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After college, I spent two years teaching English in South Korea. I taught in language institutes called hagwons, providing additional English lessons to students outside their typical school days.
I worked primarily with elementary-aged students on essential fluency. The Korean teachers taught the spelling rules while the conversational element of language was left to us, “ex-pats” as we were called!
Not being as widely emersed in my mother tongue, it was fascinating to see how quickly I forgot basic English words! One day, I couldn’t spell “squirrel” for the life of me! I also wrote “uncle” as “aunkle” without flinching!
Could my trouble with not being able to spell these words correctly be because I, like many others in the USA, wasn’t taught phonics in school? Instead, we were taught to read using something called the whole-language approach, which was the way of teaching reading for a long time.
Whole language instruction emphasizes understanding the meaning of text rather than just decoding individual words. It encourages students to use context clues, prior knowledge, and language patterns to figure out words and phrases.
The thing is, the whole language approach has been devastating to students. Without the key to unbreaking the code (decoding), students are often left to guess what a word “says.”
On the other hand, the Science of Reading is the scientifically proven approach many more successful students have used instead. This approach says that learning to read is a two-part system. Part 1 is the decoding piece of reading, while Part 2 is the language piece.
We must decode (recognize the sounds represented by letters) and comprehend the words, phrases, and figurative language in passages and texts.
Phonemic awareness is like being a word detective. It means listening to words carefully and figuring out the sounds that make them up. It’s like knowing that the word ‘cat’ has three sounds: /k/ /a/ /t/. Phonemic awareness helps us read and spell words correctly because we can break them down into their little sound parts.
In my Phoneme Segmentation and Deletion Flashcards, your students can practice the crucial skills of segmenting and deleting phonemes to make new words!
When you decode a word, you’re breaking it down into the sounds each letter or group of letters represents and putting those sounds together to say the word correctly. So, decoding helps you read and understand words when you see them in books, signs, or anywhere else.
In this word families resource — your students will get ample practice reading and spelling the sounds of words within the commonly found word families: -all (as in call), -ell (as in bell), -ill (as in mill), -oll (as in toll), and -ull (as in full).
Reading fluently means you can read words and sentences in a story quickly and without stopping too much. When you’re fluent, you don’t have to sound out every word, and you can understand what you’re reading rather easily. It’s like you’re reading a story as if you were telling it to a friend, and it makes reading more fun and enjoyable!
To improve fluency, students should be reading texts after you, practicing with fluency grids or fluency pyramids.
A larger vocabulary means students can express themselves more clearly and effectively in speaking or writing. They can share their thoughts and ideas with others more precisely.
In my resources, I give students the opportunities to grow their vocabularies through seeing words in context (in authentic texts) while also using the words in their own example sentences!
What is the point of reading if we don’t understand what we read? The goal of all reading is to comprehend the words, sentences, and paragraphs we read!
One of the best predictors of reading success is the ability to summarize what one reads. Summarizing is a crucial strategy to use to not only understand what one reads but to remember what one reads!
In summary, by incorporating Science of Reading-based strategies with your students, regardless of their age or ability, you empower them with the tools they need to navigate a world rich in literacy! Their future may just depend on it!