Teaching Literacy

This literacy section contains ideas, resources, and lessons for every grade level.

The Building Blocks of Reading

Reading is comprised of 5 building blocks, pillars. They are phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Below, I have defined and provided list of teaching resources for each pillar.

Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic Awareness are sounds of what we hear. For example, what do you hear in the word cat? /c/-/a/-/t/. Individual letters are blended together to create a word.

Sightwords is the need to see website dedicated to teaching children to read. This resources is packed full of teaching instruction, curriculum development, and teaching aids.

The University of Oregon provides a curriculum map of early phonemic awareness. This is a great resources although a little tough to read.

Phonics

Phonics is the matching of sounds to letters or groups of letters. The three sounds /c/ /a/ /t/ make up the word cat. Phonics is what we hear and see. This is also the area in which students learn to decode words within reading.

Phonic Talk is a creative site that provides an outlined order of what to teach in phonics. It is loaded with great visual aids and tons of printable teaching charts!

Edith Cowen University created a teaching sequence for phonics with K-6 detailed skills and examples for each. On page 5, they created a valuable list of reading resources every teacher should know about.

Fluency

Fluency is the ability to read with accuracy, speed, and expression.

Reading Rockets have a list of strategies and activities to use in guiding fluent readers. They have also created a list of top 10 resources for teachers.

Reading Resources came up with some great fluency activities to try out in your classroom.

Vocabulary

Reading vocabulary are the words we need to know in order to understand what we read. (Reading Rockets)

Alton Schools created a great vocabulary resource based off of Marzano's Six Step Process.

Sightwords provides lessons, flashcards, and games. I couldn't be happier to have found this free resource for their flashcards alone!

Comprehension

Comprehension is the processing or understanding of what is read.

Reading Rockets rocks my world with valuable information and fabulous teaching instruction. Check out this list of reading strategies and how to incorporate them.