For more information on the 5 Building Blocks of Reading, refer to Bonnie B.

Ambrusters,

Overview
Reading is a wonderful experience that every child is entitled to. Reading opens the door to a world of information, fulfillment, and enjoyment. Watching your child learn to read will be an unforgettable experience. Learning to read is a very complex process. This brochure will help you gain a basic understanding of the 5 Building Blocks of Reading that your child will be taught in first grade.
Gunning, T. (2013). Creating literacy instruction for all students. (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

Put Reading First.

How to Help Your Child Have Success with Reading

Armbruster, B. B., Lehr, F., Osborn, J. (n.d.) Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks For Teaching Children to Read - Kindergarten Through Grade 3. Third Edition (pp 148). Retrieved from :http://lincs.ed.gov/publications/pdf/PRFbooklet.pdf

A Parents Guide to the 5 Building Blocks of Reading

5 Building Blocks of Reading

Phonemic Awareness Phonics Fluency Vocabulary Text Comprehension

For additional information feel free to contact Katie Kneisel at:

(440) 937-6015 or kneiselk@avonlocalschools.org

After having learned to read, a person is never quite the same.

-Gunning, 2013

Phonemic Awareness

Phonics will improve your childs word recognition, spelling, and reading comprehension. The goal of phonics instruction is to teach your child a system for remembering how to read words, even irregular ones. Letter-sound relationships are in logical order (e.g., CVC words, blends, digraphs, etc).

Vocabulary

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words. -Bonnie B. Ambruster Every word is made up of phonemes
(the individual sound a letter makes). ex: hat = /h/ /a/ /t/

Vocabulary is the words we must know in order to communicate effectively both orally and in reading. -Bonnie B. Ambruster Your child will use vocabulary to understand the words they see in books. It is important for your child to have a large vocabulary bank because they must know what words mean before they can understand what they are reading.

Ways to Hel p at Home

On your childs writing assignments, encourage them to mark their words. This will help them recognize phonetic patterns in words. More information on marking words can be found in the Fundations Take-Home packets.

Phonemic awareness teaches your child to identify and manipulate the phonemes in a word. Phonemic awareness can improve your childs comprehension of the text they read. When a child can rapidly identify and bland sounds together to read words accurately, it allows them to turn their focus on the meaning of what they are reading.

Fluency

Ways to Hel p at Home

Read aloud to your child because he/she can learn new words by being read to.

Ways to Hel p at Home

Encourage your child to tap out each phoneme and then blend them together when spelling and sounding out words. More information on tapping out can be found in the Fundations Take-Home packets.

Text Comprehension
Fluency is the ability to read a text accurately and quickly. -Bonnie B. Ambruster Your child will become a fluent reader by automatically recognizing words, reading aloud with little effort, and by using expression. As your child becomes a fluent reader they will be able to make connections between their background knowledge and personal experiences and the text. Fluency opens the way to reading comprehension. Comprehension is the reason for reading!
-Bonnie B. Ambruster

Phonics

The goal of comprehension is to teach your child to read for a purpose (e.g., read a nature book if they are taking a trip to the park). When your child comprehends what they are reading they will be able to understand what they read, remember what they read, and communicate with others about what they read.

Phonics teaches your child the relationship between the letters of written language and the sounds of spoken language.
-Bonnie B. Ambruster

Ways to Hel p at Home

Encourage your child to chunk sentences. Model fluent reading for your child. Reread the same text multiple times. Have your child read their poems from their poetry binder aloud.

Ways to Hel p at Home

Preview the book before you read. Ask questions that allow your child to connect their background information. Have regular conversations with your child about the text you read.

Phonics teaches your child the alphabetic principle.