring progress.

Test of phonological awareness- kindergarten

(Second Half of Kindergarten; Screen). This measure of phonemic sensitivity strongly predicts which students will demonstrate high segmenting ability following small-group instruction in phonemic awareness (Torgesen & Davis, 1996). The measure consists of one form with 10 items requiring students to indicate which of three words (represented by pictures) have the same first sound as a target word and 10 items that require students to indicate which of four words (represented by pictures) begins with a different first sound than the other three. The measure is administered to small groups of 6 to 10 children and is untimed. Students receive raw scores that are normed.

Nonword spelling

(Second Half of Kindergarten; Screen). This measure strongly predicts which kindergarten students will demonstrate growth in blending and segmenting after small-group phonological awareness instruction. Five nonwords (feg, rit, mub, gof, pid) comprise the measure. Students receive one point for each phoneme that they represent correctly in the spelling.

Digit naming rate

(Second Half of Kindergarten; Screen). This measure strongly predicts which kindergarten students are likely to demonstrate growth in blending after small-group phonological awareness instruction. The measure consists of six rows with five single digits per row on an 8 " x 11 " card. The students are timed as they name the digits as fast as they can, beginning at the top and continuing to the bottom. Students complete two trials using cards with differently arranged numbers. The score is based on the average time for the two series.

Yopp-SingerTest of phoneme segmentation

(Second Half of Kindergarten, First Grade; Screen). This test (Yopp, 1995) consists of 22 items and requires students to separately articulate each phoneme in the presented words. The student receives credit only if all sounds in a word are presented correctly. The student does not receive partial credit for saying /c/ or /c/ /at/ for cat. One feature that differentiates this screening measure from others is that students receive feedback after each response. If the child's response is correct, the test administrator says, "That's right." If the student gives an incorrect response, the examiner tells the student the correct response. Moreover, if the student gives an incorrect response, the examiner writes the error. Recording the errors helps the teacher decide what remediation the student requires. The student's score is the number of items correctly segmented into individual phonemes. The test is administered individually and requires about 5 to 10 minutes per child.

Bruce test of phoneme deletion

(Second Half of Kindergarten; Screen). The Bruce (1964) test assesses phoneme deletion, a more difficult and compound skill than segmenting (Yopp, 1995). The measure consists of 30 one- to three-syllable words drawn from words familiar to children between the ages of 5 and 61/2. The examiner asks students to delete one phoneme from the beginning, middle, or end of a word and to say the word that remains. The positions of deleted phonemes are randomly ordered throughout the test. The test is individually administered and requires 10 minutes to administer.

Auditory analysis test

(Second Half of Kindergarten; Screen). This measure (Rosner & Simon, 1971, cited in MacDonald & Cornwall, 1995) consists of 40 items arranged in order of difficulty from deletion of syllables in compound words to deletion of syllables in multisyllabic words to deletion of phonemes in beginning, middle, and end positions. The teacher asks the student to delete a syllable or phoneme and say the word that is left. The measure is administered individually.

Rapid letter naming, dynamic indicators of basic early literacy skills

(Second Half of Kindergarten, First Grade; Screen). The Rapid Letter Naming, DIBELS (Kaminski & Good, 1996) is another of many measures used to assess the rapid letter-naming ability of students. The measure has 18 alternate forms and consists of 104 randomly selected upper- and lowercase letters presented on one page. The measure is given individually, and students have 1 minute to name as many letters as possible in the order that they appear on the page.

Phoneme segmentation fluency, DIBELS

(End of Kindergarten, First Grade; Screen, Monitor Progress). The Phoneme Segmentation Fluency, DIBELS (Kaminski & Good, 1996) is one of many segmenting measures. The measure has 18 alternate forms. Each form consists of 10 words, each with two or three phonemes, randomly selected from words in the pre-primer and primer levels of the Scribner basal reading series. The measure is administered individually and is timed. Unlike the Yopp-Singer Test, students do not receive feedback on their responses but do receive scores for partially correct answers. In other words, for cat, a student receives a score of 1 for saying /c/, a score of 2 for saying /c/ /at/, or a score of 3 for saying /c/ /a/ /t/. Because this measure assesses the number of correct phonemes per minute, it is sensitive to growth and is, therefore, appropriate for both screening and monitoring progress.

Conclusion

As we noted at the outset of this article, efforts to understand the role of phonological awareness have far exceeded the efforts to relate research findings to classroom practice regarding phonological awareness. This article is an attempt to pull together the valuable information available on the role that phonological awareness plays in early reading development, the research-based teaching strategies that address the needs of all children, the instructional design principles that address the needs of children experiencing delays in early reading development, and the validated instruments available for screening and monitoring students' progress in phonological awareness.

Our description of the role that phonological awareness plays in reading development conspicuously fails to address the connection of phonological awareness and spelling. This failure is not an oversight, nor should it be perceived as a statement of our beliefs regarding the importance of spelling. We firmly believe that findings from spelling research (e.g., Ehri, 1998; Templeton, 1995; Treiman, 1993) represent such a significant part of our knowledge base about reading that they would go far beyond the length and scope of this article.

Recent research on phonological awareness and phonemic awareness, including how to teach and assess them, has made an extremely valuable contribution to our understanding of how to teach reading to children with learning disabilities or delays in early reading. It is not, however, a cure for reading disabilities, but a significant advance in preventing and correcting reading difficulties so that more children are prepared to learn how to read in our alphabetic writing system.

About the authors

David J. Chard, PhD, is an assistant professor of special education at The University of Texas at Austin. His current interests include research in professional developmental in early reading and analysis of children's discourse in mathematics classrooms. Shirley V Dickson, PhD, is an assistant professor of special education at Northern Illinois University. Her interests are in research on phonological awareness and reading instruction and collaboration models in special education. Address: David J. Chard, University of Texas at Austin, Dept. of Special Education, SZB 408, Austin, TX 78712.

Appendix

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This article defines phonological awareness and discusses historic and contemporary research findings regarding its relation to early reading. Common misconceptions about phonological awareness are addressed. Research-based guidelines for teaching phonological awareness and phonemic awareness to all children are described. Additional instructional design guidelines are offered for teaching children with learning disabilities who are experiencing difficulties with early reading.

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Phonological Awareness for Older Students | Curriculum Review | Heggerty Bridge the Gap | Kilpatrick

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Phonics instruction teaches the relationships between the letters of written language and the sounds of spoken language. To read, children need to understand the alphabetic principle - the idea that letters represent the sounds of spoken language. Decoding is when we use letter-sound relationships to translate a printed word into speech.

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https://spiralwarmups.com/phoneme-grapheme-mapping/

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When kids and adults learn to read, they're connecting how words sound to how those sounds are represented by letters. Phonics instruction helps make those connections.

Phonics instruction also teaches spelling patterns and spelling rules. It teaches about parts of words called syllables. Learning common syllable patterns can help people become better readers and spellers.

To thrive in both reading and spelling, here are 15 important rules to know.

Every syllable of every word must have at least one vowel sound. A vowel can stand alone in a syllable, as in u●nit and an●i●mal. It can also be surrounded by consonants, as in jet, nap●kin, and fan●tas●tic.

Vowels can make different sounds. The sounds they make depend on where they are in a word. For example, is the vowel followed by a consonant? This helps determine if the vowel makes its short or long sound: go vs. got, she vs. shed, hi vs. him.

When there's only one vowel in a syllable and it is followed by at least one consonant, the vowel usually makes its short sound. Examples include on, itch, mas●cot, and Wis●con●sin. This pattern is called a "closed syllable" because the consonant "closes in" the short vowel sound.

When there is only one vowel and it is at the end of a syllable, the vowel makes its long sound, as in he and ban●jo. This pattern is called an "open syllable."

When e is the last letter in a word, and there's only one other vowel in that syllable, the first vowel in that syllable is usually long and the e is silent, as in sale and in●side. This syllable pattern is called "vowel-consonant-e."

Some teachers call this the "silent e" rule. Some call it the "magic e " rule. The e gives all its power to the other vowel and makes that vowel use its long sound ("say its name").

4. Consonant blends and digraphs

Digraph is a fancy word for two letters that represent one sound. In a digraph made of consonants, the two consonants work together to form a new sound. Examples include chap, ship, thin, whiz, and photo. Consonant blends are different. These groups of two or more consonants work together. But unlike digraphs, their individual sounds can still be heard as they're blended together. Examples include clam, gra sp, and scr ub.

In a vowel digraph, two vowels are side by side. The first vowel is long and says its name. The second vowel is silent, as in b oat, p aint, and b ea ch.

Sometimes, two vowels work together to form a new sound. This is called a diphthong. Examples include cl oud and b oi l.

When a syllable has a vowel that is followed by r, the vowel is "controlled" by the r and makes a new sound. Examples include car, bird, germ, form, and hurt. This rule is sometimes called "bossy r" because the r "bosses" the vowel to make a new sound.

Any vowel can make the schwa sound; it sounds like a weak uh or ih. Words like fr om and fin al have the schwa sound. Some words have more than one schwa sound, like apartm ent and b anan a. It's the most common sound in the English language.

When the letter c is followed by the vowels e, i, or y, it usually makes its soft sound. Examples of that are cent, circus, and cyclone. With other vowels, the letter c makes a hard sound, as in cat and co t.

Likewise, when the letter g is followed by the vowels e, i, or y, it usually makes its soft sound. Examples of that are gel, giant, and gym. With other vowels, the letter g makes a hard sound, as in gas, gorilla, and yo gu rt.

9. The "fszl" (fizzle) rule

The letters f, s, z, and l are usually doubled at the end of a one-syllable word immediately following a short vowel. Examples include st uff, gr ass, f uzz, and sh ell. Exceptions include qu iz and b us.

When a one-syllable word ends with the /k/ sound immediately following a short vowel, it's usually spelled with ck, as in d uck and tr ick. When the /k/ sound follows a consonant, long vowel sound, or diphthong, it's usually spelled with k, as in t ask, c ake, s oak, and h awk.

11. The /j/ sound and the /ch/ sound

In a one-syllable word, when a /j/ sound immediately follows a short vowel, it's spelled dge as in b adge, h edge, br idge, d odge, and sm udge. (The d "protects" the vowel from the "magic e " rule.)

In a one-syllable word, when a /ch/ sound immediately follows a short vowel, it's usually spelled tch as in c atch, f etch, st itch, bl otch, and cl utch. The exceptions to this rule are s uch, m uch, r ich, and wh ich.

When words end with a silent e, drop the e before adding - ing. Examples: bike/biking, give/giving, and dodge/dodging. This rule also applies to other suffixes that start with vowels, like - ed, - er, - able, and - ous. Examples: grieve/grievous, excite/excitable, and hope/hoped.

In a one-syllable word like win where one short vowel is followed by one consonant, double the consonant before adding a suffix that starts with a vowel. Examples: wi nner, wi nning, wi nn able.

For most words, add s to make them plural, as in cat/cat s. But when a singular word ends with s, sh, ch, x, or z, add es to make it plural, as in class es, brush es, and fox es.

To make plural a word that ends in a vowel immediately followed by y, just add s, as in toy/toy s. When y immediately follows a consonant, change the y to i and add es. Examples: family/famili es, pony/poni es, and treaty/treati es.

Suffixes follow a similar set of y rules. When there's a vowel right before y, keep the y and simply add the suffix. Examples include play/play ing and annoy/annoy ing.

When a word ends with a consonant followed immediately by y, change the y to i before adding suffixes like - ed and - est. Examples include carry/carri ed and happy/happi est.

But when the suffix begins with i, keep the y and simply add the suffix, as in fly/fly ing and baby/baby ish.

Most words in the English language follow phonics rules. But any exceptions to these rules need to be taught and memorized for reading and spelling. These words are often found on lists of sight words or high-frequency words.

About the Author

About the Author

Ginny Osewalt is a dually certified elementary and special education teacher with more than 15 years of experience in general education, inclusion, resource room, and self-contained settings.

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15 phonics rules for reading and spelling

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When kids and adults learn to read, they're connecting how words sound to how those sounds are represented by letters. Phonics instruction helps make those connections. Phonics instruction also teaches spelling patterns and spelling rules. It teaches about parts of words called syllables. Learning common syllable patterns can help people become better readers and spellers.

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August, D., M. Carlo, C. Dressler, and C. Snow. 2005. The critical role of vocabulary development for English language learners. Learning Disabilities: Research & Practice 20 (L), pp. 50-57.

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

Calderón, M., D. August, R. Slavin, D. Duran, N. Madden, and A. Cheung. 2005. Bring words to life in classrooms with English-language learners. In E.H. Hiebert and M.L. Kamil (eds.), Teaching and learning vocabulary: Bringing research to practice. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbraum.

Chall, J., and E. Dale 1995. Readability revisited: The new Dale-Chall readability formula. Brookline, MA: Brookline Books.

Cunningham, A.E. 2005. Vocabulary growth through independent reading and reading aloud to children. In E.H. Hiebert and M.L.Kamil (eds.), Teaching and learning vocabulary: Bringing research to practice. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbraum.

Cunningham, A.E., and K.E. Stanovich. 1998. What reading does for the mind. American Educator. 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. Mew York: Teachers College Press.

Kamil, M.L. 2004. Vocabulary and comprehension instruction: Summary and implications of the National Reading Panel finding. In P. McCardle and V. Chhabra (eds.), The voice of evidence in reading and research. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.

Kamil, M.L., and E.H. Hiebert. 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.

National Center for Educational Statistics. 2005. The condition of education. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.

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.

Schwartz, R.M., and T.E. Raphael. 1985. Concept of definition: A key to improving students' vocabulary. Reading Teacher 39, pp. 198-203.

Scott, J.A., and W.E. Nagy. 2004. Developing word consciousness. In J.F. Baumann and E.J. Kame'enui (eds.), Vocabulary instruction: Research to practice. New York: Guilford.

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.

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Consider some excellent lesson models for teaching vocabulary, explaining idioms, fostering word consciousness, instruction for English Language Learners, and mnemonic strategies.

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It's hard for students to read and understand a text if they don't know what the words mean. A solid vocabulary boosts reading comprehension for students of all ages. The more words students know, the better they understand the text. That's why effective vocabulary teaching is so important, especially for students who learn and think differently.

In this article, you'll learn how to explicitly teach vocabulary using easy-to-understand definitions, engaging activities, and repeated exposure. This strategy includes playing vocabulary games, incorporating visual supports like graphic organizers, and giving students the chance to see and use new words in real-world contexts.

The goal of this teaching strategy isn't just to increase your students' vocabulary. It's to make sure the words are meaningful and relevant to their lives.

Watch: See teaching vocabulary words in action

Watch this video of a kindergarten teacher teaching the word startled to her students:

Read: How to use this vocabulary words strategy

K-5 (CCSS ELA Literacy Anchor Standard L.4: Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases)

K-5 (CCSS ELA Literacy Anchor Standard R.4: Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text)

Before you dive in, it's helpful to know that vocabulary words can be grouped into three tiers:

Tier 1 words: These are the most frequently used words that appear in everyday speech. Students typically learn these words through oral language. Examples include dog, cat, happy, see, run, and go.

Tier 2 words: These words are used in many different contexts and subjects. Examples include interpret, assume, necessary, and analyze. The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium has a partial list of Tier 2 words, broken down by grade levels.

Tier 3 words: These are subject-specific words that are used in particular subject areas, such as peninsula in social studies and integer in math.

When choosing which vocabulary words to teach, you may want to pick words from Tier 2 because they're the most useful across all subject areas.

Come up with student-friendly definitions. Find resources you and your students can consult to come up with a definition for each word. The definition should be easy to understand, be written in everyday language, and capture the word's common use. Your definitions can include pictures, videos, or other multimedia options. Cambridge Learner's Dictionary, Merriam-Webster Learner's Dictionary, and Wordsmyth Children's Dictionary are all good resources to help create student-friendly definitions.

For English language learners (ELLs): Try to use cognates (words from different languages that have a similar meaning, spelling, and pronunciation) when you introduce new words. For more information about using cognates when teaching vocabulary to ELLs, use these resources from Colorín Colorado. You can also ask students to say or draw their own definition of the words - in English or their home language - to help them understand each word and its meaning.

2. Reflect. Allow time for students to reflect on what they know or don't know about the words. Remember that your class will come to the lesson with varying levels of vocabulary knowledge. Some students may be familiar with some of the words. Other students may not know any of them. If time permits, this could be a good opportunity to use flexible grouping so students can work on different words.

3. Read the text you've chosen. You can read it to your students or have students read on their own (either a printed version or by listening to an audio version). As you read, pause to point to the vocabulary words in context. Use explicit instruction to teach the word parts, such as prefixes and suffixes, to help define the word. If students are reading on their own or with a partner, encourage them to "hunt" for the words before reading. Hunting for these words first can reduce distractions later when the focus is on reading the text.

Word associations: Ask students, "What does the word delicate make you think of? What other words go with delicate?" Students can turn and talk with a partner to come up with a response. Then invite pairs to share their responses with the rest of the class.

Use your senses: Ask your students to use their senses to describe when they saw, heard, felt, tasted, or smelled something that was delicate. Allow students time to think. Then ask them to give a thumbs up if they've ever seen something delicate. Call on students to share their responses. Do the same with each of the senses.

A round of applause: If the word is an adjective, invite students to clap based on how much they would like a delicate toy, for example. Or students can "vote with their feet" by moving to one corner of the room if they want a delicate toy or another corner if they don't. This activity works especially well if you pair the new adjective with a familiar noun.

Picture perfect: Invite students to draw a picture that represents the word's meaning.

Examples and non-examples: Give one example and one non-example of how the word is and isn't used. For instance, you could tell students that one thing that is delicate is a teacup. One thing that isn't delicate is the cement stairs into the school. Then invite students to share their own examples of things that are and aren't delicate.

After students do one or more of the activities above, have them say or draw the word again.

Understand: Why this strategy works

Rote memorization ("skill and drill") isn't very helpful when it comes to learning new vocabulary. Students learn best from explicit instruction that uses easy-to-understand definitions, engaging activities, and repeated exposure. Teaching this way will help students understand how words are used in real-life contexts and that words can have different meanings depending on how they're used.

This explicit approach helps all students and is especially helpful for students who learn and think differently. This includes students who have a hard time figuring out the meaning of new words when they're reading. It can be difficult for them to make an inference or use context clues to figure out what a word means.

Explicit vocabulary instruction with student-friendly definitions means there's no guesswork involved. Repeated exposure and practice help to reinforce the words in students' memories.

Share with families this resource they can use at home to help students grow their vocabulary. You can model some of these strategies for families at back-to-school night or another family event.

Research behind this strategy

About the author

About the author

Cheryl Lyon, MAT is a PhD student in educational psychology with a focus on special education and literacy.

Reviewed by

Reviewed by

Allison Posey, MEd, CAST, Inc. is a curriculum and design specialist at CAST.

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Literacy Strategy: How to Teach Vocabulary Words

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It's hard for students to read and understand a text if they don't know what the words mean. A solid vocabulary boosts reading comprehension for students of all ages. The more words students know, the better they understand the text. That's why effective vocabulary teaching is so important, especially for students who learn and think differently.

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Blast from the Past: This entry was first published September 28, 2019 and was re-issued on October 17, 2020. As a young man, I set out to improve my vocabulary since I knew it would improve my chances of getting into graduate school. Over a period of about a year, I learned about 400 new words (all recorded on index cards for practice). This was not a research study, I really needed to master these words. My personal impression: I couldn't believe how much my reading and listening comprehension improved during that period; things that I "kind of" understood previously were really understood with that richer lexicon. Teach word meaning well, along with other aspects of vocabulary. Teacher question: What's the best way to teach and have students master vocabulary?
Shanahan response:

My original reaction to this question was not exactly what I'd label a model of helpfulness.

The question was asked by someone new to my blog and I started to send him a note telling him I'd written about that several times already and if he searched my website, he'd find an answer to his question.

But I had second thoughts and decided to be a bit more accommodating. I still didn't intend to write a blog entry. I figured it would be generous to identify some specific links from the site, so he wouldn't have to search it himself.

I was surprised when I was unable to find much of an answer to this very reasonable pedagogical question. I've written about vocabulary a bit and have linked some vocabulary resources on my site. But there is no clear statement of what works in vocabulary teaching. Let's remedy that now.

First some preliminaries.

I've learned over the years that all words are not equal.

For instance, some words are more useful than others. Knowing the meaning of "obloquy" likely pays off less often than knowing "shame."

Readers need to know the words that authors use. You only have so much time, be sure to invest it in teaching words that will open the most doors to understanding for your students.

Another implication is that some words are learned more easily than others. I've taught myself to read French, a language I do not speak (though these days I'm even trying that). With some unknown words, looking them up in the dictionary seems sufficient to make them my words ever. But there are also slippery words that I've looked up dozens of times with success.

Teachers need to recognize-and be patient-with this great unevenness-not just across kids, but in each student's experience.

A second preliminary is the distinction between vocabulary and concept. Vocabulary refers to the labels that we associate with particular concepts or ideas, while the concepts are those ideas that the words refer to.

A word like "shimmer" will be easily learned by kids who have seen light waver, but more effort will be required for those who do not. If it is a lack of vocabulary, much of this work can be done verbally, but if it is a lack of concept, then words alone probably won't be enough.

A final preliminary thought is that much vocabulary is learned without formal teaching. We gain words from conversation, observation, television/media use, reading, and so on. We learn so many words like that that some scholars have scoffed at the value of explicit teaching. Nevertheless, research shows that teaching vocabulary can measurably improve reading comprehension-if we teach the right words well enough.

Effective vocabulary teaching has some key principles.
1. Focus on rich meanings, not just dictionary definitions.
Too often vocabulary instruction is no more than kids copying definitions from the dictionary. But researchers have identified a number of instructional approaches that outdo any learning that may accrue from copying definitions.

One of those key principles is that students work with more extensive or complex definitions or explanations of word meanings. Encourage the encyclopedia explanation over the dictionary meanings.

When I teach vocabulary, I often have the kids engage in trying to provide several different versions of a word's definition.

1. Dictionary definition

2. Synonyms for the word

3. Antonyms (if there are any)

4. Part of speech

5. Classification (what semantic group does it belong to, like tools or ways of talking)

6. Comparison (it is like____, but different because______)

7. Real-life examples

8. Graphic version (drawings, pictures, representations)

9. Acting it out

2. Emphasize the connections among words.
By the time you've come up with nine different explanations of a word you are more likely to remember it (and, of course, we can do more than just these nine if we want to get into analogies, part-whole relationships, and the like).

Many vocabulary programs introduce words by category, such as focusing on words from health and medicine or about transportation, including some that have research showing that they can be effective. However, direct research specifically on this aspect of teaching, suggest that word learning goes slower and without evident later advantage from the extra work that mastering these words entails needed to master these sets of words.

And, yet, evidence reveals that the lexicons in our heads are organized in various networks, not like dictionaries. When you remember a word, you draw from memory a plethora of related ideas-attributes, functions, and synonyms related to that word.

Start thinking diesel trucks and words like wheel, tire, dump truck, gasoline, and highway will not be far behind.

There are circumstances in which it is necessary to simultaneously introduce collections of closely related words that may require fine or subtle distinctions, such as when kids are learning about the structure of cells or atoms. I'll give that a pass, since such introductions are likely to be accompanied by a much deeper dive into the underlying concepts in such cases.

I also think it is quite reasonable when teaching words to get kids thinking about words about that concept that they may already have mastered. Linking a new word to a concept, is very different than trying to learn and link a whole collection of words.
3. Promote usage of the words.
I would avoid introducing together plethora, dearth, scarcity, cornucopia, shortage, plenty, sufficient, abundant, and liberal as some programs do. Collect such words over time as they are learned and then later you can have kids comparing the ideas or fitting them into continuum or network.

One teacher I know has her students classifying the vocabulary each week in bulletin board folders, and when a folder accumulates several related words, they revisit them as a set.

It is not enough that kids study word meanings, but they have to learn to use these words in their reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Instruction should create opportunities for kids to use words in all of these ways.
4. Review is important.
For instance, that rich vocabulary assignment that was described earlier can be done by groups of kids working together to come up with those multiple definitions. That kind of cooperation requires that kids talk with each other about the words. Additionally, I often assign small numbers of words to each group and then have them get together to teach each other the words that their groups studied... more speaking and listening.

One might reward kids for using the studied vocabulary in their writing-or that can be required in various ways.

Isabel Beck and Moddy McKeown came up with the idea of "word wizards," which gave kids extra points in vocabulary if they could bring in evidence that they had confronted or used the words of interest. Kids get very turned on if they run across some of the vocabulary when watching television or playing their favorite computer game.
5. Involve students in identifying some of the words to be studied.
It can be hard to retain vocabulary if you don't get a lot of opportunity to use it. We may teach vocabulary because certain words were prominent in the texts, we were reading this week, but then kids might not see them for a long time.

There are many ways to deal with vocabulary, such as having one day a week when you only work with words that have been taught (and supposedly learned) in the past-or perhaps entire weeks might be devoted to this throughout the year.

I'm a fan of including words from past weeks on vocabulary quizzes and for the use of vocabulary notebooks to help punch up kids' writing during revision.

Another way of ensuring the words stick, is to see how many additional words students can construct morphologically, adding prefixes or suffixes or altering parts of speech and so on. I've written about some of the important work being done on morphology by Peter and Jeffrey Bowers before (and you can search for that on my site or on Google).

I noted earlier that much vocabulary learning is incidental and, therefore, largely out of the province of schools. However, not all kids are equally good at such learning and even for those who it is easier, it can still be a tough slog requiring many experiences with a word to get it to stick.

One thing that we can do to help develop a "word consciousness" among our students is to involve them in identifying unknown words from their own reading-and to include these in your classroom curriculum. When readers get used to noticing their lack of knowledge of particular words, they will be more likely to try to resolve those gaps when reading. Kids will also be more motivated if they have some say so over the curriculum as well.

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Vocabulary Teaching | Shanahan on Literacy

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Blast from the Past: This entry was first published September 28, 2019 and was re-issued on October 17, 2020. As a young man, I set out to improve my vocabulary since I knew it would improve my chances of getting into graduate school.

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Fluency is defined as the ability to read with accuracy, good speed, and appropriate expression. In order to understand what they read, children must be able to read fluently whether they are reading aloud or silently. When reading aloud, fluent readers read in phrases and add intonation appropriately. Their reading is smooth and has expression.

Children who do not read with fluency sound choppy and awkward. Those students may have difficulty with decoding skills or they may just need more practice with speed and smoothness in reading. Fluency is also important for motivation; children who find reading laborious tend not to want read! As readers head into upper elementary grades, fluency becomes increasingly important. The volume of reading required in the upper elementary years escalates dramatically. Students whose reading is slow or labored will have trouble meeting the reading demands of their grade level.

What the problem looks like

A kid's perspective: What this feels like to me

Children will usually express their frustration and difficulties in a general way, with statements like "I hate reading!" or "This is stupid!". But if they could, this is how kids might describe how fluency difficulties in particular affect their reading:

I just seem to get stuck when I try to read a lot of the words in this chapter.

It takes me so long to read something.

Reading through this book takes so much of my energy, I can't even think about what it means.

A parent's perspective: What I see at home

Here are some clues for parents that a child may have problems with fluency:

He knows how to read words but seems to take a long time to read a short book or passage silently.

She reads a book with no expression.

He stumbles a lot and loses his place when reading something aloud.

She reads aloud very slowly.

She moves her mouth when reading silently (subvocalizing).

A teacher's perspective: What I see in the classroom

Here are some clues for teachers that a student may have problems with fluency:

Her results on words-correct-per-minute assessments are below grade level or targeted benchmark.

She has difficulty and grows frustrated when reading aloud, either because of speed or accuracy.

He does not read aloud with expression; that is, he does not change his tone where appropriate.

She does not "chunk" words into meaningful units.

When reading, he doesn't pause at meaningful breaks within sentences or paragraphs.

How to help

With the help of parents and teachers, kids can learn strategies to cope with fluency issues that affect his or her reading. Below are some tips and specific things to do.

What kids can do to help themselves

Track the words with your finger as a parent or teacher reads a passage aloud. Then you read it.

Have a parent or teacher read aloud to you. Then, match your voice to theirs.

Read your favorite books and poems over and over again. Practice getting smoother and reading with expression.

What parents can do to help at home

Support and encourage your child. Realize that he or she is likely frustrated by reading.

Check with your child's teachers to find out their assessment of your child's word decoding skills.

If your child can decode words well, help him or her build speed and accuracy by:

Reading aloud and having your child match his voice to yours

Having your child practice reading the same list of words, phrase, or short passages several times

Reminding your child to pause between sentences and phrases

Read aloud to your child to provide an example of how fluent reading sounds.

Give your child books with predictable vocabulary and clear rhythmic patterns so the child can "hear" the sound of fluent reading as he or she reads the book aloud.

Use books on tapes; have the child follow along in the print copy.

What teachers can do to help at school

Assess the student to make sure that word decoding or word recognition is not the source of the difficulty (if decoding is the source of the problem, decoding will need to be addressed in addition to reading speed and phrasing).

Give the student independent level texts that he or she can practice again and again. Time the student and calculate words-correct-per-minute regularly. The student can chart his or her own improvement.

Ask the student to match his or her voice to yours when reading aloud or to a tape recorded reading.

Read a short passage and then have the student immediately read it back to you.

Have the student practice reading a passage with a certain emotion, such as sadness or excitement, to emphasize expression and intonation.

Incorporate timed repeated readings into your instructional repertoire.

Plan lessons that explicitly teach students how to pay attention to clues in the text (for example, punctuation marks) that provide information about how that text should be read.

Browse our fluency library

Learn more about how to build children's fluency skills through our articles, tips for parents, video, FAQs, and research briefs. Visit our Fluency section

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Fluency is defined as the ability to read with accuracy, good speed, and appropriate expression. In order to understand what they read, children must be able to read fluently whether they are reading aloud or silently. When reading aloud, fluent readers read in phrases and add intonation appropriately.

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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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Back to Articles

Fluency is the link between recognizing words and understanding them. Effective reading programs teach fluency skills, so that readers can make the link between words, sounds, and meaning more quickly.

Fluent readers

Fluent readers are no longer 'decoding' each word they encounter. They have developed the knowledge and skills to recognize words automatically, accurately, and quickly. This means that the reader can focus on the higher-order reading goals.

For a fluent reader, "multiple tasks are being performed at the same time, such as decoding the words, comprehending the information, relating the information to prior knowledge of the subject matter, making inferences, and evaluating the information's usefulness to a report he or she is writing".

People who are not fluent readers spend a lot of mental energy on decoding text, recognizing individual words, and then trying to string them together for meaning. In complex texts, fluency is required to be able to comprehend the subject matter, not just read the words. As reading is still the main mode of transmitting new information in a majority of educational environments, reading fluency is important for learning in all subjects.

Teaching fluency

Reading ability is built upon the "integration of all the following skills via explicit instruction in: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary knowledge, and text comprehension." Fluency and comprehension require automaticity in phonic decoding and word recognition skills, and a working knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, and text construction.

Explicit instruction is how we learn these skills but it is practice, practice, practice which creates the automaticity we require for fluency. And that means a lot of reading practice. "There are few ideas more widely accepted than that reading is learned through reading."

Support children in their reading lessons, at school, in homework, or online. Help them understand how English is put together. Assist them in learning sight words, spelling lists, and new vocabulary. Celebrate their achievements in language learning. Encourage them to keep reading.

Guided reading

Make time for guided reading. This is where the child reads out loud to an adult who is actively listening and helping the child improve their reading skills. Reading aloud benefits fluency as the reader needs to be able to present the text with proper oral expression, which requires comprehension of the text.

The guiding adult could offer strategies to help with problematic words, such as thinking about context, sounding out, relating the word to similar ones in meaning, spelling and/or form, and correcting pronunciation that may be misleading them. Discuss how the English language is put together, the rules and inevitable exceptions.

At the end of a text they should foster conversation to see if the child has comprehended what they read. Encourage them to relate the story or information in their own words, or ask specific questions about the text. Reread parts of the text they didn't comprehend, or which the two of you disagree on. Try to see their viewpoint, and remember it's ok to agree to disagree.

Guided reading has been proven to be an effective strategy in helping to build fluency. The National Reading Panel in the US came to the conclusion that guided oral reading procedures had "a consistent, and positive impact on word recognition, fluency, and comprehension as measured by a variety of test instruments and at a range of grade levels."

Wide reading

The other main strategy which is relatively simple to implement in terms of developing fluency is wide reading. This involves reading a broad variety of texts, reading often, and reading for pleasure as well as information. Eminent reading researcher Melanie Kuhn has said, "learners must develop automatic word recognition through the extensive reading of connected text... rather than simply developing the ability to recognize words in isolation."

In Kuhn's study of fluency instruction, she found that, in a comparison of an oral repeated reading strategy and a wide reading strategy, "the wide reading group showed greater growth in terms of comprehension." Her ultimate conclusion was that both strategies are beneficial - both encouraged plenty of reading practice, building fluency.

The National Reading Panel in the US also looked at wide reading and its effect on fluency. While they did find that there has not been enough direct research into this strategy as yet, "the correlational evidence is overwhelming. There are literally hundreds of studies that find that the best readers read the most and that poor readers read the least".

Reading a variety of texts that are at the correct level for the student helps develop reading fluency. This can be done at school, at home, in the library, or using online resources. Most classrooms and families can make time to follow the NRP determination that "lots of silent reading would provide students with valuable practice that would enhance fluency and, ultimately, comprehension."

Using Reading Eggs to build reading fluency

The Reading Eggs program uses a number of strategies to increase reading fluency. This online program can be accessed through a computer or tablet. It is a structured learn‑to‑read program that offers personalized instruction in an engaging manner at your child's level.

The Reading Eggs program provides a series of lessons using explicit teaching to build skills in phonic decoding. Many of the activities also aim to build an increasing bank of high‑frequency sight words. These are essential skills needed to develop fluency in reading.

The lessons present phonological skills and word recognition in the context of connected text as well as individual word recognition. Using focus words in sentences and short stories, for both reading and construction of text, creates a sense of meaning in students' understanding of language.

The Reading Eggs program models fluent reading and encourages repeat reading of texts. It has a library of over 2500 leveled books to provide wide reading material for any level of recreational reader. Each book can be read repeated times, encouraging fluency in that text. The library books end with a quiz, which requires reading comprehension.

Reading Eggs rewards students at every step, with congratulatory sounds and messages, with eggs and points and cards to be collected, with critters to earn, and certificates to be printed. Your child will build confidence in their reading fluency as they progress through the program.

See how Reading Eggs works

We offer all new parents a free trial to see how Reading Eggs works for their child.

It only takes a few minutes to get started-and unlike other reading programs, you won't need to provide your credit card details until you're totally confident it's right for you.

Try Reading Eggs here to see how your child's reading and comprehension skills can improve in just weeks.

Reading Eggs testimonials

"Reading Eggs is simply amazing [...] My kids simply loved it. Within two months my son is reading fluently (just started Grade 2), and the younger one, who is in Kindergarten, is reading three‑ to four‑letter words already." - Umm B.

"Reading Eggs has been a terrific addition to our homeschool. Each of my three kids aged 3, 5, and 7 beg me to let them play and I think that is how Reading Eggs really differs from the others; it is not a chore for them to be using it. After they complete their lessons, they are then allowed to play in the extra [learning areas] and games which gives them an incentive to finish the lessons well. They are learning their letters and the sounds they make to reading small words in as little as ten minutes a day. My two smallest are now able to recognize words in their own books that we read, and my 7‑year‑old has learned to read fluently solely from Reading Eggs. I have to put a limit on how much time they are allowed to be on Reading Eggs, or they will be on there all day. I will continue to use Reading Eggs for many years to come and cannot recommend it highly enough." - Amanda B.

iSamuels, S.J. & Flor, R.F. (1997). The Importance of Automaticity for Developing Expertise in Reading. Reading & Writing Quarterly. 13(2): 107-121. doi: 10.1080/1057356970130202.

ii Rowe, K. and National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy (Australia). (2005). Teaching Reading. Retrieved from https://research.acer.edu.au/tll_misc/5

iii National Reading Panel (U.S.), & National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (U.S.). (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: reports of the subgroups. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.

iv National Reading Panel (U.S.), & National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (U.S.). (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: reports of the subgroups. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.

v Kuhn, M. (2004). Helping Students Become Accurate, Expressive Readers: Fluency Instruction for Small Groups. The Reading Teacher, 58(4), 338-344. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20205487

vi Kuhn, M. (2004). Helping Students Become Accurate, Expressive Readers: Fluency Instruction for Small Groups. The Reading Teacher, 58(4), 338-344. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20205487

vii National Reading Panel (U.S.), & National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (U.S.). (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: reports of the subgroups. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.

viii National Reading Panel (U.S.), & National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (U.S.). (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: reports of the subgroups. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.

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Back to Articles Fluency is the link between recognizing words and understanding them. Effective reading programs teach fluency skills, so that readers can make the link between words, sounds, and meaning more quickly. Fluent readers are no longer 'decoding' each word they encounter. They have developed the knowledge and skills to recognize words automatically, accurately, and quickly.

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A recent blog post by Tim Shanahan titled "What should morphology instruction look like?" reminded me how important it is to teach students about word parts (i.e., roots, prefixes, suffixes) as a useful tool for determining the meaning of unfamiliar words and growing academic vocabularies.

One of the five components of our Key Vocabulary Routine is Teach Word Learning Strategies, which includes how to look for clues outside the word (use of context) and inside the word (use of word parts) when encountering an unknown word while reading. Outside clues include rereading the sentences before and after the word and using the context of the text. Inside clues come from recognizing meaningful parts of the word, i.e., using morphological knowledge.
Morphemes and Morphological Awareness
Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in a language. The dictionary defines a morpheme as "a word or part of a word that has a meaning and that contains no smaller part that has a meaning." Morphemes include base words and roots, prefixes, and suffixes. They can be combined in different ways to express particular meaning or to fill grammatical roles. Some morphemes are free - they can stand alone (e.g., cat, walk, govern). Other morphemes are bound - they cannot stand alone and must be attached to another morpheme (e.g., re-, un-, geo, phon, -ed, -ment). Here are some examples:

The word cat contains one free morpheme

The word cats contains one free morpheme (cat) and one bound morphemes (s)

The compound word sandbox contains two free morphemes (sand, box)

The word unfit contains one bound morpheme (un) and one free morpheme (fit)

The word transportable contains three bound morphemes (trans, port, able)

Morphology means the study of word parts, and morphological awareness refers to the ability to recognize the presence of morphemes in words. Research suggests that students can be taught various morphemic elements as a way to determine the meaning of new words (Edwards et al., 2004). Carlisle (2010) analyzed 16 studies about the relation of morphological awareness instruction to key components of literacy development. The findings showed that instruction about word parts was associated with improvements in word reading and spelling, and in determining the meaning of unfamiliar words.
Academic, School Morphemes
Academic vocabulary that must be learned beyond grade three often consists of words that combine a root, prefix, and suffix (e.g., poly + nom + ial = polynomial; manu + script = manuscript). In the upper elementary grades and higher, there are many opportunities to find words in content reading that contain Greek and Latin morphemes. Children in primary grades can begin to learn how morphemes combine by adding common prefixes and suffixes to short Anglo-Saxon words and also compounding them. For example:

jump, jumps, jumped, jumping, jumper

read, reread, reader, nonreader, reading

sunshine, schoolhouse, upstream

There are some limitations to morphemic analysis. Although it is useful, teachers must also make students aware that it doesn't always work. This is because some prefixes are not consistent in meaning (e.g., in- means both not and in). It is also because the meaning of many Greek and Latin roots have changed substantially over hundreds of years, so they no longer lend themselves to literal translation. For example, the literal translation of circumspect should be look around ( circum means around, spect means look), while the real meaning is to be cautious, careful.
Introducing Morphology
One way to introduce word analysis skills is to teach students how words are made up of word parts, and how words can be related in word families, such as the word family below for the Latin root port (to carry).

Keys to Literacy trainers often see examples of teachers using word families when we visit classrooms. Here are some examples:

Another instructional strategy is to have students build word families by providing a main root and then prefixes and suffixes that can be combined with the root to generate words. Word Matrix boxes such as the examples below can be used for this purpose. For more examples, visit Peter Bowers' website
convoy, envoy, convoys, envoys, convoying, convoyed, voyage, voyages, voyaging, voyaged, voyager, voyagers retake, retakes, retaken, retaking, untaken, mistake, mistakes, mistakable, mistakably, mistaken, mistakenly, mistaking, intake, intakes, overtake, overtakes, overtaken, overtaking, undertake, undertakes, undertaker, undertaken, undertaking, undertakings, uptake, uptakes, breathtaking, caretaker, caretaking, takes, taker, taken, taking, takeaway, takeover Teaching Morphology
Here are two additional suggestions from our Key Vocabulary Routine professional development program:

Find opportunistic moments: Often, unplanned moments come up during content instruction to provide examples of word analysis. Words from content vocabulary lists may include common word parts, or an opportunity to make a connection between the root of a new word and a word previously covered in class may arise. Content teachers in particular are in a position to point out examples of words that contain roots, prefixes, and suffixes from content reading material.

School-wide focus: Most of the general academic words that students need to learn are derived words with word parts. A school-wide approach to teaching academic vocabulary involves teachers from different grades and subjects agreeing to focus on a few root words and their associated word families each week or two.

A 2015 piece posted by the Institute for Multi-Sensory Education's blog suggests these strategies for teaching morphology in the classroom based on research by Dr. Nonie Lesaux:

1. Morphology should be taught as a distinct component of a vocabulary improvement program throughout the upper elementary years.

2. Morphology should be taught as a cognitive strategy to be learned. In order to break a word down into morphemes, students must complete the following four steps:

Recognize that they don't know the word.

Analyze the word for recognizable morphemes, both in the roots and suffixes.

Think of a possible meaning based upon the parts of the word.

Check the meaning of the word against the context.

Students also need to understand the use of prefixes, suffixes, and roots, and how words get transformed.
Lists of Roots, Prefixes, Suffixes
There is a significant body of research indicating that instruction of prefixes is beneficial, and many vocabulary researchers recommend instruction of the most common prefixes as the first and best component of word analysis (Graves, 2004; Carlisle, 2007). White, Sowell, and Yanagihara (1989) found that 20 prefixes account for almost 97% of the 2,959 prefixed words that most frequently appear in school reading materials. Given how often these 20 prefixes occur, it makes sense to teach their meaning and use. To access a free list of these prefixes, visit the Keys to Literacy free resources page at our website, and go to the Vocabulary section. You will also find free lists of the following:

Common Numerical Prefixes

Common and Useful Suffixes

Common Greek and Latin Roots

References:
Carlisle, J.F. (2010). Effects of instruction on morphological awareness on literacy achievement: An integrative review. Reading Research Quarterly, 45 (4) 464-487.

Carlisle, J.F. (2007). Fostering morphological processing, vocabulary development, and reading comprehension. In R.K. Wagner, A.E., Muse, & K.R. Tannenbaum (Eds.). Vocabulary acquisition: Implications for reading comprehension. New York: Guilford Press.

Edwards, C.E., Font, G., Baumann, J.F., & Boland, E. (2004). Unlocking word meanings: Strategies and guidelines for teaching morphemic and contextual analysis. In James, R. Baumann & Edward J. Kame/ennui (Eds.). Vocabulary instruction: Research to practice. New York: Guilford Press.

Graves, M.F. (2004). Teaching prefixes: As good as it gets? In James, R. Baumann & Edward J. Kame/ennui (Eds.). Vocabulary instruction: Research to practice. New York: Guilford Press.

White, T.G., Sowell, J., & Yanagihara, A. (1989). Teaching elementary students to use word-part clues. The Reading Teacher, 42.

Joan Sedita

Joan Sedita is the founder of Keys to Literacy and author of the Keys to Literacy professional development programs. She is an experienced educator, nationally recognized speaker and teacher trainer. She has worked for over 35 years in the literacy education field and has presented to thousands of teachers and related professionals at schools, colleges, clinics, and professional conferences.

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Using Morphology to Teach Vocabulary - Keys to Literacy

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Suggestions for teaching vocabulary by analyzing word parts.

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Teacher question:
Are there any resources that provide a list of morphemes to teach at each K-5 grade level? I have been looking for a definitive list of morphemes that is organized by grade level like the Fry sight word list. I often come across research about how L1 and L2 students acquire morphemes, but I am looking for a list that represents the morphemes that students will most likely see in print at each K-5 grade level. Does anything like that exist? Thank you for your time.
Shanahan's response:

The short answer to this question is, "No, I don't know of such a list."

But when have I ever been satisfied with the short answer to anything?

Let's make sure we're all in agreement as to what constitutes a morpheme? Basically, a morpheme is the "smallest grammatical unit." It isn't the same thing as a word, and yet many words are morphemes. The distinction turns on whether the unit (the morpheme or word) can stand on its own. Words have to have that kind of independence, while morphemes don't require it.

Thus, bags, trucked, running, and redirect are all words in the English language while bag, s, truck, ed, run, ing, re, and direct are all morphemes. Each morphemic unit carries meaning, but sometimes morphemes can do that independently (bag, truck, run, direct), and sometimes they need to be combined with other morphemes to be considered a word (s, ed, ing, re).

I admitted ignorance on this issue, and I've tried to turn that ignorance to your advantage. I contacted Jeffrey and Peter Bowers. Both are outstanding scholars (Jeff at the University of Bristol in the UK, and Peter at WordWorks Literacy Centre, in Ontario) who are particularly knowledgeable about teaching morphology to improve literacy. They've both published widely on the issue, and both have chided me when they felt I wasn't paying sufficient attention to how words work morphologically. These days I know no one better able to provide you with a thoughtful answer to your question, and boy was I right!

Word Matrix: a map of a word family

Word Sums: reveal underlying structure of any complex word (a word with more than just a base)

un + help + ful + ness > unhelpfulness

Here is Peter Bower's response (with my light editing)

I have no knowledge of such a list, but I wouldn't recommend one anyway.

My recommendation based on theory not direct research evidence - is that the main value comes from teaching all or many members of a morphological family at one time with the matrix and word sums (see the attached figure illustrating a matrix and word sum). In the younger grades I start with free bases [those morphemes that stand alone as words], but once that is established, I have no trouble introducing bound bases [the units that can't stand alone]. This relates to the research we cite about the value of studying meaningfully related items at one time rather than disconnected items.

Instead of a "scope and sequence" of morphemes to teach, what I recommend is starting with words in the children's vocabulary, analyzing such words to find their bases, then looking for other members of that family.

The point is not that there is a "scope and sequence" of morphemes to teach. Rather there is a kind of a "scope" of orthographic concepts that we want students to learn, and teachers can address those concepts based on whatever words are central to the readings they are introducing to the students.

A brief list of those concepts that should be taught would include:

Every word is a base or a base with something else (another base or affix)

Bases and affixes (morphemes) are the meaningful building blocks that construct words.

We can analyze complex words into constituent morphemes with word sums and show their interrelationship with a matrix.

English spelling prioritizes consistent spelling of morphemes over consistent pronunciation of morphemes. (This is why we refer to morphemes by their spelling not their pronunciation. The base of the word action is not referred to by the pronunciation of the word act. Instead it is referred to by its spelling. The base "a - c - t". This is the same as the fact that we don't refer to the <-ed> suffix by one or all of its three pronunciation, we call it by it's spelling "e-d suffix.")

Thus, we need to understand grapheme-phoneme correspondences from within the context of morphological families. (e.g. we learn the phonology of the grapheme by studying morphological families).

There are reliable conventions for the three suffixing conventions.

Studying and understanding the suffixing conventions is not primarily about improving spelling accuracy, it is about being able to analyze hypotheses about connections between words. We can test the hypothesis that has a base only if we know vowel suffixes replace final, non-syllabic s (image/ + ine -> imagine).

The "structure and meaning test": To determine that two words share a base, we need evidence from both structure (word sum) and meaning (etymology). So with the earlier example of words related to (play, playing, playful, replay, playhouse), we can prove all of those words can be analyzed with word sums with coherent affixes and bases. But we can also show that they all go back to an Old English root plegan, plegian for "frolic, move rapidly". However, the word which can be analyzed structurally turns out not to be related. It does not belong in the morphological family with the others because it goes back to a Latin root plac(ere) for "fold". So to "display" is to "unfold".

If we are going to teach children how their writing system works, we need to teach them the interrelation of morphology, phonology, and etymology. As we have pointed out, this is why Structured Word Inquiry (SWI) is not about "adding" morphological instruction to phonics instruction - its about teaching how the system works.

This is why I argue that SWI teaches grapheme-phoneme correspondences more explicitly and accurately than phonics. Phonics instruction (under the definition of associations of pronunciations and letters without reference to morphology or etymology) cannot explain the grapheme-phoneme correspondences in countless words like does or rough or every or homophones, and so on. So many people miss the absolute detail into orthographic phonology that comes with SWI.

Here are some videos to illustrate my point.

Grade 2 Morphology

A teacher showing investigations from his class.

Grade 1 Morphology

Investigating grapheme-phoneme correspondences - with the context of morphological word sums.

Kindergarten Morphology

A kindergarten lesson I taught introducing the word sum and matrix that touches on grapheme-phoneme correspondences like the pronunciation of the <-s> suffix for /z/ and /s/.

It's as simple as starting with the "known" and then expanding from that. Even if kids know all the words in a morphological family (e.g. play, playing, playful, replay, playhouse) the lesson is not about new vocabulary, but learning how word structure links words. That concept can then be applied anywhere.

The other thing I keep in mind when choosing morphological families to investigate is the orthographic concepts a family has to offer. If I've established the fact that words that share a base share a spelling and a meaning connection, then I can introduce a base like with words like actor, acting, react, and action as a way to introduce the fact that the pronunciation of morpheme might change but keep the spelling. In that way we learn the phonology of t is not the "t sound", but that the grapheme can write /t/ when that is the appropriate sound. I've attached an example of a lesson I've used for that before.

I also draw on the <-ed> suffix from early on to highlight this same concept that morphemes do not have pronunciations until they are in a word. The pronunciation of a word like is another useful one to get rid of this idea of a "t sound" since this very common pronunciation of a very common suffix is what is typically thought of the "t sound," but their ain't no /t/!

And then you also encounter words that give rise to the need to teach all the suffixing changes.

These are concepts teachers need to learn and they can bring into work with their class as they investigate words."

Shanahan again

I don't disagree with Peter on any of this, except I'm not as dismissive of the kind of list that you are requesting. I don't see it as mutually exclusive from the curriculum goals that he specified or contradictory of the kind of instruction he described.

Many teachers, when referring to morphology or "structural analysis", actually are talking about affixes alone, and not the bases. If that is the case here, there are some lists like that which present the most common prefixes and suffixes from textbooks in grades 3-9 (White, Sowell, & Yanagihara, 1989). You can easily find those lists on line and you could definitely make use of those lists to make sure that you are hitting all the notes if you do the word sums and matrixes that Peter recommends.

Otherwise, I haven't been able to come up with a graded list of bases for you to use. But I have passed your letter along to my friends at MetaMetrics (the Lexile people) and have asked if they could produce such a list from their language corpus of more than 1 billion words. Stay tuned!
See comments here ›

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What Should Morphology Instruction Look Like?

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Are there any resources that provide a list of morphemes to teach at each K-5 grade level? I have been looking for a definitive list of morphemes that is organized by grade level like the Fry sight word list.

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Reading comprehension, simply stated, is the act of understanding and interpreting what we read. What happens in our students' brains as they read is anything but simple! Skilled reading depends on a wide range of abilities - everything from concrete, masterable skills like decoding to complex, hard-to-pin-down thinking skills like making inferences.

What makes a skilled reader?

Why is it that reading comes more easily to some children than others? What makes a skilled reader? Reading researchers have described skilled reading in different ways (Duke, Pearson, Strachan & Billman, 2009; Sedita, 2006; National Reading Panel, 2000), but there are abilities and behaviors that most skilled readers seem to have in common:

A clear purpose for reading and an ability to monitor and adjust their reading to serve that purpose

Word attack skills that allow them to accurately, automatically decode words

Vocabulary knowledge and oral language skills that help them understand the meaning of words and sentences

Background knowledge, including content knowledge and literacy knowledge

Thinking and verbal reasoning skills such as drawing inferences

Strategies for constructing and revising meaning as they read, such as making predictions and asking questions about the text

The motivation to read and to apply what they learn

Why is "strategic" reading important?

Comprehension "strategies" are behaviors that researchers have consistently observed in skilled readers. We explicitly teach these behaviors so that all of our students can benefit from them. Strategic readers understand what they read, but their comprehension doesn't stop there. They also notice and reflect on their own reading. By teaching comprehension strategies, we help our students to be aware of their own thinking - to be metacognitive - as they read.

Draw on Prior Knowledge

We tap into students' prior knowledge by asking questions like, "What do you know about jellyfish?" And there's nothing better than seeing the excitement on the face of a first-grade expert who raises his hand to say, "Some jellyfish are phosphorescent!" Encouraging our students to draw on their own knowledge and experience not only helps them understand what they read; it also builds their curiosity and their motivation to read more.

Draw Inferences

If we read aloud a story that starts, "She was so excited to get to school that she practically jumped out of bed," and ask the class, "What time of day is it in this story?" some of our students will infer that the events of the story are happening in the morning.

We can boost students' ability to "read between the lines" in this way by intentionally calling attention to inferences they (and we) make throughout the day. Over time, they will come to understand that making inferences helps them understand why events are happening in a certain way, why characters act the way they do, and what might happen next.

Self-Monitor

Skilled readers monitor their comprehension during and after reading. By helping our students be aware of when they understand and when they don't, we empower them to "fix" their own understanding and learn more from their reading.

Form Mental Images

Skilled readers often form mental images - pictures in their mind - as they read. Readers who picture the story during reading, research shows, understand and remember what they read better than readers who do not. The video below offers a glimpse into a first-grade classroom where students are guided to visualize and to write and draw using their mental images.

Summarize and Retell

Throughout their school years, our students will be expected to determine what is important in texts and to retell or summarize what they have read. By explicitly teaching them to identify and connect important ideas in a text, we give them the tools to remember and synthesize their reading in both oral and written form. In this blog post, How to Teach Summarizing, researcher Timothy Shanahan talks more about why summarizing and retelling are so important for our students.

How... and How Much... to Teach

A tried and true way to introduce metacognitive strategies to our students is to narrate the process ourselves using a "think-aloud." We might say, for example: "I noticed that when I read that part about the storm, I got a picture in my mind of the boat tipping sideways and really big waves splashing over the side." That's a think-aloud intended to help students understand what it means to make a mental picture.

In recent years, there has been some debate about the value of teaching comprehension strategies. Willingham & Lovette (2014) have compared using strategies to understand a text to deploying "strategies" to build an IKEA desk. The strategies for building the desk might be something like:

1. Think about the desks you have put together in the past;

2. Find the "main" pieces to work with and start assembling

3. As you work, stop and ask yourself if it looks correct.

As Willingham and Lovette explain:
The vague Ikea instructions aren't bad advice. You're better off taking an occasional look at the big picture as opposed to keeping your head down and your little hex wrench turning. Likewise, reading comprehension strategies encourage you to pause as you're reading, evaluate the big picture, and think about where the text is going. And if the answer is unclear, reading comprehension strategies give students something concrete to try and a way to organize their cognitive resources when they recognize that they do not understand.
The limitation of the "strategies" approach to building a desk, though, is that it really only works if you already know how to build a desk! The same is true of comprehension; readers can't effectively apply metacognitive strategies unless they already understand much of what they've read.

Let's take, for example, the sentence "The earth is only one of the sun's many satellites." One student might have read or heard another book about the solar system and infer that the author is referring to the other planets (or other objects) orbiting the sun. But this "strategic" move depends on having a significant amount of vocabulary and background knowledge already in place.

Bottom line? Spending a limited amount of time teaching comprehension strategies can help our students be metacognitive and independent in their reading, but skilled comprehension ultimately depends on language comprehension.

Why is language comprehension important?

Skilled reading is not possible without language comprehension - the ability to understand spoken language - and word recognition. This is the common-sense concept underlying the Simple View of Reading proposed by Gough & Tunmer (1986). A reader might have strong oral language skills or extensive background knowledge on a topic, for example, but if she can't read the words on the page, it may affect her ability to understand or to learn from a book on that topic. The converse is true; a student who easily decodes a word but who has never heard the word before or doesn't know what it means will struggle to comprehend as well. (For a more in-depth explanation of word recognition and recommendations for supporting students in developing strong word recognition skills, see the Phonics module.)

The Scarborough's Rope model (Scarborough, 2001) goes into more detail than the Simple View of Reading. Scarborough's Rope looks at language comprehension and word recognition as two strands that twist together into the strong "rope" of skilled reading. The language comprehension and word recognition strands are each woven from smaller strands.

Lessons and activities that build language comprehension are helpful for all students and are particularly important for students who are English-learners or who speak a dialect of English at home that's different from the texts they encounter at school. Guidance for language comprehension instruction can be found in the In Practice section of this module. Additional supports for English-learners can be found at Colorin Colorado.

Background Knowledge
The knowledge and language needed to be successful in learning a content topic
Our students understand a text better - and learn more from it - when they have some familiarity with the topic. We can help our students build background knowledge by:

Encouraging them to make connections to their previous experiences and related knowledge

Intentionally introducing and discussing new information and connecting it to what students already know

Literacy Knowledge
The knowledge and understanding of how books and print materials convey meaning
Our students come to school with different levels of literacy knowledge. Some may not yet know that the print in books carries meaning. Some may flip confidently through a book pointing to the occasional familiar word. Some may already be reading. But our students can still benefit from explicit teaching and rich discussion of:

Concepts of print: Print awareness plays an important role in our students' literacy development. It can even be a predictor of future reading achievement. A preschooler earnestly "reading" a book held upside-down is an adorable reminder of why concepts of print matter. See this article to learn more.

Structures of various genres: Narrative text (stories) and expository or informational text follow predictable patterns and include common elements. No two books are exactly the same, of course, but having a sense of what to expect in a text based on its genre gives our students a framework for comprehension.

Vocabulary Knowledge
The knowledge of words and word meanings
It should go without saying that our students will have a harder time comprehending a text if they don't know the meaning of individual words in that text. Vocabulary plays a crucial role in listening, speaking, reading, and writing tasks throughout the school day. The good news is, we have many, many opportunities to notice, discuss, and model the use of words throughout the school day as well! (Vocabulary and vocabulary instruction are addressed in greater depth in the Vocabulary module.) The chart below, from the Teaching Reading Sourcebook (CORE), explains the four vocabulary forms:

Language Structures
The knowledge of a language's grammar
In any language, English included, words and sentences combine in predictable patterns. These patterns make up a language's grammar - its overall "rules" and conventions - including punctuation, capitalization, word order (syntax), word usage, and verb tense. Because we've internalized English grammar, we know that we're more likely to see a man eating chicken than a man-eating chicken! Dr. Timothy Shanahan addresses the role of grammar in comprehension in more detail in this blog post, Grammar and Comprehension: Scaffolding Student Interpretation of Complex Sentences.

Verbal Reasoning
The ability to understand and reason using words
Verbal reasoning is the way we think with - and about - words. Most of the learning our students do in school relies on understanding what we say, understanding what they read, or both. From following directions in kindergarten, to learning to read, to deciphering complex text in the upper elementary grades and beyond, verbal reasoning lets our students follow instructions, understand concepts, and problem-solve around words.

What does verbal reasoning look like in practice? In the sentence, "I ran home and so did he," verbal reasoning tell us that "he" ran home, too, even though the exact words "he ran home" do not appear in the sentence. And when we read the sentence, "In August, my living room is a sauna," verbal reasoning lets us know that the author is probably not talking about literally spending summer evenings in a steam-filled cedar box!

What should we keep in mind when matching students to texts?

What Makes a Text Complex

We know intuitively that Go, Dog. Go! is less complex than Hamlet. But what makes a text complex? The Common Core State Standards (2010) identify three factors that should be considered in evaluating how complex a text is and whether it is appropriate for a particular reader.

Qualitative: Only a knowledgeable human reader can evaluate a text from a qualitative standpoint. When we ask ourselves questions like, "How much background knowledge is needed for my students to make sense of this book?" or "Will this book be accessible to my English-learners?", we are making qualitative judgments.

Quantitative: The quantitative aspects of a text are things like word frequency and sentence length that we don't have a practical way to determine for every book in our classroom libraries. Quantitative descriptions of texts (e.g., Lexile level) are typically generated by computer software.

Reader and task: Characteristics of a particular reader (such as level of motivation or background knowledge) and of the task she is being asked to do (such as the format of the response) can help us determine whether a text is appropriate for that reader and for that task.

Supporting documents for the Common Core Standards include lists of high-quality texts for each grade level. For the primary grades, complex texts are taught primarily through read-alouds because our students are not yet automatic in their decoding. By using different texts for different purposes (decodable texts for decoding practice and read-alouds for comprehension work) students who take longer to master foundational skills can still have a chance to develop academic language, vocabulary and background knowledge.

What Makes a Text "Considerate" (or Not)

Our students' comprehension may vary depending not only on their reading and language abilities, but also on how "considerate" a particular text is - how well it accommodates the range of different readers' needs and abilities. "Considerate texts" (Armbruster & Anderson, 1985) support comprehension through features such as an introduction, a clear sequence of topics, and the use of cohesive words (e.g., however, in summary, for instance). Text cohesion - how clearly sentences are structured and how logically sentences are strung together into paragraphs - can make a text more or less considerate of the reader, too.

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Reading comprehension, simply stated, is the act of understanding and interpreting what we read. What happens in our students' brains as they read is anything but simple! Skilled reading depends on a wide range of abilities - everything from concrete, masterable skills like decoding to complex, hard-to-pin-down thinking skills like making inferences.

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References

Click the "References" link above to hide these references.

Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Cordova, D., & Lepper, M. (1996). Intrinsic motivation and the process of learning. Beneficial effects of contextualization, personalization, and choice. Journal of Educational Psychology, 88, 715-730.

Fawson, P.C., & Fawson, C. (1994). Conditional philanthropy: A study of corporate sponsorship of reading programs. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the International Reading Association, Toronto, Canada.

Gambrell, L. (1996). Creating classrooms cultures that foster reading motivation. The Reading Teacher, 50, 4-25.

Gambrell, L., Palmer, B., Codling, R., & Mazzoni. S. (1996). Assessing motivation to read. The Reading Teacher,

Guthrie, J., & Wigfield, A. (2000). Engagement and motivation in reading. In M. Kamil & P. Mosenthal, D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of reading research. Mahwah, N.J.:Earlbaum. 49(7), 518-533.

Iyengar, S., & Lepper, M. (1999). Rethinking the value of choice: A cultural perspective on intrinsic motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 349-366.

Marinak, B. & Gambrell, L. (2007). Boy's voices: I can read, I choose not to. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the College Reading Association, Salt Lake City, Utah, November 2, 2007.

Marinak, B. & Gambrell, L. (2008). Intrinsic motivation and rewards: What sustains young children's engagement with text? Literacy Research and Instruction. 47(1), 9-26.

McGee, L., & Richgels, D. (2003). Designing early literacy programs: Strategies for at-risk preschoolers and kindergarten children. ERIC Document ED 478237

Mohr, K. (2006). Children's choices for recreational reading: A three-part investigation of selection preferences, rationales, and processes. Journal of Literacy Research, 38 (1), 81-104.

Pappas, C. (1993). Is narrative "primary"?: Some insights from kindergartners' pretend readings of stories and inform books. Journal of Reading Behavior, 25, 97-129

Worthy, J. & McKool, S. (1996). Students who say they hate to read: The importance of opportunity, choice, and access. In D.J. Leu, C.K. Kinzer, & K.A. Hinchman (Eds.), Literacies for the 21st century: Research and practice. 45th yearbook of the National Reading Conference (pp. 245-256). Chicago: National Reading Conference.

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Reading Motivation: What the Research Says

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Click the "References" link above to hide these references. Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Cordova, D., & Lepper, M. (1996). Intrinsic motivation and the process of learning. Beneficial effects of contextualization, personalization, and choice. Journal of Educational Psychology, 88, 715-730.

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Linking the CCSS to Your Curriculum: Lessons for Mastering Standards (Grade 6 Teacher's Edition)

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A series of instructional tools for integrating lessons on the Common Core State Standards into existing curriculum.

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Reading & Writing With Meaning provides a structured yet engaging approach to tackling text-dependent questions. These questions help teachers and their students think critically about what they read, regardless of instructional context, subject matter, or grade. Specifically, this book develops teachers' deep understanding of text-dependent questions, how they are formed, and how they can be used in the classroom.

Instructors working with students of diverse abilities will find this guide's format, sample text excerpts, and gradual release framework beneficial. Templates, charts, and examples are generously used throughout the book to make text-dependent questions both accessible and useful; a dropbox file of essential templates makes practice opportunities accessible to the teacher.

This book is a great choice for teachers who want to help students develop a deeper understanding of what they read.

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Reading & Writing With Meaning | Silvereye

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Reading & Writing With Meaning provides a structured yet engaging approach to tackling text-dependent questions. These questions help teachers and their students think critically about what they read, regardless of instructional context, subject matter, or grade. Specifically, this book develops teachers' deep understanding of text-dependent questions, how they are formed, and how they can be used in the classroom.

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how to teach students to critically think about text

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How to Teach Students to Critically Think about Text

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How to Teach Students to Critically Think about Text [Jill Jackson] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. How to Teach Students to Critically Think about Text

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Build fluency and motivation by reading short, nonfiction passages.

Increase reading accuracy and expression with audio support.

Strengthen comprehension and vocabulary.

Develop automaticity in decoding (Phonics levels).

Work independently most of the time.

Experience success and an improved attitude toward reading.

Read Naturally Live provides...

An interactive reading intervention, often used for RTI or MTSS implementations.

Options to easily differentiate the program to meet individual needs.

Motivating informational texts for reluctant readers, from beginning readers to adults.

Extensive, computer-generated reports on student progress.

Opportunities for teachers to work with students one-on-one.

Three curriculum series (Sequenced, Phonics, Idioms) with a total of 23 levels.

Nonfiction reading opportunities as required by state standards.

Spanish translations for stories in early Sequenced levels.

​Read Naturally Live is an online reading program that accelerates reading achievement by combining the research-proven strategies of teacher modeling, repeated reading, and progress monitoring. A student works at his or her own pace in an appropriate level of material. Text and audio guide the student through the steps. The student masters a story by reading along with audio and then practicing the story until he or she can read it fluently and with comprehension. The program automatically tracks student progress.

Research basis for the Read Naturally Strategy

​Read Naturally Live Steps

1. Select a Story
The student clicks on the story he or she wants to read. Choosing the story deepens the student's investment in the material.

2. Key Words
In the Sequenced and Idioms series, the student reads the key words and their definitions while listening to an audio recording. The key words provide definitions that are important to understanding the story. In the Phonics series, the student listens to a phonics lesson and reads words that have the featured phonics patterns.

3. Prediction
The student uses the title, picture, and key words to write a prediction of what he or she thinks the story is about. The prediction prepares the student's mind for reading the story.

4. Cold Timing
The teacher may time the student for one minute as he or she reads the story, or the student may complete this step independently. The student clicks unknown words while reading, and then clicks the last word read during the timing. Read Naturally Live subtracts the unknown words from the total number of words attempted to obtain a cold-timing score and displays it on a graph. This step establishes a baseline for progress monitoring, the component of the Read Naturally Strategy that motivates the student to improve.

5. Read Along
The student reads along quietly with a recording of the story, typically three times. This step is the teacher-modeling component of the Read Naturally Strategy, which helps the student learn new words and master others as well as learn proper pronunciation, expression, and phrasing.

6. Practice
The student practices reading the story without audio support three to ten times until able to read it accurately, with expression, and at the goal rate. This step is the repeated-reading component of the Read Naturally Strategy, which helps the student improve fluency, master difficult words, and understand the story.

7. Quiz
The student answers questions about the story. Responding to the text holds the student accountable for meaning, develops the ability to answer many types of questions, and provides teachers with information about how well the student comprehends the story.

8. Retell/Word List
In the Sequenced and Idioms series, the student retells or summarizes the story to improve comprehension.
In the Phonics series, the student works on decoding skills by practicing the word list until able to read it accurately at a predetermined rate. The Phonic series also includes a spelling step to give students practice encoding words from the word list.

9. ​Pass
The student reads the story for the teacher to show that he or she can read it at the goal rate, with appropriate expression, and with three or fewer errors. The teacher corrects the comprehension questions and the retelling of the story (if applicable) and reviews the results with the student.

In the Phonics series, the student also reads the word list to show that he or she can read it with three or fewer errors at the goal rate. ​A graph shows how much the student's fluency has improved since the cold timing.

​ Additional graphs show results for the comprehension questions, the retelling, and the word lists (if applicable).

Read Naturally Live is a component of Read Live, a subscription program that is licensed per student. Teachers can reassign licenses if students leave the program. Read Live subscriptions include access to all 23 levels of three series. All series have the same basic design with strategic differences.

Sequenced series is the basic series and has 13 levels (1.0 - 8.0) with 24 stories per level.

Phonics series adds phonics lessons and activities to the basic design and has 6 levels (0.8 - 2.7) with 24 stories per level.
Phonics elements taught in the Phonics series

Idioms series teaches common American idioms as students work on reading skills. Idioms has 4 levels (3.0 - 4.5) with 12 stories per level.
Featured idioms

The teacher assigns the appropriate series and level for each student. The student works through the level in the student program, and the teacher manages the student's progress in the teacher program.

STUDENT PROGRAM

High-interest, leveled, nonfiction stories include:

Key words, clickable vocabulary words, and comprehension activities.

Spanish translation of each story in Sequenced levels 1.0 - 4.5.

Extensive audio support includes:

Audio directions for each step of the process.

Three appropriately paced recordings that model correct pronunciation and expression.

Pronunciation of words in stories when clicked.

Audio definitions of key words, or, in the Phonics series, an audio phonics lesson.

Clickable vocabulary words with audio-supported, student-friendly definitions.

Spanish translation of each story in Sequenced levels 1.0 - 4.5.

Auditory signals that indicate if a student's responses to multiple choice items are correct or incorrect.

Structured instructional process includes:

Automated steps built around teacher modeling, repeated reading, and progress monitoring.

A wait-time vocabulary-building activity.

Computerized scoring and extensive reports include:

Automated correction of multiple-choice questions.

Calculation of fluency, phonics, and comprehension scores.

Graphs and reports showing student performance.

TEACHER PROGRAM

Set up of account for district, building, classroom, staff, and/or students include:

Enrolling staff and students.

Licensing students.

Support for single sign-on tools from ClassLink and Google Classroom.

Management of student programs includes:

Placement of each student in a level and series with an appropriate reading-rate goal.

Easily customized options for individual students and extensive student reports.

Printable stories, reports, parent letters, awards, and completion certificates.

Online documentation includes:

Step-by-step instructions for working in the software and "how to" section on setting up Read Naturally Live.

A lesson plan for introducing the program to students.

Training videos that explain how to set up the software and work with students in the program.

ONLINE RESOURCES AND TECH SUPPORT

To help you implement Read Live successfully, Read Naturally provides free web resources and tech support.
Learn more about Read Naturally's online resources and tech support

Read Naturally Live is an integrated component of the Read Live platform.

Students At-a-Glance Report
This report includes a student-by-student summary of results for Read Naturally Live stories passed. This report is used to quickly identify students who may not be making adequate progress in fluency and comprehension and therefore may require adjustments in their programs or additional instruction.

Student Level Summary Report
This is a table summarizing results for each story a student has passed at a given Read Naturally Live level, including cold- and hot-timing results, number of practices, quiz results, and more.

Student Fluency Graph
This bar chart displays a student's cold- and hot-timing scores for all stories passed in a specified series and level.

Student Comprehension Graph
This graph shows the quiz questions a student answered correctly on the first try for each story in a specified level. Quiz results are reported by question type and story.

Student Retell Graph
This graph shows the number of words a student used to retell each completed story on the first try and whether or not the student met the teacher's expectations on the first try.

Word List Graph
This graph shows how long it took a student to read the word list on the most recent attempt for each story the student completed in a specified level.

Story Details Report
This report provides a student's detailed results for a specific Read Naturally Live story.​

Student Placement Results
This report shows the results of a student's placement test conducted using the Read Naturally Live placement program-the test results, recommendations, and decision.

Read Naturally Live is an integrated component of the Read Live platform. All Read Live licenses enable full access to the Read Naturally Live curriculum as well as access to the Word Warm-ups Live curriculum, One Minute Reader Live curriculum, and Read Naturally Live-Español curriculum.

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Read Naturally® Live :: Read Naturally, Inc.

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Build fluency and motivation by reading short, nonfiction passages. Increase reading accuracy and expression with audio support. Strengthen comprehension and vocabulary. Develop automaticity in decoding (Phonics levels). Work independently most of the time. Experience success and an improved attitude toward reading. Read Naturally Live provides...

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Phonics Instruction for Middle and High School ELLs

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I recently had the opportunity to teach summer school, and two of my sixth-grade students barely read at a first-grade level. This was very challenging for me, and I struggled to find the right way to address their need for phonics and comprehension instruction. Little by little, however, I began to…

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The population of English language learners (ELLs) in U.S. public schools is on the rise. Learn about the most effective ways to teach ELL students (or ESL students), how to create a welcoming classroom, and ways to promote family involvement.

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Knowing vocabulary words is key to reading comprehension. The more words a child knows, the better he or she will understand the text. Using a variety of effective teaching methods will increase the student’s ability to learn new words.

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Phonics Boost is a set of 80 intervention lessons for students in grades 3-12 who have significant and severe decoding weaknesses. The primary focus of the lessons is phonemic awareness, phonics concepts, and essential word-attack skills and the net effect of these lessons is faster and more accurate reading of complex text.

Students' accuracy, fluency, and comprehension improve when they learn with Phonics Boost. Students placed in Phonics Boost have typically struggled to acquire key foundational literacy skills, and need a slower pace and more practice than their peers. We also offer HD Word for grades 3-12, learn more>>

Intervention, RTI, Tier 2 & 3
40-60 Minutes a Day
Grades 3-12 - RTI, Tier 2 and 3, dyslexia, and special education intervention for students who struggle with basic phonics skills; small groups up to 10.

Phonics Boost can be supplemented with Phonics Boost Plus and progressed monitored using Phonics Boost Skills Assessments.

The Phonics Boost Teacher's Guides provide teachers with all the lessons they need to effectively teach Phonics Boost. All the lessons are built for the teacher and include a thorough explanation of the concepts, routines, and procedures. The lessons are easy to follow so they can be taught by a wide range of educators, not just seasoned literacy professionals, and phonics specialists. For those unfamiliar with teaching phonemic awareness and phonics, the guides include incremental professional development for each lesson.
Learn more and download a Phonics Boost sample lesson>>

Boost Online Teacher Presentation Tool is aninteractive teaching tool can be used with Boost to add a new dimension to instruction. Boost Online will help you engage emerging and struggling readers as you work through the Boost lessons. These virtual manipulatives help make important concepts obvious to your students and reduce teacher prep and set-up time. Students learn concepts faster and retain them better when the teacher uses these online tools.
Sign up for a 2 week trial>>

This set of 6 books contains everything a student needs to participate in the lessons; 4 student workbooks contain the phonics practice activities that help students develop mastery and automaticity, and 2 passage books contain the oral reading passages that help students build better fluency. The practice activities follow a standard Orton Gillingham scope and sequence. The activities are engaging, mature, and move at a pace that is appropriate for students in grades 3-12. There is a high concentration of academic vocabulary and students learn how to read the complex multi-syllable words that they encounter across the curriculum.

The Student Phonics Kit is an essential part of Phonics Suite instruction. Students use the magnetic letter tiles and SyllaBoards to practice the phonics concepts taught in the lessons. They use the calculator and colored pencils as they track errors and chart their fluency rate and accuracy during oral reading.

The Student Phonics Kit can also be used by tutors working with one or two students or with other phonics-based programs.

Phonics Boost and Blitz Skills Assessment

Phonics Skills Assessments (PSSA) are used to measure the progress of students receiving Phonics Boost of Phonics Blitz instruction. They provide a highly structured way to assess the specific skills student should have mastered after completing certain lessons. The PSSAs, combined with the teachers' ongoing classroom observations of students' growth, are a powerful tool for evaluating success and planning future instruction.

The PSSAs consist of 40 separate pre- and post-assessments that systematically measure mastery of the phonemic awareness and phonics concepts taught in Phonics Suite. The assessments allow educators to chart progress, report on student growth, and are a wonderful way to provide meaningful data to students, parents, teachers, and administrators.
Download a sample assessment>> Learn more and purchase

Phonics Boost Plus

Phonics Boost Plus is a supplement used to augment Phonics Boost and Blitz. Phonics Boost Plus has 40 modules. Each module is aligned with one or more specific lessons from Phonics Boost and Blitz and provides hundreds of multisensory activities and materials for strategic supplementation. It is designed for students that are growing with the lessons but need more practice and repetition to master and build automaticity with the concepts.
Learn more and purchase

Boost Student Group Size, Scope and Sequence and Lesson Structure

Phonics Boost lessons are most effective with small-group instruction. The group sizes vary from 3-12 students and are dependent on the deficit level of the students and their grades. Our complimentary Grouping Matrix™ will help identify the level of decoding difficulty for each student, the recommended set of lessons from Phonics Suite™, and the maximum group size. Sign up for free access to the Grouping Matrix.

The Phonics Boost scope and sequence is systematic and cumulative. Click here to view the Phonics Boost scope and sequence. Not all students start with Lesson 1 and complete all 80 lessons. There are multiple entry points for the lessons and many students test out of the program after just 25-30 hours of instruction.

Each Phonics Boost lesson has four parts: Oral Reading, with students periodically charting their own accuracy and fluency rate; Phonemic Awareness skill-building activities; Phonics Concepts, taught with engaging manipulatives; and Student Practice with students reading words and sentences out loud, with the teacher providing immediate supportive feedback.
What are the differences between Phonics Blitz and Boost? >>

Complimentary Initial Diagnostics

The most effective first step toward implementing our Phonics Suite lessons is assessing your students with our Diagnostic Decoding Surveys. In just 5-7 minutes, these assessments help educators identify which students have decoding deficits impairing their ability to comprehend. Since they can pinpoint an individual's word-level strengths and weaknesses, the data can be leveraged to determine what types of instruction will have the maximum impact on student success. Our complimentary packets contain everything you'll need for the initial assessment of an unlimited number of students. The packet also provides an explanation of how the survey results can be used to group students, and it offers guidance on how to plan effective and efficient instruction. Learn more and download our complimentary diagnostic assessments>>

Complimentary Student Grouping

Successful reading interventions start with accurate diagnosis and grouping. RGR's Grouping Matrix helps facilitate differentiated data-driven instruction and reporting. It is a free, web-based data management system that enables educators to group students (from the middle of 1st through 12th grade) according to the type and depth of their decoding difficulties. The same data management system can be used to monitor progress, report and adjust. Learn more and sign up for free access to the Grouping Matrix>>

Professional Development

Teacher background knowledge is a key component of successful reading intervention. Really Great Reading offers different training options to provide teachers and interventionists with the background knowledge they'll need to successfully diagnose, group, and teach struggling decoders. Even if you don't use Phonics Blitz or Phonics Boost, our professional development will offer you valuable techniques for helping struggling readers.
Book a workshop or see a schedule of workshops, webinars and access our training modules>>

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row][one]Really Great Reading's[color] Phonics Boost[/color][row][oneFourth][/oneFourth][threeFourth]Phonics Boost is a set of 80 intervention lessons for students in grades 3-12 who have significant and severe decoding weaknesses. The primary focus of the lessons is phonemic awareness, phonics concepts, and essential word-attack skills and the net effect of these lessons is

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DIBELS

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DIBELS

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DIBELS

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PAST

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The PAST can be downloaded above. Please also download and carefully read the instructions before using. Information can also be found in the manual “Equipped for Reading Success” by David A. Kilpatrick, Ph.D in chapter 11 on how to effectively use the test. Make sure to also practice using the test before using it with […]

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GORT-5

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GORT-5: Gray Oral Reading Test - Fifth Edition

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analysis system allows reading specialists to analyze reading errors and tailor interventions to specific students' needs.New Features of the GORT-5New normative data were collected in 2008-2010Norms were extended upward to age 23 years, 11 months'Basal and ceiling rules were streamlined to make administration easier and more efficientComprehension questions were completely revised, and studies were provided to show that the items are passage dependentReliability and validity studies were addedThe overall look of the test was updatedAvailable Scores for the GORT-5Rate.

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Keeping kids interested and motivated to read is sometimes a challenge. Learn how to effectively motivate young learners, including tips from kids for teachers and parents, classroom strategies that work, and guidance for motivating struggling readers, reluctant readers, and boys.

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Reading Don't Fix No Chevys: Literacy in the Lives of Young Men

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The problems of boys in schools, especially in reading and writing, have been the focus of statistical data, but rarely does research point out how literacy educators can combat those problems. That situation has changed. Michael Smith and Jeff Wilhelm, two of the most respected names in English ...

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Amazon.com: The Megabook of Fluency (0078073257010): Timothy V. Rasinski;Melissa Cheesman Smith: Books

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speech to print: language essentials for teachers

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Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers

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Amazon.com: Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers (9781681253305): Moats Ed.D., Louisa Cook, Brady Ph.D., Dr. Susan: Books

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Equipped for Reading Success [David A. Kilpatrick] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Equipped for Reading Success

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brain words: how the science of reading informs teaching

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Brain Words: How the Science of Reading Informs Teaching

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Amazon.com: Brain Words: How the Science of Reading Informs Teaching (9781625312730): Gentry, J. Richard, Ouellette, Dr. Gene: Books

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second edition: robust vocabulary instruction

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Bringing Words to Life, Second Edition: Robust Vocabulary Instruction

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Amazon.com: Bringing Words to Life, Second Edition: Robust Vocabulary Instruction (8601405872920): Isabel L. Beck, Margaret G. McKeown, Linda Kucan: Books

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Allen, L. H., & McKnight, K. S. (2018). Strategies to support struggling adolescent readers, grades 6-12. Rowman & Littlefield.

Hinchman, K. A., & Sheridan-Thomas, H. K. (2014). Best practices in adolescent literacy instruction. The Guilford Press.

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