Reading instruction centered on evidence-based practices ensures all students have opportunities to become successful, lifelong readers.
From recognizing the individual sounds that make up words, to mastering their written forms and meanings, each component plays a vital role in developing confident, capable readers. By weaving together instruction in phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, and writing, educators empower students with the tools to decode, comprehend, and express ideas with clarity and purpose.
These interconnected skills don’t just enhance classroom learning – they lay the groundwork for lifelong communication, understanding, and success.
Here are the four key components of literacy instruction, and tips for teaching them.
Phonological awareness
- Develops the ability to distinguish sounds in words
- Leads to stronger decoding and encoding skills
- Additional instruction benefits struggling readers, who often have deficits in these areas
- Provides the foundation for successful reading development
Phonics
- Connects knowledge of the sounds in words to the correlating letters and spelling patterns
- Multiple spelling patterns, or graphemes, can represent each sound
- Explicit, systematic instruction enables students to orthographically map phoneme-grapheme correspondences and apply learned skills
- Many high-frequency words, such as see, in, how, and that, are decodable and should be taught that way
- Words that follow irregular spelling patterns, such as was, there, you, and of, can be taught as sight words
Vocabulary
- Learning to decode words supports vocabulary acquisition
- Knowing how word elements make up words helps students determine meanings
- Intentional, direct instruction is essential for building a student’s word bank
- Use context to provide definitions, actively engage students in deciphering word parts and meanings, and provide multiple exposures to content about the word
- Making connections and deeply understanding meanings of word parts are more helpful than memorization
Writing
- Writing is the application of all learned skills
- Direct instruction ensures students understand how to organize, develop, and compose thoughts/ideas
- Teacher modeling and graphic organizers are powerful tools
- Actively monitor and provide feedback to students on their writing
- Scaffold writing instruction based on students’ needs so they receive differentiated instruction and assignments on their instructional level
Empower students with strategies for success
Focus your literacy instruction on evidence-based practices to improve skills that students can use in school and life.