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Letter/Sound Tic Tac Toe!

Each child has a tic-tac-toe board with random uppercase letters of the alphabet. Say and word, and the student must identify the beginning sound. The first student to have three letters in a row wins. They also need to repeat the letter and sound when they win.

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Activity Accommodation

"involves explicit instruction on letter recognition, using various strategies such as letter-sound flashcards, alphabet charts, and interactive activities. Simultaneously, students begin to associate each letter with its corresponding sound(s)."(Brown, 2023) Using different means of instruction helps all students at various developmental levels.

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Resources for Families

1. Families can make rhyming games with note cards at home and play memory match. Also, the teacher can send home premade cards and cards with pictures that can help support all learners.

2. Counting and clapping out syllables of different types of food and family members' names.

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Slap the Letter Sounds

Make a word from foam letters or on cardstock and have students swat each letter as they say the sounds. (Marshall, 2024)

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Activity Accommodation

The teacher and the student have the option of making it a word and slapping each sound to blend or if the child is not ready for words yet, they can slap the individual letter and say the sound.

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Resources for Families

1. Fun Phonics Writing- the child can write a letter and words, and then the child says the sound of the letter or the word. This activity can be low-cost or free to do at home. The child can write in shaving cream, sand, dirt, pudding, or even mud!

2. Word Building with Magnetic Letters- Practice building phonics words of the week from the student's school folder.

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Choice of Text

Instead of choosing a passage on the student's grade level, choose a text or passage that is on their independent reading level or just below.

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Activity Accommodation

Selecting passages or text at or below a student's reading level helps the child not get frustrated and promotes confidence in reading.

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Resources for Families

1. Reread Favorite Book- Since practice makes perfect, encourage your child to read books they are already familiar with. They can read them out loud to themselves or family members. Repetition builds accuracy and confidence.

2. Word Reading- Read words without sounding them out. Use a list provided by your child's teacher, and read the words daily without sounding them out.

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Get a soft-feeling ball

Have students make a circle

Name a category

One student will throw the ball to another student. When they catch it they will say a word from the category

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Hot Potato can be played with only familiar categories. It can also be played as a review. This game can be played at a pace where that is good for everyone.

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1. Provide a simple, kid-friendly example that makes sense within their daily life:

Remember that really big watermelon we got at the grocery store? That was an enormous watermelon!

2. Encourage your child to develop their own example:

What enormous thing can you think of? Can you think of something really big that you saw today? That’s right! The bulldozer near the park was enormous! Those tires were huge. (reading rockets, 2024)

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Stick story questions can be used to ask questions before, during, and after the story to help with comprehension.

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The teacher can choose questions according to the academic level of each small group.

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Mind Movies/Draw It Out-after child rads the story or passage, have them draw out what the story was about. This can be helpful with families that have speak more than one language in the home.

I Predict…-Before reading the book, have your child predict hat the books is about by looking t the cover and describing it. Alison taking a “picture walk” by lookin t the pictures and talking but what they see.

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Oral language is the system of words and word combinations used to communicate with others through speaking and listening. We use oral language to express and comprehend knowledge, ideas, and feelings. Oral language allows us to connect words, to communicate, and to understand. It is the foundation on which all emergent literacy and later reading is built. Strong oral language skills are key to successfully communicating ideas, needs and goals, and to developing personal relationships with family and friends.

Phonological awareness is the understanding that spoken language can be broken down into parts and the ability to manipulate those parts at the word, syllable, onset-rime, and phoneme level. Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in spoken words. Phonemic awareness is a developmental level of phonological awareness. Think about the size of the unit of language you are focusing on--if you are working with a broad focus of words or syllables it is phonological awareness. If you are working with a narrow focus of individual sounds (phonemes), it is phonemic awareness. The ultimate goal of phonological awareness instruction is to help students develop an awareness that words are composed of individual sounds, or phonemes, and to develop the ability to manipulate individual sounds in words. Phonological awareness helps students benefit more from phonics instruction and is directly related to reading ability.

Phonological Awareness Resources

Differentiating Phonological Awareness Instruction

Student Progress Records, Information to Guide Instruction, and Instructional Routines

Progress monitoring data and teacher observation determine the type of phonological awareness instruction and practice individual students need. Use these Student Progress Records to record individual student progress in phonological awareness and to form groups for differentiated small group instruction. Some features in these documents will only function when opened in Adobe Acrobat 2020 or later versions.

Information to Guide Instruction and Aligned Instructional Routines

The information in the tables below can help you learn more about the instructional needs of your students and guide your instruction with specific groups and/or individual students. If the student cannot demonstrate the skill, you can implement the aligned instructional routine during small group instruction.

Phonics is the relationship between graphemes (letters) and the phonemes (sounds) they represent. Phonics is also used to describe reading instruction that teaches these relationships (often referred to as sound-symbol correspondences). The goal of phonics instruction is to help children use sound-symbol correspondences to read and write words.

Phonics instruction helps students learn the alphabetic principle (the understanding that there are systematic and predictable relationships between written letters and spoken words). This helps students learn to read familiar words with accuracy and decode unknown words. This process proves true for regular (e.g., mat) and irregular (e.g., phone) words. Once students are able to read words quickly, reading connected text becomes more fluent, and more cognitive energy can be devoted to comprehension, and less on decoding words.

Differentiating Phonics Instruction

Student Progress Records, Information to Guide Instruction, and Instructional Routines

Progress monitoring data and teacher observation determine the type of phonics instruction and practice individual students need. Use these Student Progress Records to record individual student progress in phonics and to form groups for differentiated small group instruction. Some features in these documents will only function when opened in Adobe Acrobat 2020 or later versions.

Information to Guide Instruction and Aligned Instructional Routines

The information in the tables below can help you learn more about the instructional needs of your students and guide your instruction with specific groups and/or individual students. If the student cannot demonstrate the skill, you can implement the aligned instructional routine during small group instruction.

Fluency is the ability to read out loud accurately, at an appropriate rate, and with prosody (proper phrasing, intonation, and expression). Fluency emerges gradually over time through supported and repeated practice in automatic word recognition and reading connected text. The successful development of fluency depends on an individual acquiring phonemic awareness, accurate letter-sound correspondence, sound blending, and spelling pattern and morpheme recognition. Oral reading practice with feedback from the teacher is necessary. The goal of fluent reading is to improve comprehension through the ability to recognize words automatically, accurately, and with prosody.

Eventually, all words become "sight words" as they are repeatedly read correctly in text. It is the students' ability to recognize very large numbers of words "at a single glace" that is one of the most important factors underlying the development of reading fluency in the early elementary grades. When students read fluently, they are not focusing on decoding words, but instead they can actively construct meaning as they read.

Differentiating Fluency Instruction

Student Progress Records, Information to Guide Instruction, and Instructional Routines

Progress monitoring data and teacher observation determine fluency instruction and practice individual students need. Use these Student Progress Records to record individual student progress in fluency and to form groups for differentiated small group instruction. Some features in these documents will only function when opened in Adobe Acrobat 2020 or later versions.

Information to Guide Instruction and Aligned Instructional Routines

The information in the tables below can help you learn more about the instructional needs of your students and guide your instruction with specific groups and/or individual students. If the student cannot demonstrate the skill, you can implement the aligned instructional routine during small group instruction.

Vocabulary refers to knowledge about the meanings, uses, and pronunciation of words. Vocabulary is often categorized as oral vocabulary (listening and speaking) and print vocabulary (reading and writing). The goal of vocabulary instruction is to provide students with an understanding of the meaning and use of words so that they can comprehend what they are reading and communicate effectively. The role of vocabulary instruction in the classroom is to expand the oral vocabulary while developing an extensive print vocabulary.

Differentiating Vocabulary Instruction

Student Progress Records, Information to Guide Instruction, and Instructional Routines

Progress monitoring data and teacher observation determine vocabulary instruction and practice individual students need. Use these Student Progress Records to record individual student progress in vocabulary and to form groups for differentiated small group instruction. Some features in these documents will only function when opened in Adobe Acrobat 2020 or later versions.

Information to Guide Instruction and Aligned Instructional Routines

The information in the tables below can help you learn more about the instructional needs of your students and guide your instruction with specific groups and/or individual students. If the student cannot demonstrate the skill, you can implement the aligned instructional routine during small group instruction.

Comprehension refers to the understanding of the meaning of a passage and the context in which the words occur. Reading comprehension depends on various underlying components including decoding (the ability to translate words in print into speech), knowledge of word meanings (vocabulary), fluency, the ability to understand and interpret spoken language, and knowledge of text structure. Skills that support the development of reading comprehension include both language-comprehension skills as well as word-reading skills. Difficulty in word reading limits reading comprehension in the early stages of learning to read. However, as reading connected text becomes more fluent across the grade levels, students rely more on language comprehension to comprehend what is read. The goal of comprehension instruction is for students to gain understanding from written language.

Differentiating Comprehension Instruction

Student Progress Records, Information to Guide Instruction, and Instructional Routines

Progress monitoring data and teacher observation determine comprehension instruction and practice individual students need. Use these Student Progress Records to record individual student progress in comprehension and to form groups for differentiated small group instruction. Some features in these documents will only function when opened in Adobe Acrobat 2020 or later versions.

Information to Guide Instruction and Aligned Instructional Routines

The information in the tables below can help you learn more about the instructional needs of your students and guide your instruction with specific groups and/or individual students. If the student cannot demonstrate the skill, you can implement the aligned instructional routine during small group instruction.

Writing is a fundamental part of engaging in professional, social, community, and civic activities. Students should develop an early foundation in writing in order to communicate their ideas effectively and efficiently.

Differentiating Writing Instruction

Student Progress Records, Information to Guide Instruction, and Instructional Routines

Progress monitoring data and teacher observation determine writing instruction and practice individual students need. Use these Student Progress Records to record individual student progress in writing and to form groups for differentiated small group instruction. Some features in these documents will only function when opened in Adobe Acrobat 2020 or later versions.

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The components of reading are oral language, phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and writing. For each reading component, you will find a definition, why it is important, evidence-based practices, and resources. Also included is information to differentiate instruction: grade-specific Student Progress Records, Information to Guide Instruction, and Instructional Routines.

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In this episode, Susan Lambert is joined by Arturo Valadez Sáenz, a demonstration teacher from Dallas, Texas, who delves into his journey from his childhood in Mexico to becoming an educator in the United States. He describes his current role, teaching both English and Spanish language arts, and emphasizes the importance of bilingual education. He shares the demographics and linguistic challenges of his students, many of whom are newcomers to the country, some of whom come from economically d...

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ml/el e6: curating a confident classroom for multilingual learners

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‎Science of Reading: The Podcast: ML/EL E6: Curating a confident classroom for multilingual learners, with Arturo Valadez Sáenz on Apple Podcasts

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In this episode, Susan Lambert is joined by Arturo Valadez Sáenz, a demonstration teacher from Dallas, Texas, who delves into his journey from his childhood in Mexico to becoming an educator in the United States. He describes his current role, teaching both English and Spanish language arts, and emp...

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5 Components of Reading | IMSE | Orton-Gillingham

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Adams, M., Treiman, R., & Pressley, M. (1998). Reading, writing and literacy. In I. E. Siegal and K. A. Renniger (Eds.), Handbook of child psychology: Child psychology in practice (5th ed., Vol. 4, pp. 275-355). New York: Wiley.

Bear, D. Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (1996). Words their way: Word study for phonics, vocabulary, and spelling. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill.

Beck, I. L., & McKeown, M. G. (1991). Conditions of vocabulary acquisition. In P. D. Pearson (Ed.), The Handbook of Reading Research (Vol. 2, pp. 789-814). New York: Longman Press.

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & Omanson, R. C. (1984). The fertility of some types of vocabulary instruction. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans.

Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., Hamilton, R. L., & Kucan, L. Getting at the meaning: How to help students unpack difficult text. American Educator, 22, 66-71, 85.

Beck, I. L., McCaslin, E. C., & McKeown, M. G. (1980). The rationale and design of a program to teach vocabulary to fourth-grade students. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Learning Research and Development Center.

Berninger, V., Vaughan, K., Abbott, R., Brooks, A., Abbott, S., Reed, E., Rogan, L., & Graham, S. (1998). Early intervention for spelling problems: Teaching spelling units of varying size within a multiple connections framework. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90, 587-605.

Berninger, V., Vaughan, K., Abbott, R., Abbott, S., Brooks, A., Rogan, L., Reed, E., & Graham, S. (1997). Treatment of handwriting fluency problems in beginning writing: Transfer from handwriting to composition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89, 652-666.

Durkin, D. (1993). Teaching them to read (6th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Ehri, L., & Soffer, A. (1999). Graphophonemic awareness: Development in elementary students. Scientific Studies of Reading, 3, 1-30.

Fletcher, J. M., & Lyon, G. R. (1998). Reading: A research-based approach. In W. Evers (Ed.), What's gone wrong in America's classrooms (pp. 49-90). Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.

Graham, S., Berninger, V., Abbott, R., Abbott, S., & Whitaker, D. (1997). The role of mechanics in composing of elementary school students: A new methodological approach. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89, 170-182.

Learning First Alliance (1998). Every child reading: An action plan. Washington, DC: Author.

Moats, L. C. (1995). The missing foundation in teacher education. American Educator, 19(2), 9, 43-51.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Fluency. Chap. 3 in Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: Reports of the subgroups (pp. 3-1-3-43). Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: 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, National Institutes of Health.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Text comprehension. Part 2 of Chap. 4 in Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: Reports of the subgroups (pp. 4-39-4-118). Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.

National Reading Panel. (2000). Vocabulary instruction. Part 1 of Chap. 4 in Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read: Reports of the subgroups (pp. 4-15-4-38). Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health.

Pressley, M. (1998). Reading instruction that works: The case for balanced teaching. New York: Guilford Press.

Scarborough, H., Ehri, L., Olson, R., & Fowler, A. (1998). The fate of phonemic awareness beyond the early school years. Scientific Studies of Reading, 2, 115-142.

Snow, C., Burns, S., & Griffin, P. (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children (pp. 80-83). Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Treiman, R. (1993). Beginning to spell. New York: Oxford University Press.

In addition to their mention in Every Child Reading: An Action Plan, these components are commonly delineated in documents such as research reviews, state standards on instruction, the Reading Excellence Act funding criteria, curriculum guidelines, and teacher instructional manuals.

Of course, as the National Reading Panel notes, "phonics teaching is a means to an end... . In implementing systematic phonics instruction, educators must keep the end in mind and ensure that children understand the purpose of learning letter sounds and that they are able to apply these skills accurately and fluently in their daily reading and writing activities" (Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institute of Health, 2000, p. 10). The panel's report also states that, notwithstanding the fact that explicit, systematic, synthetic phonics is the most effective approach, there remain unanswered questions on how to make this instruction as effective as possible. For example, the panel notes that more research is needed on questions such as how long single instruction sessions should last, how many letter-sound relations should be taught, and how many months or years a phonics program should continue. Moreover, some children will learn and appropriately apply phonics skills quickly and effortlessly, while others must be taught slowly, step by step. The individual variation in any group remains a continual challenge to teacher judgment, resourcefulness, and program management skill.

In the standardization of the Texas Primary Reading Inventory, these subtests combined predict the likelihood of success or failure with about 90 percent accuracy.

The readability of text, as reflected in sentence complexity and frequency of vocabulary, can now be assessed with software. Readability formulas tend to have more validity for children who have attained a reading level above 2nd grade than they do for those who are just beginning to read, and readability does not reflect the extent to which a text is decodable on the basis of what a child has been taught.

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9 Components of Effective, Research-Supported Reading Instruction

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We know from research that an effective reading program must address several aspects of reading. Among others, these aspects include the alphabetic code, fluency, comprehension, and motivation.

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As educators, we are always learning and growing in order to improve reading instruction. It can be challenging to sift through the many resources available, so we have created a list for you. The following includes a list of 30 resources for educators who wish to further their knowledge about the Science of Reading.

5 "Must See" Resources to Get Started
1. EAB Report: Narrowing the 3rd Grade Reading Gap (10 minute read)
A research brief for educators embracing the science of reading from the EAB District Leadership Forum. This is an accessible read for educators who want to learn more and implement classroom instruction that is aligned to the science of reading.

2. Of 'Hard Words' and Straw Men: Let's Understand What Reading Science is Really About by Louisa Moats (5 minute read)

An article about what the Science of Reading really entails and how important it is to really have an understanding of the components of foundational literacy instruction in order to implement them effectively into the classroom.

3. Hard Words: Why Aren't Kids Being Taught to Read? (45 minute listen)
Emily Hanford, educational journalist has researched reading instruction across the US. Her findings sparked conversations about The Science of Reading and how we can improve reading proficiency in the US. 4. Videos: Is My Kid Learning to Read? (Part 1 and Part 2; 26 minutes) How many students are being taught to read in the classroom can be eye-opening for parents. Watch this two-part video series to learn more about how students may be learning to read and how to best support them as they continue to learn to read. 5. Reading Rockets website
Okay, we kind of cheated with #5, but if you read nothing else on Reading Rockets, be sure to check out their articles on Phonological and Phonemic Awareness and Why Phonological Awareness is Important for Reading and Spelling .

Infographics

6. The Ladder of Reading by Nancy Young

7. Scarborough's Reading Rope

"The genesis of the Reading Rope dates back to Scarborough's lectures for parents on the complexities involved in learning to read. Originally, she spoke of skilled reading as resembling the 'strands' of a rope, using pipe cleaners to illustrate the interconnectedness and interdependence of all the components."

8. How Our Brains Learn to Read

Our brains are naturally set up to learn to speak, but learning to read does not happen on its own. Scientists have found that we must develop certain parts of our brains and build connections between brain areas that were not connected before. The picture (below) shows four different areas of our brains that we use when we read.

Podcasts

9. Educate by APM Reports

Stories about education, opportunity, and how people learn. Emily Hanford podcasts are recommended and two favorites are listed below:

At a Loss for Words (52 minutes; published Aug. 22, 2019)

National Assessment Shows More K-12 Students Struggling to Read (25 minutes; published Nov. 1, 2019)

10. Glean Education: Research to Practice

Dive into current research, hot topics, and success stories with our two podcast series for educators.

Why Phonological Awareness is Important to Reading? (23 minutes; published Jan. 3, 2019)

How to Make Sight Word Instruction and Reading Intervention More Effective ( 50 minutes published Oct. 1, 2020)

11. Science of Reading: The Podcast by Amplify Education

The latest insights from researchers and practitioners in early reading. Each episode takes a conversational approach and explores a timely topic related to the science of reading.

12. Teaching, Reading & Learning: The Podcast by The Reading League

Listen to speakers who have made important contributions to the educational community as they discuss reading and writing, but connect to other "literacies" that impact children's learning .

Websites, Blogs & Webinars

13. The Reading League

The Reading League is a non-profit organization focused on the mission to advance awareness, understanding, and use of evidence-based reading instruction.

14. Right to Read Project

A group of teachers, researchers, and activists committed to the pursuit of equity through literacy.

15. Louisa Moats

A website from Literacy Expert, Louisa Moats, includes webinars, blogs, and articles for educators committed to best practices in literacy instruction.

16. The Literacy Nest

Emily Gibbons, certified dyslexia practitioner and creator of The Literacy Nest shares resources for instruction for struggling readers.

17. CORE Learn

The Consortium on Reaching Excellence is Education (CORE) provides many excellent resources and free professional learning opportunities.

18. The Learning Spark

A kindergarten teacher who shares her experience along with many resources in the areas of literacy.

19. Education Week

A website sharing in-depth information and research serving K-12 education.

Articles & Research

20. Developing Early Literacy: Report of the National Early Literacy Panel (2008)

21. Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching Children to Read (2000)

22. Learning to Read: Center for Early Reading (

23. Teaching Reading Is Rocket Science: What Expert Teachers of Reading Should Know and Be Able to Do, 2020 by Louisa Moats, published by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT)

Teacher Resources

24. Florida Center for Reading Research: FCRR

25. University of Florida Literacy Institute: UFLI

26. The Simple View of Reading

Professional Books

27. Speech to Print by Louisa Moats (2014)

28. Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties by David Kilpatrick (2015)

29. Phonics from A to Z by Wiley Blevins (2017)

30. Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print by Marilyn Adams (1994)

Did we miss a resource? Please leave a comment and let us know!

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As educators, we are always learning and growing in order to improve reading instruction. It can be challenging to sift through the many resources available, so we have created a list for you. The following includes a list of 30 resources for educators who wish to further their knowledge about the Science of Reading.

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Effective Reading Interventions for Kids with Learning Disabilities

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Research-based information and advice for sizing up reading programs and finding the right one for your child with a learning disability.