The National Reading Panel published a report in the year 2000 which synthesized research on the essential components of effective reading instruction. In this subsection you will access each of the sections of the publication, Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read, for information summarized from the panel report, including:

Phonological Awareness: the ability to hear and identify individual sounds in spoken words
Phonics: the relationship between the letters of written language and the sounds of spoken language
Fluency: the capacity to read text accurately and quickly, and with expression
Vocabulary: the words students must know to communicate effectively
Comprehension: the ability to understand and gain meaning from what has been read.

A BEST tenet for emerging readers is that "Foundational Instruction Matters.' In the early grades, the standards emphasize explicit, systematic phonics instruction as the foundation of literacy. Decoding and fluency are essential to creating proficient readers. The following benchmarks are taken from the Phonological Awareness section of the Progression of Foundations Benchmarks in the BEST Standards for English Language Arts.

ELA.K.F.1.2 Demonstrate phonological awareness.

1. Blend and segment syllables in spoken words.
2. Identify and produce alliterative and rhyming words.
3. Blend and segment onset and rimes of single-syllable words.
4. Identify the initial, medial, and final sound of spoken words.
5. Add or delete phonemes at the beginning or end of a spoken word and say the resulting word.
6. Segment and blend phonemes in single-syllable spoken words.

ELA.1.F.1.2 Demonstrate phonological awareness.

1. Segment spoken words into initial, medial, and final phonemes, including words with digraphs, blends, and trigraphs.
2. Orally blend initial, medial, and final phonemes together to produce a single-syllable word that includes digraphs, blends, or trigraphs.
3. Blend single-syllable spoken words with at least five phonemes.
4. Segment single-syllable spoken words with at least five phonemes.
5. Segment and blend phonemes in multi-syllable spoken words.

ELA.612.F.2.1 Demonstrate an understanding of spoken words, syllables, and sounds.

1. Orally produce single-syllable and multisyllabic words by accurately blending sounds.
2. Accurately segment single-syllable and multisyllabic words

Your task in this section is to read the information that relates to each of the research-based components of effective reading instruction. Then review the activities for each component of reading instruction to gain ideas and best practices to teach that area of reading.

The contents in this section will help you meet the following objectives.