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Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read
The five building blocks for teaching children to read are phonemic awareness, phonics,
fluency, vocabulary, and text comprehension. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that
the sounds of our spoken language work in conjunction to form words; it is the foundation for
phonics instruction. With this understanding, we recognize and manipulate sounds to form
words. In the spoken language, a phoneme is the smallest part of sound. There are more than
40 phonemes in the English language. According to research from Armbruster et al., phonemic
awareness instruction is most effective when children link the letter name (grapheme) and shapes to the
associated sound (2010). An educator can utilize activities to increase phonemic awareness by
using phoneme: isolation, identification, categorization, blending, segmentation, deletion,
addition, and substitution. An effective educator selects one or two activity types to focus on at
a time.
Phonics instruction teaches students that there is a relationship between the phonemes
we speak and the graphemes we write. These systematic and predictable patterns are known as
the alphabetic principle. When students learn these relationships, they can use them to
recognize familiar words and “decode” the unfamiliar words they read. An effective phonics
program needs to be organized and explicit. For phonics instruction to be effective, an educator
needs to provide plenty of time. A variety of ways to interact and apply the learned sounds and
letters when reading words, sentences, or stories will help build literacy skills.
As students begin to read words and sentences, educators should start fluency
instruction. Being a fluent reader means a student is able read text accurately and quickly. Also,
they read with expression and sound natural without effort. Fluency takes time and lots of
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practice to master – a student’s level of fluency may change based on the level of text at hand.
When selecting texts for practice, educators should choose materials that are within the
students independent reading level. Instructors can use repeated readings to practice fluency.
Teachers listen and provide feedback while students read and reread passages. For most
students, reading the same text four times is sufficient to reach fluency of that text. Teachers
should model fluency by reading aloud to students. During the read-aloud, the teacher should
teach students how to use intonation and when to pause in reading. When students can read
fluently, they can then focus on comprehension of the text.
To aid in comprehension, we rely on the vocabulary that we recognize. Vocabulary can
be broken into four types: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Oral vocabulary refers to
the words we know when listening and speaking. Reading vocabulary refers to the words we
know in print. Beginning readers connect what a word means with the words they learn to
read. Most vocabulary is gained though indirect methods including conversations, read aloud,
and reading independently.
All this aids in text comprehension, which is the reason to read. Educators can teach
comprehensive strategies through explicit and cooperative learning. Readers benefit from
educators modeling or thinking out loud as we read to explain our understanding of the text.
Chapter one in the textbook breaks the phonological system into the four cueing
systems (Tompkins et al., 2021). The first cueing system is phonological, the sound system, which
focuses on phonemic awareness and phonics. The second is syntactic, this is the structural organization
of English. It focuses on manipulating words using morphemes. The third is the semantic system, which
focuses on vocabulary. Both the textbook and article emphasize that most vocabulary is learned
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indirectly. The last cueing system is pragmatic – the social aspect of language usage. The only reading
instruction I have been directly involved in has been at the phonemic awareness level.
References
Armbruster, B., Lehr, F., & Osborn, J. (2010). Put reading first: The research building blocks for
teaching children to read: Kindergarten through grade 3. National Institute for Literacy.
Tompkins, G., Rodgers, E., & Rodgers, A. (2021). Literacy for the 21st century: Balancing reading
and writing instruction (8th ed.). Pearson.
Response #1
Reply to Brian Cavanagh
Brian, thank you for sharing. I wish more parents and teachers understood the importance of
reading to their child – having purposeful conversations with their children can help with reading and
vocabulary skills. Vocabulary and reading are important skills to foster at a very young age. Long before
children enter school. According to research from Colker by the age of 3 students that have not been
read to or have meaningful conversations with adults, have a word gap that will require early
interventions that directly address this issue (2014). Which is why reading to our kids is so important. As
our reading assignment “Put Reading First” pointed out, a student is more likely to connect a word they
have read, when they have already heard it. As educators teaching young children to read it is
important read to our students to help them become better readers! I hope now that your kids can read
on their own, you have not stopped reading with them. My girls and I will often do our own “book clubs”
and read the same books or series. Good luck with the semester!
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References
Armbruster, B., Lehr, F., & Osborn, J. (2010). Put reading first: The research building blocks for
teaching children to read: Kindergarten through grade 3. National Institute for Literacy.
Colker, L. J. (2014, March). The word gap: The early years make the difference. NAEYC.
Retrieved January 21, 2023, from https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/tyc/feb2014/the-
word-gap
Response #2
Reply to Kelly Travis
////// Kelly, thank you for your post. My goal is to eventually teach in preschool. I love how
your students are doing picture walks. The first book I ever had an experience was Harold and
the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson (1955). My professor brought her 6-year-old daughter
into class and had her “read” the book based on the pictures. Modeling effective reading to your
students has resulted in them learning a reading skill that they may use for comprehension later.
As Chapman and Sopko state, a picture walk can be a pre-reading strategy for developing
students, as it may give insight into the misconceptions or questions that students may have prior
to reading the book (2003). /Since I graduated several educators, I have worked with have used
picture walks with students with disabilities as a pre reading strategy. I love to listen to their
stories they come up with if they had never seen the book before. Good luck with the semester!
References
Chapman, V. G., & Sopko, D. (2003). Developing strategic use of Combined-Text trade books.
Reading Rockets. Retrieved January 21, 2023, from
https://www.readingrockets.org/article/developing-strategic-use-combined-text-trade-books
Johnson, C. (1955). Harold and the Purple Crayon. Harper.
Instructions
150-200 words. support assertions with scholarly citations.
