Definition of a Core Reading Program:
A Core Reading Program is an instructional tool that teachers use to teach children to read. It gives both students and teacher a scope and sequence to guide them in daily structured, explicit and systematic lessons.
Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic Awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in spoken words.
- Recognizing which words begin with the same sound
- Isolating and saying the first or last sound in a word
- Combining or blending the separate sounds in a word
- Breaking a word into separate sounds
Phonics
Phonics instruction teaches children the relationships between the letters of written language and the individual sounds of spoken language.
- Hearing and recording sounds
- Decodable books
- Phonics decoding
Fluency
Fluency is the ability to read a text accurately and quickly. Fluent readers read aloud effortlessly, with expression, as if they are speaking. Fluency provides a bridge between word recognition and comprehension
- Fluent reading modeled in teacher Read Aloud
- Lots of books for students to read at their own level
- Students read and reread text
Vocabulary
Vocabulary can be described as oral of reading vocabulary. Children use the words they have heard to make sense of words they see in print.
- Discussion of concept
- Dictionaries
- How to use information about word pats to figure out the meaning of words
- How to use context clues to determine word meanings
Comprehension
Comprehension is the reason for reading. Good readers can understand what they read.
- Story maps, webs, graphs, charts, or frames
- Dictionaries
Components to a Comprehensive Curriculum
- Phonological and phonemic awareness
- Phonics, word recognition and decoding
- Vocabulary
- Reading fluency
- Text comprehension
- Oral language comprehension and production
Home Extension
- Establish a homework routine
- Read aloud to your child
- Listen to your child read
- Take them to the library
- Celebrate their small and big successes at school
