Whole language is a discredited philosophy of the nature of reading that is based upon the premise that learning to read comes naturally to humans in the same way that learning to speak develops naturally. In assessing this claim, research psychologist Keith Stanovich asserted “The idea that learning to read is just like learning to speak is accepted by no responsible linguist, psychologist, or cognitive scientist in the research community”, while in a systematic review of the reading research literature, Louisa Moats concluded that “Almost every premise advanced by whole language about how reading is learned has been contradicted by scientific investigations.”
Phonics is a method for teaching reading and writing of the English language by developing learners' phonemic awareness—the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate phonemes—in order to teach the correspondence between these sounds and the spelling patterns (graphemes) that represent them.
Reading education is the process by which individuals are taught to derive meaning from text. Schoolchildren not capable of reading competently by the end of third grade can face obstacles to success in education. The third grade marks a crucial point in reading because students start to encounter broader variety of texts in their fourth grade.
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.
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.
The Spalding Method is the methodology and educational philosophy of The Writing Road to Reading program. The Spalding philosophy is child centered, that is the physical and mental well-being of students is a primary concern of Spalding teachers. High expectations for all children are central to the philosophy. These principles of learning and instruction are applied throughout the spelling, writing, and reading curricula.
Inventive spelling is the use of unconventional spellings of words.
"Phonics" emphasizes the alphabetic principle – the idea that letters represent the sounds of speech, and that there are systematic and predictable relationships between written letters and spoken words, which is specific to the alphabetic writing system Children learn letter sounds first and then blend them to form words. Children also learn how to segment and chunk letter sounds together in order to blend them to form 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, which is one of the more common types of writing systems in use today.
The Orton-Gillingham Approach to reading instruction was developed in the early-20th century.
Sight words, often also called high frequency sight words, are commonly used words that young children are encouraged to memorize as a whole by sight, so that they can automatically recognize these words in print within three seconds without having to use any strategies to decode. Sight words don’t follow the standards rules of phonics or the six syllable types. The term sight words is often confused with sight vocabulary, which is defined as each person's own vocabulary that the person recognizes from memory without the need to decode for understanding. Sight words were introduced after Whole language fell out of favor with the education establishment.
Dyslexia is characterized by learning difficulties that can include:
A Balanced literacy program uses whole language and phonics and aims to include the strongest elements of each. The components of a 'balanced literacy' approach are as follows: The read aloud, guided reading, shared reading, interactive writing, shared writing, Reading Workshop, Writing Workshop and Word study.
Learning to read is the acquisition and practice of the skills necessary to understand the meaning behind printed words. For a fairly good reader, the skill of reading often feels simple, effortless, and automatic; however, the process of learning to read is complex and builds on cognitive, linguistic, and social skills developed from a very early age.
Analytical phonics refers to an approach to the teaching of reading in which the phonemes associated with particular graphemes are not pronounced in isolation. Children identify (analyze) the common phoneme in a set of words in which each word contains the phoneme under study. For example, teacher and pupils discuss how the following words are alike: pat, park, push and pen. Analytic phonics for writing similarly relies on inferential learning: realising that the initial phoneme in /p i g/ is the same as that in /p æ t, p a: k, p u ƒ/ and /p e n/, children deduce that they must write that phoneme with grapheme. Today, Analytical phonics is referred to as Implicit phonics. This is because it signifies the analysis of the whole word to its parts.
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.
