Essential Components of Reading Instruction

What are the essential components of reading instruction?

Scientifically based reading research has identified five essential components of effective reading instruction:

1. PHONEMIC AWARENESS– The ability to hear, identify and manipulate the individual sounds –phonemes – in spoken words. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that the sounds of spoken language work together to make words.
   
   
2. PHONICS – 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. Readers use these relationships to recognize familiar words accurately and automatically and to decode unfamiliar words.
   
   
3. VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT – Development of stored information about the meanings and pronunciation of words necessary for communication.
   
   
4. READING FLUENCY, INCLUDING ORAL READING SKILLS– Fluency is the ability to read text accurately and quickly. It provides a bridge between word recognition and comprehension. Fluent readers recognize words and comprehend at the same time.
   
   
5. READING COMPREHENSION STRATEGIES– Strategies for understanding, remembering, and communicating with others about what has been read. Comprehension strategies are sets of steps that purposeful, active readers use to make sense of text.

What is scientifically based reading research?

Scientifically based reading research is research that applies rigorous, systematic and objective procedures to obtain valid knowledge relevant to reading development, reading instruction, and reading difficulties.

This includes research that:

1. Employs systematic, empirical methods that draw on observation or experiment;
   
   
2. Involves rigorous data analyses that are adequate to test the stated hypotheses and justify the general conclusions drawn;
   
   
3. Relies on measurements or observational methods that provide valid data across evaluators and observers and across multiple measurements and observations; and
   
   
4. Has been accepted by a peer-reviewed journal or approved by a panel of independent experts through a comparably rigorous, objective and scientific review.