Science of Reading by Ellie Stewart

Big Picture and Structure of English

estewar7 — 2025-08-25 19:02:50 UTC

63% of 4th graders and 64% of 8th graders scored at or below the basic reading level
scores have not been improving, despite increased reading
when we learn to read, we rewire part of our brain!
words are consisted of phonemes which are the smallest units of sound in a language
- English has 42-44 phonemes!

Print Awareness

estewar7 — 2025-08-27 18:12:06 UTC

Letter Knowledge

estewar7 — 2025-08-27 18:13:20 UTC

Phonological and Phonemic Awareness

estewar7 — 2025-08-27 18:13:53 UTC

Phonics

estewar7 — 2025-08-27 18:14:49 UTC

Irregular Word Readings

estewar7 — 2025-08-27 18:15:15 UTC

Multisyllbaic word reading

estewar7 — 2025-08-27 18:16:53 UTC

estewar7 — 2025-08-31 16:36:48 UTC

Print awareness is the knowledge that written language carries meaning
Print Awareness is acquired by most children during their pre-school years
should be assessed 3 times during kindergarten: fall, winter, and spring
students who have little to no access to books or reading at home are at risk of not being fully prepared for their elementary years in the sense of reading

estewar7 — 2025-08-31 16:45:52 UTC

Aspects of Print Awareness

ability to understand and recognize that print carries meaning
ability to understand and use book-component vocabulary
ability to turn the pages in a book
ability to track text from left to right and top to bottom
ability to recognize a word
ability to recognize the spaces in between words

estewar7 — 2025-08-31 16:49:46 UTC

Important things to teach

talking about the cover, title, author, and illustrations in books
text directionality (start from from of book, read one page at a time, left to right, top to bottom)
concept of word (words are separated by spaces, each word has different meaning in a sentence

Introducing letter B

estewar7 — 2025-09-04 16:51:59 UTC

https://files.readinguniverse.org/PDFs/introducing-letter-Bb-reading-universe.pdf

estewar7 — 2025-09-08 18:14:35 UTC

When students are tested, there should be uppercase and lowercase letters, and they should be out of alphabetical order!

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Kindergarten-Assessment-2795187

estewar7 — 2025-09-08 18:27:47 UTC

Letter Knowledge is an important skill for children to learn, hopefully in preschool, but definitely by kindergarten. Letter knowledge consists of reciting the alphabet, recognizing, naming, and writing all upper- and lowercase letters, and identifying the sound a letter makes. I think that I will use strategies like the two images I added, especially having lists like the grid the table that has mixed up uppercase and lowercase letters.

Levels of Phonological Awareness

estewar7 — 2025-09-19 23:32:39 UTC

1. Word 2. Syllable 3. Intrasyllable 4. Phoneme

Definitions

estewar7 — 2025-09-19 23:35:55 UTC

Phonemic Awareness: the ability to detect, identify, and manipulate phonemes in spoken words

Phoneme: the smallest unit of a spoken language that makes a difference in a words meaning

Sample Activity

estewar7 — 2025-09-19 23:42:16 UTC

Segmenting cheer activity (scroll down to 6th activity)

https://www.readingrockets.org/classroom/classroom-strategies/blending-and-segmenting-games

estewar7 — 2025-09-19 23:44:57 UTC

Phonological awareness is the ability to hear and work with the different sounds in spoken words, like rhymes and syllables. A smaller part of this skill is phonemic awareness, which means noticing and working with the single sounds, or phonemes, in words. For example, when a child can break the word cat into /c/ /a/ /t/ or put those sounds together, they are using phonemic awareness. These skills are very important because they help students when they start learning to read and spell. In the classroom, we practice them through fun activities like clapping out word parts, rhyming, and blending sounds together.

What

estewar7 — 2025-10-07 23:39:13 UTC

Phonics is a method of instruction that teaches the systematic relationship between letters and letter combinations in written language and the individual sounds in spoken language and how to use these relationships to read and spell words

decoding and blending
automatic word recognition
decodable text

Why

estewar7 — 2025-10-07 23:42:05 UTC

Phonics is the best and most efficient way to teach students the alphabet principle

English is an alphabetic language, therefore, knowing how written letters are spoken gives readers a systematic method of reading unknown words.

When?

estewar7 — 2025-10-07 23:45:02 UTC

phonics has its greatest impact in kindergarten and first grade
it can begin was soon as a student knows the sounds of a few letters and should continue until all students can decide multi syllabic words confidently and automatically
accesses and intervening should begin early on
use building blocks

How

estewar7 — 2025-10-07 23:47:08 UTC

https://readinguniverse.org/explore-teaching-topics/word-recognition/phonics

https://www.readingrockets.org/reading-101/reading-101-learning-modules/course-modules/phonics/practice

What

estewar7 — 2025-10-14 18:39:15 UTC

High-frequency irregular words are words that appear consistently in text but are not able to be sounded out

Why?

estewar7 — 2025-10-14 19:14:14 UTC

decoding is a reliable strategy for decoding regular words, but sometimes that is not possible with irregular words
knowledge of irregular words is necessary for fluent reading

When?

estewar7 — 2025-10-14 19:19:12 UTC

should be systematically introduced in a reasonable order and regularly practiced
waiting to introduce these words will encourage students to rely on identifying a word based off of sounding it out rather than identifying it as a whole
an irregular word should be introduced at least once before a student reads it in the connected text

How

estewar7 — 2025-10-14 19:23:54 UTC

PRACTICE!!
aim for automaticity
flash cards

What

estewar7 — 2025-10-14 22:08:25 UTC

to read words in text fluently and accurately, the Brian's orthographic processor must learn to recognize common letters patterns adj recurring word parts
when skilled readers encounter a multisyllabic word, they automatically break it up into smaller united based on brains memory of common patterns from other words
flexible syllabication
- breaking up words into spoken syllables, matching the spoken syllables to their spellings, and then blending the segments form a recognizable word.