A Primer on Reading:

What ARE the

“Big Five in Reading”?

5Dr. Robert B. Cooter, Jr.Bellarmine University

The National Reading Panel’s

“Big Five”• Phonemic

Awareness• Phonics• Vocabulary• Reading

Comprehension• Reading Fluency

#1 Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness (PA) refers to the understanding that spoken words are made up of individual speech sounds (Pikulski & Templeton, 1997; Burns, Griffin, & Snow, 1999).

• For example, "no" and "she" each have two speech sounds, or phonemes. Phonemes are not the same as letters, by the way; letters represent phonemes in the spelling of words.

• Before children learn to read print, they need to become aware of how the sounds in words work and, as mentioned, that spoken words are made up of phonemes (National Reading Panel, 2000; Armbruster, Lehr, & Osborn, 2001).

Research on PA

Phonemic awareness is an important factor in beginning reading success, and in learning to spell (Lyon, 1997; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998; National Reading Panel, 2000).

About 20% of students lack phonemic awareness (Adams, 1990), a problem that can be easily resolved through classroom instruction.

Phoneme isolation- Recognizing individual sounds in words.

Teacher: What is the first sound in boy Student: The first sound in boy is /b/.

Phoneme identity- Hearing the same sound in different words.

Teacher: What sound is the same in boy, bake, and butter ?Student: The first sound /b/ is the same.

Phoneme categorization- Recognizing a word having a different sound in a group of three or four words.

Teacher: Which word doesn't belong? run, rake, toyStudent: Bed doesn't belong because it begins with /t/.

Assessing Phonemic Awareness: Examples

#2 PhonicsAnalogy Phonics—Teaching students unfamiliar words by analogy to known words (e.g., such as reading brick by recognizing that -ick is contained in the known word kick, or reading stump by analogy to jump).

Analytic Phonics—Teaching students to analyze letter-sound relations in previously learned words to avoid pronouncing sounds in isolation.

Embedded Phonics—Teaching students phonics skills by embedding phonics instruction in text reading, a more implicit approach that relies to some extent on incidental learning.

Phonics through Spelling—Teaching students to segment words into phonemes and to select letters for those phonemes (i.e., teaching students to spell words phonemically).

Synthetic Phonics—Teaching students explicitly to convert letters into sounds (phonemes) and then blend the sounds to form recognizable words.

#3 Vocabulary

Recognizing and understanding written vocabulary is essential to reading. Indeed, unless children are able to understand word meanings as they read, the process is reduced to mindless decoding (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996; Reutzel & Cooter, 2005).

Children who come to school with thousands of “words in their head”—words they can hear, understand, and use in their daily lives—are already on the path to learning success (Allington & Cunningham, 1996).

Similarly… children who have small listening, speaking, and reading vocabularies—from what could be termed “language deprived backgrounds”—must receive immediate attention if they are to have any real chance at reading success.

-- National Research Council, 1998; Johnson, 2001; Reutzel & Cooter, 2005

There Are Four Types of Vocabulary

• Listening vocabulary, the largest, is made up of words we can hear and understand. All other vocabularies are subsets of our listening vocabulary.

• The second largest vocabulary, speaking vocabulary, is comprised of words we can use when we speak.

• Next is our reading vocabulary, words we can identify and understand when we read. • The smallest is our writing vocabulary,

words we use in writing.

Level Definition

Unknown The word is completely unfamiliar and its meaning is unknown.

Acquainted The word is somewhat familiar; the student has some idea of its basic meaning.

Established The word is very familiar; the student can immediately recognize its meaning and use the word correctly.

Levels of Word Knowledge

#4 Reading Comprehension

Comprehension is the very heart and soul of

reading…

Three Avenues of Promise…

•Questioning (Higher Levels)

•Graphic Organizers (G.O.)

•Retelling (3 levels)- oral, G.O., written summaries

#5 Reading Fluency

Attention

Decoding

Comprehension

Fluency Skills

Automaticity involves translating letters-to-sounds-to-words effortlessly and accurately.

Quality refers to the reader’s ability to use proper intonation or expression (i.e., "prosodic features"-- pitch, juncture, and stress) in one's voice.

Rate involves attaining appropriate reading speed according to the reader’s purpose or the type of passage.

Oral Reading Fluency End-of-Year Goals for Grade Levels 1-5: Words per Minute (wpm)-- Instructional Level (Adequate) Text 

Grade Level

Minimum Words per Minute* (wpm)

Fluent Oral Reading (wpm)

Grade 1 60 wpm 80 wpm

Grade 2 70 wpm 100 wpm

Grade 3 80 wpm 126 wpm**

Grade 4 90 wpm 162 wpm**

Grade 5 100 wpm 180 wpm

 *Adapted from the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (2002-2002). Source: Texas Education Agency website-- http://www.tea.state.tx.us/.

** Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Listening to Children Read Aloud, 44. Washington, DC: 1995.

READING WRITING

Balanced Literacy K-6Balanced Literacy K-6INSTRUCTIONAL METHODOLOGIES

WITHIN A LANGUAGE RICH ENVIRONMENT•Classroom Management

•Room Arrangement

Skills Instruction and Practice

Oral Reading/Writing

Instructional Level Reading/Writing

Independent Reading/Writing

Developmental Writing

• Mini lessons• Spelling stages & strategies,

word work, making words, mechanics, word walls

• Handwriting

• Guided writing• Writer’s workshop

•Writing Process•Genre Study

• Writing aloud•Morning Message•Daily News•Model process writing

• Graphic organizers (Go Charts)

• Book extensions

• Writing/literacy centers• Journals/Response logs• Writer’s Notebook• Book making/extensions• Independent writing

• Writing stages• Interactive writing• Shared writing

• Mini lessons• Phonemic awareness• Alphabetic Principle• Elkonin boxes• Word Study

• Teacher read alouds• Language to Literacy Charts• Shared Reading/warm-ups

•Concepts about print•Cueing systems•Text Structure

• Comprehension Workshop• Retelling

• Guided reading•Teacher prompts•Teaching points•Running Records•Silent Reading•Reading for meaning

• Fix-up strategies• Reader’s Workshop

• Author’s chair/group sharing

ONGOING ASSESSMENT (TPRI/TEJAS LEE = K-2, DSP = 3-6, DLP/PLED = K-3)

• Book boxes• SSR/DEAR time• Reading/Literacy centers• Buddy reading• Literature circles/Book clubs• Inquiry/Research

11 3I CAN READ22 3

C Marrin

456READING TO LEARN

May you live in exciting times.

- Jewish proverb