The science of reading has long been a topic teachers have been aware about and over the last several years have started to be immersed into professional development, individual research and the up roar of educational jargon and buzz words. However the science of reading itself, is not new or a buzz word. The science of reading was established and heavily researched by the national reading panel which published its research in 2000 and was formed in 1997. That was 23+ years ago! How can we just be catching the buzz and educational jargon of this panel? Well we aren't just catching it, however we are just beginning to touch the service of implementing the research provided.
Over the last many years Structured Literacy, Multisensory language, and Orton-Gillingham have really started to make headlines in the education world as new methodology to teach students in our classrooms, and not just special education or remediation classes but to main stream classrooms. We have started to implement the five pillars of reading more widely through curriculums and professional development of our teachers in a more systematic and explicit way. We have taught the five pillars in the past but not in the ways we are now, not simultaneously and interconnected through lessons and not systematic in nature. The instruction provides students with daily practice that prepares them for reading on a higher level.
The five pillars of reading include phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency, phonics, and comprehension. It is important that we as educators are implementing all five of these pillars daily with our students to begin to intertwine reading instruction and create a fuller picture of learning for our students.
Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic awareness addresses rhyming, segmentation, isolation, manipulation, and blending of phonemes (a.k.a sounds). Phonemic awareness helps students to hear patterns in words and begin to manipulate sounds to broaden their understanding of words. If students can rhyme words they have now opened an avenue of many more words and creating more words with spelling patterns and sound patterns to make reading easier as well as spelling for students. Students are able to generalize their skills to other words and other rhyming families and words that are similar.
Phonics
Phonics includes explicit, direct, and structured instruction in each grapheme and phoneme in the english language. This helps students to have the ability to decode words because they know the smallest parts of a a word in both sound and written symbol. Teaching students these skills to identify graphemes and phonemes is the beginning of a larger journey to learn to read. Students also require explicit structured teaching of morphemes (smallest form of a letter/letters that has meaning) and specific spelling rules and patterns.
Fluency
Fluency includes students abilities to read at an age appropriate rate as well as with the ability to read the given text correctly and begin to make meaning of the texts. Students can read very quickly with many mistakes and that does not count as mastered fluency, that counts as a student reading quickly. If students are unable to make meaning of the text what is the point of reading the text quickly? Fluency not only is reading of passages but also sentences, words, and even letters. At the youngest of ages we can begin to see students develop fluency through rapid letter naming and rapid word naming. As students develop their reading skills fluency can accrue to sentences and passages. Fluency is built through students abilities to quickly decode and recognize words through spelling patterns and the learning of grapheme and phonemes as well as sight words that are irregular for reading.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary focuses on students abilities to make meaning of the words that are put in front of them and maintain the understanding of the smallest parts of words that have meaning, morphemes, to help build meaning of entire words. Students build vocabulary through morphology studies of prefixes, suffixes, and roots of words as well as the study of language and its immense history of anglo saxon, latin, greek, and french layers amongst others. Students vocabularies are built through these word studies as well as through reading and addressing words that may be unfamiliar throughout the text, making meaning based on the surrounding passage or through explicit learning of word meaning. Vocabulary works together with all parts of reading to assist students in deeper comprehension.
Comprehension
Comprehension is a culmination of the four other pillars being put into motion simultaneously. Putting students phonemic awareness, phonics skills, fluency and vocabulary skills into motion requires a great deal of brain work for students while they also work to make meaning and think critically about what they are reading. Students must have the foundations of the other four pillars to develop comprehension skills with ease. Students abilities to summarize, answer questions, predict, and develop listening and thinking skills helps students to not only grow in their reading but also their overall academic and literacy selves. It is important that while comprehension is the culmination of these skills that we also foster comprehension throughout the fostering of the four other pillars, slowly through sequencing, the five w's (who, what, where, when, why), and through the beginning of critical thinking exercises even in the midst of reading decodable, short passages, picture books, and later chapter books.
How can you bring the five pillars into your classroom?
Well there are many different ways you can learn more about the five pillars and bring new instructional strategies into your classroom. While I have no doubt you have heard of these five pillars before and have explore reading instruction, adding new knowledge to your bank of resources is imperative in this time of shifts of reading and literacy instruction. For me, I went all through my pre teaching education learning many fantastic literacy skills, implementing them in student teaching and pre-service teaching placements but when it comes down to it the structured literacy and multi sensory method that I spend the first two years of my teaching career learning through intensive Orton-Gillingham and language practitioner training taught me more than anything about how to teach reading, how to systematically address my students needs and present lessons that not only taught the curriculum but taught students how to read regardless of their learning needs because they could all be addressed.
Coming soon to my teachers pay teachers store will be resources for you to implement into your classroom using the Orton-Gillingham method and structured language. These resources will include small group lessons, centers, activities, worksheets, decodable words, sentences, stories, as well as writing activities and comprehension activities that are intertwined in all five pillars through a multi sensory approach. Over the coming months more units will be released so that by August 2023 there will be a years worth of Orton-Gillingham, Multisensory resources for phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension will be in my stores for your use. All resources will follow the systematic structure of Orton-Gillingham and of the scope and sequence I was taught through OG training, although there are a variety of scopes and sequences you can find.
I can't wait to share new and exciting resources for you to use within your classrooms and share the knowledge I have gained from my training and experience using OG Multi-sensory Structured language over the last six years in my classroom and now in creating resources. I look forward to sharing these new resources with all of you and writing more blog posts on this topic in the future.
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