5 Essential Components of Reading

Learning to read is imperative for today’s students. Reading is a tool we use to share our ideas, knowledge, and experiences. Reading provides a means for learning. There are five essential components of reading.
1. Phonemic Awareness:
Children must understand phonemic awareness in order to associate sounds with letters and manipulate sounds to blend words. Phonemic awareness is the foundation for phonics instruction. Children must first learn to segment words by sounds and know the sound of the phonemes before they can learn to read.
2. Phonics:
“Phonics refers to how alphabet spellings relate to speech sounds in systematic and predictable ways, and how this knowledge can be used to identify words in print” (Cooter, Reutzel 2009, p.25).Phonics instruction is most important for kindergarten through second grade students. Students should complete phonics instruction by second grade.
3. Fluency:
According to Phonics from A to Z fluency is one’s ability to read smoothly with freedom from word recognition problems (Blevins, 2006). Fluency is necessary for comprehension and pleasurable reading.
4. Vocabulary:
Vocabulary instruction involves the learning of words and their meanings. There are four types of vocabulary. The four types of vocabulary are listening, speaking, reading, and writing vocabularies. Vocabulary teaching relates directly to reading comprehension; if students do not know what a word means in a passage it is difficult for them to comprehend what the passage is about.
5. Reading Comprehension:
Each component is directly related to reading success. Students must master phonemic awareness so they can segment word sounds. Using phonics a student can segment words by sounds. Then they can spell and read written text. Students begin to decode and recognize words while reading. Once the student can recognize a large number of written words their reading fluency improves. Reading fluency will improve reading comprehension since students are not struggling with decoding words. Students can devote their attention to vocabulary and making meaning form the text (Blevins, 2006). All components of the reading process work together to build students that can authentically read.
click here to view my position paper on the five components of reading