The Science of Reading is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary body of research that explains how people learn to read. It identifies five essential components—or “pillars”—of effective reading instruction:
- Letter-Sound (or grapheme-phoneme) correspondence
- Phonological and Phonemic awareness
- Fluency
- Vocabulary
- Comprehension [5 ]
1. Letter-Sound Correspondence
Also known as “alphabet knowledge” or grapheme-phoneme correspondence, letter-sound correspondence refers to knowing the names and sounds of all the letters.
Letter-sound correspondence is taught through phonics—a systematic and structured method of teaching the relationships between the sounds and symbols used by our language. Phonics begins with teaching the sounds associated with individual letters and gradually introduces more complex combinations (e.g., vowel teams, digraphs, and silent letters)..
It includes being able to:
- Name the letters of the alphabet
- Make the corresponding sound(s)
- Recognize and reproduce letters in different formats (e.g., upper case and lower case, various fonts)
2a) Phonemic Awareness:
Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate the smallest units of sound (phonemes) in spoken language. The English alphabet has 26 letters that represent 44 phonemes (speech sounds). Some letters make more than one sound (e.g., c in cat vs. circle; pronounced as /s/ or /k/). Some combinations of letters are used to make a single sound (e.g., sh-, ch-). Others, like silent letters, make none. This can make learning to read very difficult.
It includes being able to:
- Match phonemes: Identify words that begin with the same beginning sound.
▷ Q: Do “cat” and “car” start with the same sound or different sounds?
▷ A: Same sound
- Isolate phonemes:Identify single sounds in a word.
▷ Q: What is the first sound in the word “mat”?
▷ A: /m/
- Blend phonemes:Combine sounds in a word.
▷ Q: What happens if we add a /s/ sound to the beginning of the word “tint”?
▷ A: “stint”
• Segment phonemes:Break a word into its component sounds.
▷ Q: How many sounds make up the word “car”?
How many sounds make up the word “cash”?
▷ A: “car” has 3 sounds /k/ /a:/ /r/, “cash” has 3 sounds /k/ /ae/ /sh/
• Manipulate phonemes:Modify, change, or move the individual sounds in a word. ▷ Q: What word do we get if we change the /s/ sound in “sink” to an /r/ sound?
▷ A: “rink”
2b) Phonological Awareness
Phonological awareness is an umbrella term that includes phonemic awareness. It refers to the ability to recognize and work with the sounds of spoken language—at the word, syllable, onset-rime, and phoneme levels.
It includes the ability to:
- Hear and break sentences into individual words
- Hear and break words down into syllables
- Hear and identify onsets and rimes (e.g., pat can be broken down into the onset “p” and the rime “at” and slip would be broken down into “sl” and “ip”)
- Notice and generate rhymes
- Recognize alliteration (e.g., Five fluffy foxes)
Phonological awareness is a strong predictor of future reading success. Being able to break words down into their smaller components is essential for learning to decode unfamiliar words.
3. Fluency:
Reading fluency is the ability to read accurately, quickly, and with appropriate expression. As students master foundational skills,reading becomes more automatic.
It involves:
- Recognizing common words almost instantly
- Reading with expression and phrasing that matches the text
Fluency is critical for comprehension. If all cognitive effort is spent deciphering the sounds that make up a word, there’s not much space left for making meaning. Since the end goal of reading is to gain information from text, understanding is key! Repeated oral reading—especially reading the same text multiple times—is one of the best ways to build fluency.
4. Vocabulary:
Vocabulary connects word recognition to meaning. Students must understand most of the words in a text to comprehend it.
It involves being able to:
- Understand 90-95% of the words in a passage to understand the overall meaning (Hudson et al., 2005).
Young children mostly acquire new vocabulary indirectly through conversation, listening to stories, and media. As they get older, more vocabulary is learned through independent reading. For students with LDs, explicit vocabulary instruction is often needed.
Two main types of direct instruction:
- Teaching of specific words
- Teaching strategies for learning new words (e.g., phonological and morphological awareness)
5. Comprehension:
Comprehension is the ability to construct meaning from what has been read.
It includes:
- Interpreting both literal and figurative language
- Monitoring one’s understanding and using fix-up strategies (e.g., re-reading a sentence or paragraph, clarifying vocabulary, or slowing down to process meaning) when comprehension breaks down
Want to learn more?
Listen to LD@school’s Talk LDpodcast featuring Stacey Rickman, a Speech-Language Pathologist working in Ontario schools, as she discusses the Five Pillars of Reading Instruction.
Next, we’ll explore how Dr. Hollis Scarborough’s Reading Rope illustrates how these skills are woven together to support reading development.