Struggling and emerging readers do not automatically recognize words because the underlining skill, the ability to manipulate letters and sounds, is not fully developed. Automaticity is the most important skill of reading. Without it comprehension decreases as increased mental effort is required to decode. Reading with automaticity can be accelerated and achieved through instruction and intervention.
Reading is the foundational building block for academic and professional success.
The Five Pillars of Reading
Phonemic Awareness:
Ability to hear, identify, manipulate and substitute the smallest units of sounds.
Phonetic Awareness
Ability to understand relationship between sounds and letters.
Fluency
Ability to read and comprehend text accurately, quickly, and expressively without stopping to decode words.
Vocabulary
An ever growing stored compilation of understood words used in conversation, written text and easily recognized in print.
Comprehension
The understanding and interpretation of what is read.
Emerging and struggling readers lack a strategic approach to reading unfamiliar words.
Read with automaticity using evidence based programs.
Learn strategies, technical vocabulary, and spelling patterns.
Learn all 44 sounds of English.
Learn to identify, breakdown and differentiate sounds and syllables.
Intervention
Benefits of intervention
Comprehend challenging texts.
Greater success in academics.
Improved spelling.
Independently learn new information
Experience life from other's point of view
Assessment
Formally assess reading abilities.
Parental Interview
How do you perceive your child's reading abilities and habits?
Instruction
Sequenced systematic instruction of essential reading skills and strategies.
What to expect
Prerequisites for success
Desire to be a better reader.
An hour a night to devote to improvement.
Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.
Frederick Douglass
Abolitionist
