Long Branch Public Schools Kindergarten Teacher Training: ELA

Presenters: Dr. Renee Whelan & Joy Daniels

Elements of Reading

While we often think of reading as one singular act, our brains are actually engaging in a number of tasks

simultaneously each time we sit down with a book. There are five aspects to the process of reading: phonics,

phonemic awareness, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and fluency. These five aspects work together to create the

reading experience. As children learn to read, they must develop skills in all five of these areas in order to be

successful readers.

Vocabulary

• Children’s vocabulary knowledge closely reflects the volume of their real-life experiences.

• If children have printed words in their oral vocabulary, they can easily and quickly sound out, read and understand them, as well as, comprehend what they are reading.

• There are profound differences in vocabulary knowledge among learners from different ability or socioeconomic groups from toddlers through high school.

How do we teach vocabulary?

• Conversations with adults.

• Listening to adults read and engaging in conversations about books.

• Reading extensively independently encountering unfamiliar words.

• Constant exposure

Phonics is the association of

speech sounds with printed

symbols.

Phonemic Awareness is the ability to hear, identify and

manipulate individual sounds in spoken words; Involves

blending, segmenting, deleting sounds, etc.

Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, or Both??

1. Making the word stop with magnetic letters, then generating drop and pop on the magnet board.

2. Telling your neighbor three words that begin like juice.

3. Reciting classic nursery rhymes.

4. Repeating Baa, Baa, Black Sheep and practicing the formation of the letter b.

5. Adding /r/ words to alphabet books.

Characteristics of Strong Phonics Instruction

• Clear, direct and explicit.

• Ample modeling of applying phonics skills

• Focuses on reading words and connected text,

not learning rules.

• Contains repeated opportunities to apply learned

sound-spelling relationships to reading and

writing.

Fluency

The most basic definition of fluency is simply the ability to read text quickly and accurately.

Researchers add that ‘good expression’ is an important part of fluency.

Fluency is the developmental process that connects decoding with everything we know about words to make the meaning of the text

come to life. Fluency is a bridge to comprehension.

Comprehension

Intentional thinking during which meaning is

constructed through interactions between text and

reader.

7 Keys to Comprehension

• Visualize – “I have a clear picture in my mind.” • Question – “I have questions about the text.” • Inference – “I made an inference based on the text

and/or picture.” • Prediction – “I made predictions based on what I

know and what I read so far.” • Connection – “I made a connection: text to self, text

to text or text to world.” • Feature – “I used a feature to help me understand” • Summarize – “ I am thinking about how I will retell

the text.