The Elements of Reading

During the early years of elementary school, children experience a wide variety of instructional methods, curriculums and approaches to reading. The National Reading Panel Report (NICHD, 2000) reviewed scientifically based reading research to define the most effective elements of reading instruction for children. The elements of reading are defined by Armbruster, Lehr and Osborn (2001) in their work, Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read.

• "Phonemic Awareness is the ability to hear, identify and manipulate the individual sounds—phonemes—in spoken words" (p. 4).

• "Phonics is the understanding that there is a predictable relationship between phonemes (the sounds of spoken language) and graphemes (the letters and spellings that represent those sounds in written language)" (p. 4).

• "Vocabulary refers to the words we must know to communicate effectively. In general, vocabulary can be described as oral vocabulary or reading vocabulary. Oral vocabulary refers to words that we use in speaking or recognize in listening. Reading vocabulary refers to words we recognize or use in print" (p. 34).

• "Fluency is the ability to read a text accurately and quickly. When fluent readers read silently, they recognize words automatically. They group words quickly to help them gain meaning from what they read. Fluent readers read aloud effortlessly and with expression. Their reading sounds natural, as if they are speaking" (p. 22).

• "Comprehension is the reason for reading. If readers can read the words but do not understand what they are reading, they are not really reading" (p. 48).

Those elements should be emphasized in children's reading instruction throughout their early school years

Understanding the reading process helps us understand how each of these elements works to help children become proficient readers.

The Reading Process

Children love to hear stories and, because of their oral language, they understand and comprehend the characters and events of the story when it is read out loud. However, for children to recognize their spoken language in print (reading) and be able to produce printed language to convey a meaning (writing), they must learn to recognize that the printed words are the same as the words they hear being read. For children to complete this task independently, they must learn to decode printed words into spoken language.

When children see unfamiliar words, they first recognize the shape, direction and orientation of the letters. Even larger chunks of words, including spelling patterns or letter pairs may be familiar to them. Next children associate the printed letters and letter patterns with the sounds represented by those letters. Children search their memories for sounds and manipulate the sounds in their minds or out loud, based on what they have learned about letters and letter patterns.

They combine this information to produce words (from their prior knowledge and background) that may fit in the context of what they are reading. Children immediately filter the meaning of these words against their comprehension of the material, searching for a match. Both word meaning (vocabulary) and content meaning (comprehension) work together as children read and understand their reading.

For strong readers, this process may take only milliseconds. For beginning readers the process may be slower, yet rewarding, and over time will become automatic. For readers who are challenged, this process can be tiresome and frustrating. It is these children who benefit from systematic and explicit instruction in each of the important elements of reading defined by scientific reading research. Let's take a further look at each of the elements.

Phonemic Awareness

Building children's phonemic awareness improves their ability to read and to spell. There are many ways to help children notice, think about and work with sounds in spoken language. These include:

• Phoneme isolation—Helping children recognize individual sounds in a word

Adult: "What’s the first sound in fit?"

Child: "The first sound is /f/."

• Phoneme identity—Recognizing the same sound in different words

Adult: "What sound is the same in sit, sun, and sand?"

Child: "The first sound is the same. The first sound is /s/."

• Phoneme categorization—Recognizing that one word in a sequence of words is different from the others

Adult: "Which word doesn't belong—fall, fan, bug?"

Child: " Bug. It doesn’t begin with /f/."

• Phoneme blending—Listening to a sequence of separately spoken phonemes and combining them to form a word

Adult: "What word is /s/ /i/ /t/?"

Child: "/s/ /i/ /t/ is sit."

• Phoneme segmentation—Breaking a word into its separate sounds and saying each sound while tapping out or counting the sounds.

Adult: "How many sounds do you hear in drum?"

Child: "/d/ /r/ /u/ /m/. There are four sounds."

• Phoneme deletion—recognizing the word that remains when a phoneme is removed

Adult: "What is train without the /t/?"

Child: " Train without the /t/ is rain."

• Phoneme addition—making a new word by adding a phoneme to another word

Adult: "What word do you have if you add /s/ to mile?"

Child: "Smile"

• Phoneme substitution—substituting one phoneme for another to make a new word

Adult: "The word is run. Change the /n/ to /g/. What's the new word?"

Child: " Rug."

(Adapted from Armbruster, Lehr and Osborn, 2001)

To meet the language and literacy needs of children, teachers and tutors, usually through student assessment, must know the level of individual students. The activities listed are not meant to be used as blanket activities for a class, but rather are intended for small groups of children or for use with individual children.

Although most children acquire a great deal of phonemic awareness in kindergarten, some first through third graders still may benefit from phonemic awareness practice. Activities in kindergarten probably will focus on simpler phonemic awareness skills such as rhyming, matching words with beginning sounds, and blending sounds into words. First through third graders might work with more advanced skills such as segmentation and substitution.

Click on the icons below for phonemic awareness activities
Rhyming Fun	Find a Phoneme	Odd Man Out	Alphabet Letter Eater

Phonics

Understanding the relationship between written letters and spoken sounds—phonics— is essential to the reading process The purpose of teaching phonics is to help children see this relationship. Phonics increases children's ability to decode words, which increases their ability to recognize words in isolation as well as in text. Recognizing the phoneme sounds that are represented by letters and spelling patterns can make the difference between a good reader and a struggling reader.

Children need to be taught the full range of letter-sound correspondences—consonant letters and sounds, long and short vowel letters and sounds, etc. And they must have practice applying what they learn in reading and writing. Practicing their skills, taking part in phonemic awareness activities and listening to stories and texts read aloud help children strengthen their phonics skills. Phonics is one part of a comprehensive reading program.

Click the icons below for activities that give children phonics practice.
Kindergartners	First and Second Graders	Third Graders

Vocabulary Instruction

Vocabulary is an important component of children's reading comprehension. As children sound out words when reading, they compare the sounds to words they know. The larger a child's vocabulary, the easier it is for him to match words as he reads.

In schools, the study of new words is often done through direct instruction. Children study a word's parts, its origin and its meaning. However, as a parent, teacher or volunteer, you also may have many indirect opportunities to build children's vocabularies.

Using what children are interested in can be a successful way to teach vocabulary. Children often provide clues to their interests as you read or work on projects or in your casual conversations. Picking up on these clues and using them to teach new words engages children in their learning and makes it more fun.

A quote from Louisa Moats (2000) helps us better understand how children remember words; "Words and concepts are known in accordance with prior knowledge. Effective teaching elaborates various connections among better-known and lesser-known words, deepens and enriches existing knowledge, and seeks to build a network of ideas around key concepts that are well elaborated."

The National Reading Panel Report (NICHD, 2000) also found that children learn from extending instruction and from repeated exposure to words and their use in a variety of contexts. Providing various experiences with the words that children are learning in school will strengthen their understanding of those words.

Fluency

Fluency is associated with strong skills in phonemic awareness, phonics, and vocabulary. As hildren develop skills in each of these areas, they will read more fluently. Fluency helps children bridge the gap between word recognition and comprehension. It is easier for children to understand what they read, if they don’t have to work hard to decode the words they are reading.

Click the icons below for some fluency activities.
Kindergartners	First/Second Graders	Third Graders

Comprehension

The other elements of quality reading instruction—phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary—are skills that contribute to reading comprehension. How well children use these skills contributes to their understanding of what they are reading. Asking "wh" (who, what, when, where and why) questions when reading, making predictions about what the story will be about or what will happen in the story, looking for main ideas and connecting the story to previous experiences are ways to help children understand what they read. Pre-teaching vocabulary words before reading also helps children's understanding.

Click on the icons below for comprehension activities to do with children.
Kindergartners	First/ Second Graders	First/ Second Graders

Comprehension activities continued
First/Second Graders	Third Graders

Children learn best when learning is fun. They do need to learn the skills necessary to become good readers and to be successful in school. Through activities like the ones suggested in this article, teachers, volunteers, and parents can make the reading process fun.

Click here for additional resources.

References

Armbruster, B. B., Lehr, F., & Osborn, J. (2001). Put reading first: The research building blocks for teaching children to read. Washington, DC: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and U.S. Department of Education. Available on-line at http://www.nifl.gov/nifl/publications.html

Moats, L. (2000) Speech to print: Language essentials for teachers. Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (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 (NIH Publication No. 00-4769). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

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