Whole language is a philosophy of reading and a discredited educational method originally developed for teaching literacy in English to young children. The method became a major model for education in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Great Britain in the 1980s and 1990s, despite there being no scientific support for the method's effectiveness. It is based on the premise that learning to read English comes naturally to humans, especially young children, in the same way that learning to speak develops naturally.
Phonics is a method for teaching people how to read and write an alphabetic language. It is done by demonstrating the relationship between the sounds of the spoken language (phonemes), and the letters or groups of letters (graphemes) or syllables of the written language. In English, this is also known as the alphabetic principle or the alphabetic code.
A vocabulary is a set of words, typically the set in a language or the set known to an individual. The word vocabulary originated from the Latin vocabulum, meaning "a word, name". It forms an essential component of language and communication, helping convey thoughts, ideas, emotions, and information. Vocabulary can be oral, written, or signed and can be categorized into two main types: active vocabulary and passive vocabulary. An individual's vocabulary continually evolves through various methods, including direct instruction, independent reading, and natural language exposure, but it can also shrink due to forgetting, trauma, or disease. Furthermore, vocabulary is a significant focus of study across various disciplines, like linguistics, education, psychology, and artificial intelligence. Vocabulary is not limited to single words; it also encompasses multi-word units known as collocations, idioms, and other types of phraseology. Acquiring an adequate vocabulary is one of the largest challenges in learning a second language.
Reading for special needs has become an area of interest as the understanding of reading has improved. Teaching children with special needs how to read was not historically pursued due to perspectives of a Reading Readiness model. This model assumes that a reader must learn to read in a hierarchical manner such that one skill must be mastered before learning the next skill. This approach often led to teaching sub-skills of reading in a decontextualized manner. This style of teaching made it difficult for children to master these early skills, and as a result, did not advance to more advanced literacy instruction and often continued to receive age-inappropriate instruction.
The National Reading Panel (NRP) was a United States government body. Formed in 1997 at the request of Congress, it was a national panel with the stated aim of assessing the effectiveness of different approaches used to teach children to read.
Phonological awareness is an individual's awareness of the phonological structure, or sound structure, of words. Phonological awareness is an important and reliable predictor of later reading ability and has, therefore, been the focus of much research.
Reading comprehension is the ability to process written text, understand its meaning, and to integrate with what the reader already knows. Reading comprehension relies on two abilities that are connected to each other: word reading and language comprehension. Comprehension specifically is a "creative, multifaceted process" dependent upon four language skills: phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.
Synthetic phonics, also known as blended phonics or inductive phonics, is a method of teaching English reading which first teaches the letter sounds and then builds up to blending these sounds together to achieve full pronunciation of whole words.
Inventive spelling is the use of unconventional spellings of words.
According to the alphabetic principle, letters and combinations of letters are the symbols used to represent the speech sounds of a language based on systematic and predictable relationships between written letters, symbols, and spoken words. The alphabetic principle is the foundation of any alphabetic writing system. In the education field, it is known as the alphabetic code.
The Dolch word list is a list of frequently used English words, compiled by Edward William Dolch, a major proponent of the "whole-word" method of beginning reading instruction. The list was first published in a journal article in 1936 and then published in his book Problems in Reading in 1948.
Management of dyslexia depends on a multiple of variables; there is no one specific strategy or set of strategies that will work for all who have dyslexia.
Balanced literacy is a theory of teaching reading and writing the English language that arose in the 1990s and has a variety of interpretations. For some, balanced literacy strikes a balance between whole language and phonics and puts an end to the so called reading wars. Others say balanced literacy, in practice, usually means the whole language approach to reading.
Analytic phonics refers to a very common approach to the teaching of reading that starts at the word level, not at the sound (phoneme) level. It does not teach the blending of sounds together as is done in synthetic phonics. One method is to have students identify a common sound in a set of words that each contain that same sound. For example, the teacher and student discuss how the following words are alike: pat, park, push and pen. Analytic phonics is often taught together with levelled-reading books, look-say practice, and the use of aids such as phonics worksheets.
Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters, symbols, etc., especially by sight or touch.
Smart Way Reading and Spelling is a commercial brand of reading instruction methodology and materials that was developed in 2001 by Bright Sky Learning.
Emergent literacy is a term that is used to explain a child's knowledge of reading and writing skills before they learn how to read and write words. It signals a belief that, in literate society, young children—even one- and two-year-olds—are in the process of becoming literate. Through the support of parents, caregivers, and educators, a child can successfully progress from emergent to conventional reading.
A word sort is a developmental word study activity espoused by the Words Their Way curriculum as written by Donald R. Bear, Marcia Invernizzi, Shane Templeton, and Francine Johnston. The activity focuses students' attention on critical features of words, namely sound, pattern, and meaning.
Linnea Carlson Ehri is an American educational psychologist and expert on the development of reading. She is a Distinguished Professor Emerita of Educational Psychology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Ehri is known for her theory of orthographic mapping, which describes the process of forming "letter-sound connections to bond the spellings, pronunciations, and meanings of specific words in memory" that underlies fluent reading. As a consequence of orthographic mapping, written words are tightly linked with their pronunciations and meanings in memory and can be recognized by sight.
The simple view of reading is a scientific theory that a student's ability to understand written words depends on how well they sound out (decode) the words and understand the meaning of those words. Specifically, their reading comprehension can be predicted by multiplying their skill in decoding the written words by their ability to understand the meaning of those words. It is expressed in this equation:
