1. Overview of the Essential Components of Reading Instruction K–5
Part 3.1: Introduction
Collaboration for Effective Educator Development, Accountability, and Reform
Materials Needed for Part 3.1:
Sticky Board.
Slide 1
Good news! We know how to teach children to read. Thanks to intensive research in reading over the past few decades, a substantial body of evidence confirms the most essential components of effective reading instruction.
Today, we will review those components. Throughout the module, we will return to these components, deepening our understanding of each, learning how to assess student progress in each, and learning how to design instruction so that all students are strong readers.
In many schools that have implemented such instruction, 95% or more of the students learn to read, decreasing the number of students requiring intensive intervention or special-education services (Denton & Mathes, 2003; Matheset al., 2005; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998).
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2. ©2009 University of Texas System/Texas Education Agency
Overview of the Essential Components of Reading Instruction K–5
Part 3.1: Introduction
A special thanks to the Meadows Center for Preventing Education Risk at the University of Texas at Austin for permission to use and adapt material from a module created by the Higher Education Collaborative: Foundations of Reading Instruction.
©2009 University of Texas System/Texas Education Agency
Materials Needed for Part 3.1:
Knowledge Survey.
Sticky Board.
Slide 1
Good news! We know how to teach children to read. Thanks to intensive research in reading over the past few decades, a substantial body of evidence confirms the most essential components of effective reading instruction.
Today, we will review those components. Throughout the module, we will return to these components, deepening our understanding of each, learning how to assess student progress in each, and learning how to design instruction so that all students are strong readers.
In many schools that have implemented such instruction, 95% or more of the students learn to read, decreasing the number of students requiring intensive intervention or special-education services (Denton & Mathes, 2003; Matheset al., 2005; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998).
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3. Lean, Look, and Whisper Find a partner.
Decide who is Partner A and Partner B.
Lean, Look, and Whisper
Introduce yourselves
Discuss for one minute:
What should a teacher directly teach a student when teaching reading?
During this module, we will often work as partners. Everyone, find a partner. Decide who is Partner A and who is Partner B. When you work with a partner, you lean toward your partner, look at your partner, and whisper. We call this “Lean, Look, and Whisper.” These are explicit directions to teach students how to work in partners that Anita Archer, an educational researcher and consultant, uses.
Using “Lean, Look, and Whisper,” introduce yourself to your partner, and then discuss the following question: What should a teacher directly teach a student when teaching reading? You have 1 minute.

4. What Should Teachers Teach?
With your partner, write one thing
teachers should directly teach students
about reading.
Place your responses on the sticky board.
Provide about 2 minutes for the partners to discuss what teachers should teach students about reading. Then say: Stop. Write your thoughts on a slip of paper. Please write only one idea per slip of paper. You have 1 minute.
Pause for 1 minute.
Partner A, please take your and your partner’s papers and place them on the sticky board.
Pause until everyone has placed the slips of paper on the sticky board.
I will read some of your responses, and toward the end of this semester, we will look at these one more time to determine whether you still feel these are the most important things a teacher must teach students about reading and whether you want to add some other items.
Read the items. Categorize them on the sticky board.
See appendix 3.1 B for directions to make a sticky board

5. Module Objective
Implementation of evidence-based instruction to teach all students including:
Students from poverty.
Students with disabilities.
Students who are English language learners (ELLs).
Students who struggle learning to read.
Read slide, stopping and asking the participants to orally read the words in bold print. You are modeling one way to actively engage students.
We will focus on the knowledge and practices required by teachers in the general education, core classroom.
Note to instructor: This CEM also contains modules providing guidance on teaching supplemental or secondary instruction (Tier 2) and intensive (Tier 3) reading instruction for students who need additional support.
Define and make sure participants understand the meaning of:
Reading Instruction – the action or process of teaching skills required for reading.
Reading Intervention – planned set of procedures that are aimed at teaching a specific set of academic skills. It is more than an a single lesson and less than an entire curriculum.

6. Big Ideas & Questions
What is the idea? Why is it important? What does the research say?
What should students know and be able to do at each grade level?
How do we assess what students know and the progress they are making?
This module organizes the knowledge and content to be learned into big ideas. This framework helps to ensure we focus on each of these big ideas in our instruction.
It is also important to to have in-depth knowledge of each of the big ideas of reading. Within each big idea, you will be able to answer each of the following questions. Read questions on the slide.
Note: The big-idea questions were modified by questions developed and shared by Deb Simmons, A & M University.

7. Big Ideas & Questions
How do we effectively and efficiently teach the big idea?
How do we develop instructional plans that incorporate state standards, assessment data, and evidence-based instructional strategies?
What do we do if students are not learning the big idea?
Knowing the big-idea questions we will be addressing will help you to organize what you are learning and remember why it is important.

8. Module Outcomes Design instruction for all students.
Differentiate instruction.
Use assessment data to inform instruction, form groups, monitor progress.
Incorporate standards and evidence-based practices (EBPs).
In addition to learning about the big ideas and answering the big-idea questions, after you have completed this module you will be able to (1) design and evaluate instruction for all students, including those at risk for reading difficulties; (2) differentiate instruction for each student; (3) use assessment data to inform your instruction, form groups, and monitor student progress; and (4) incorporate state standards and evidence-based practices (EBPs).

9. Major Reports National Early Literacy Panel (NELP, 2008)
for children ages 0–5:
The good news is that we know more now than ever before about how to teach students to read. Two national reports synthesized important research. In 1998, the National Research Council published Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. The information in this book has been operationalized for in Starting Out Right: A Guide to Promote Children’s Reading Success by M. Susan Burns, Peg Griffin, and Catherine E. Snow (1999).
Two years later, the National Reading Panel published a report commissioned by the U.S. Congress. It supported the findings of the National Research Council and concluded that there are five essential elements to an effective reading program. Note that other areas also should be addressed, including how to teach English language learners, early childhood literacy, and how to motivate students to read. We don’t have all the answers, but we know more than ever before.
Let’s briefly examine the five essential components, or big ideas, of reading that every teacher must know to teach reading. As discussed earlier, throughout the module we will explore each of these concepts in depth and learn specific strategies to teach them.

10. National Reading Panel Elements of Reading Instruction
Phonemic Awareness
Phonics
Fluency
Vocabulary
Text Comprehension
These are five big ideas, or components, of reading that must be directly taught so that students will learn to read well. These five, the result of many years of research and synthesized in the two documents just discussed, are Read the slide.
This module focuses on these components. We will quickly review what these components are, and then we will study each one in depth.
National Reading Panel Report, 2000

11. Phonemic Awareness The awareness of the speech sounds in words.
The ability to:
manipulate the sounds
segment phonemes
blend phonemes
Phonemes are the smallest units of sound
One of the best predictors of a student’s success (or failure) learning to read is phonemic awareness, a subcomponent of phonological awareness. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound. An indicator of phonemic awareness is the ability to segment and blend the sounds in words. For example, say the word cat. Now say each sound and count the sounds using your fingers (Model using your left hand so the participants will observe you counting left to right). /c/ /a/ /t/. How many sounds? Yes, 3. Let’s try ball. /b/ /a/ /l/. How many sounds? Yes, 3. We want to be aware of the number of sounds, not the number of letters. Some students can segment and blend these sounds before they begin formal schooling; most students, however, need explicit instruction to master this concept.
Ehri, 2000; Snow, Burns & Griffin, 1998; National Early Literacy
Panel, 2008; National Reading Panel, 2000

12. Phonics Alphabetic Principle.
An awareness of letters and that letters represent sounds.
Phonics = graphophonemic relationships or sound-symbol relationships.
Ehri, 2002; Honig et al., 2008
The alphabetic principle is the awareness that the squiggles on a page have meaning. Students must learn the letter names and sounds so they can decode the words on the page. Phonics is an instructional method to teach students to decode words.

13. Fluency
The ability to read accurately, at an appropriate rate, with prosody and comprehension.
Fluency is reading easily with understanding. The ability to decode the words with automaticity allows students to use their cognitive resources to comprehend the text. Prosody is the ability to read with expression, noticing punctuation and phrasing. In the early grades, reading with prosody supports comprehension. In the later grades, reading with prosody is an indicator of comprehension.
Kuhn et al., 2010; Rasinski et al., 2011; Hudson et al., 2005

14. Vocabulary Word study to increase . . . Word knowledge
Word consciousness
Words for life
Academic language
Necessary for reading comprehension
The range of a reader’s vocabulary influences what the reader can comprehend. Some children come to school with limited vocabulary. A child who has not had access to books nor sufficient opportunities to hear and use language may have difficultly comprehending complex text. In this module, you will learn how to develop your students’ vocabulary.
Graves, 2006

15. Comprehension Making meaning of text
Good readers apply strategies before, during, and
after reading, including:
Activate prior knowledge
Set a purpose for reading
Monitor their understanding
Use fix-up strategies
Paraphrase and summarize
Reading comprehension, the goal of reading instruction, is complex. It requires the skills we have reviewed: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, and vocabulary as well as background knowledge, awareness of genres and text structures, syntax and semantics, metacognitive awareness, and use of appropriate strategies before, during, and after reading. Comprehension instruction and assessment are challenging to implement.
Good readers are able to select, apply, and modify effective strategies to help them solve comprehension problems. Before reading, good readers activate their prior knowledge, predict what the text may be about, and set a purpose for reading. They preview the text like you watch a movie preview and make some conclusions about what the movie is going to be about and whether or not you will enjoy it. During reading, good readers monitor their comprehension and notice when they do not understand. They then use fix-­up strategies to improve their comprehension. They are aware of text structure and the demands of reading in different disciplines (e.g., you read a physics text differently than a romance novel). Finally, after reading, good readers think about what they have read, paraphrase and summarize the main ideas.
Coyne, Zipoli, Chard, Fagella-Luby, Ruby, Santoro et al. 2009;
Duke & Pearson, 2002; Pressley, 2001

16. The Reading Rope Used with permission from Guilford Press.
All of these components, plus more, are required to be a successful reader. They are like the strands in a rope: Alone, they are not sufficient, but when bound together, the elements become a strong, firm basis for excellence in reading—a goal we have for all our children.
This diagram by Hollis Scarborough shows how all these components are related.
Note that there are three main categories of skills illustrated by the Reading Rope. The first is language comprehension. This module will not discuss early oral and listening language development, but it is very important to provide the language foundation for reading. We will discuss how to increase the development of background knowledge, vocabulary, and literacy.
The second category is word recognition. This includes phonemic awareness, decoding and spelling, and sight recognition. Sight recognition is the automatic recognition of words and patterns that enable students to read fluently (Ehri, 2014).
Finally, through effective instruction and ample practice, students become increasingly strategic and automatic in reading, leading to skilled reading with fluency and comprehension.
We will review this slide again after discussing in more depth the components that lead to successful reading.
Used with permission from Guilford Press.

17. Tier 1 Core Reading Instruction
All students included
Uninterrupted time
Small, flexible groups
Data informs instruction
The elementary core reading class must address all the components in the rope. Different aspects will be emphasized for different grade levels. For example, in kindergarten, phonemic awareness and letter naming activities are of vital importance. Developing listening comprehension and vocabulary are also important. As the students become proficient in the basic skills, teachers begin to emphasize other skills. The National Research Council (1998) published a table of expected accomplishments in reading by grade level, K-3 (p ). The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) also have expectations by grade level. These skills must to taught to all students in the general education, core reading class.
Note to Instructor: A helpful activity for the participants, time allowing, would be to compare and contrast the Accomplishments in Reading with the CCSS in reading.
The general education core reading class is Tier 1 of a multi-tiered system of instruction, also referred to as RtI (Response to Intervention). The most important tier is Tier 1, as excellent instruction in this tier prevents many learning difficulties from developing. Best practices for the core reading instruction include an uninterrupted time period for instruction (many districts require a minimum of 90 minutes); instruction in small, flexible groups; and use of effective, explicit, and systematic instruction. In addition, data informs the teacher’s instruction. The data, discussed later in the CEM, could be derived from standardized benchmark tests, screening instruments, diagnostic assessments, and the state’s outcome test.

18. Scaffolding Instruction
Small group instruction
Task presented in smaller units
More time
More models
More practice with feedback
More explicit
More systematic
More progress monitoring
Archer & Hughes, 2011; Meadow Center for Preventing Educational Risk, 2009; Rosenshine, 2012
Students come to school from different backgrounds and with different skills. They also learn at different rates. Therefore, teachers need to scaffold instruction according to the student’s needs. Often all it takes for some students to “get it” is to provide more practice opportunities, more models, more time. If done well, 70-80%, or more of the students should be able to learn the concepts. Some students need more intensive instruction, such as instruction in a smaller group and more sessions (often referred to as dosages). That kind of instruction should increase the students who are success to 85-95%. The students who still struggle need even more intensive instruction.
For an excellent explanation of the elements of explicit instruction, refer the participants to: Archer, A. & Hughes, C. (2011). Explicit instruction: Effective and efficient teaching. New York, NY: Guilford.

19. Review & Reflect With your partner….
Explain the five essential components of reading instruction
Create questions about each component
With your partner, take turns stating and defining the five essential components of reading instruction. You may use your notes.
Record questions you have about each area. Keep reviewing and creating questions until I tell you to stop.
Note to instructor: Proceed to the part of the module that is appropriate for your group. If you are working with teacher candidates or novice teachers, it is suggested that you proceed through the parts in order.