Five Dimensions of Reading
Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic awareness is a precursor to reading. It is the awareness and ability to hear and identify sounds within words. This is a spoken and auditory skill. It is not the ability to spell. For example,
Teacher: What sound do you hear at the beginning of the words mouse, man, mat, met, mister?
Student: "I hear the /m/ sound."
Phonics
Phonemic Awareness
Phonemic Awareness
Once students develop phonemic awareness, they learn to associate the letters of the English alphabet with those sounds to form words. Then they learn to put the words together to read sentences.
Fluency
Phonemic Awareness
Comprehension
Fluency is the idea of reading smoothly, like we're talking. It involves the rhythm, prosody and intonation that we use when we are speaking.
Comprehension
Comprehension
Comprehension
As students are reading, and as they notice their thinking (metacognition), they make sense of the text through skills such as clarifying, asking questions and summarizing to gauge understanding.
Vocabulary
Comprehension
Vocabulary
As we build vocabulary through word study and the study of word roots, prefixes, and suffixes, our ability to comprehend increases. Often meaning and understanding break down because we don't understand a word. The key is to notice when comprehension breaks down, determine the meaning of the unknown word using context, or the dictionary, and reread to repair the breakdown in understanding.