¶ … Philadelphia The five components of a reading program -- phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary development, and comprehension -- build on one another to help students become readers. At a hypothetical all-African-American elementary school in Philadelphia's inner city, there would be similarities and differences in the way the five components would be taught in first grade, third grade, and fifth grade classrooms.

Phonemic awareness is the first stage in a comprehensive reading program. It is the foundation upon which other reading skills are built. The International Reading Association (IRA) defines phonemic awareness as "the ability to segment and manipulate the sounds of oral language" (2011). The IRA points out research shows that a child's awareness of the sounds of spoken language are a strong predictor of success in learning to read. Language "play" helps children develop this awareness of sounds. Read-alouds, songs, riddles, poems, and rhyming activities are effective ways to develop these skills in students.

In any first grade classroom, not just those in the inner city, students come to school in various stages of readiness. There can be a great deal of difference between a little boy who enters first grade a week after his sixth birthday and a little girl who turned six in February of the same year. In addition to developmental differences as a result of age and gender, students' preschool and kindergarten experiences can also affect their readiness to read. Students will have been exposed to phonemic awareness activities in preschool, though the curriculum is not standardized among public school, Head Start and private programs, so students' experiences will vary. Students who did not attend preschool may or may not have had the benefit of phonemic awareness activities in the home...

The challenge to the first grade teacher is to get all students ready to read, regardless of developmental level or prior experience with phonemic awareness.
Along with phonemic awareness, first graders study phonics, in which they learn to associate sounds with symbols. Doing so enables them to "decode" unfamiliar words. Phonics provides not only a foundation for reading but for spelling and writing as well. According to Richard T. Vacca, former IRA president, "Phonics is a tool needed by all readers and writers of alphabetically written language…strategies need to be taught systematically in well-planned lessons" (n.d.). A typical phonics activity one might see in the first grade classroom the creation of C-V-C words (consonant-vowel-consonant) in word families. For example, the teacher might put the phoneme -- an on the board and students could spell words in the family by changing the initial consonant. First graders need considerable practice with such an activity, and teachers can vary the task with whole class, small group, and individual practice. The teacher might have all students participate in a lesson that uses magnetic letters on a whiteboard. Pairs or small groups of students might practice with sets of plastic or magnetic letters. Students may practice independently with worksheets.

There is an old axiom that says students in first and second grade learn to read; by third grade, they are starting to read to learn. It is expected that phonemic awareness and phonics are established in first and second grade. The first grade teacher will incorporate lessons on fluency, vocabulary development, and comprehension; further development of these skills will take place in the third and fifth grade classrooms. Many children struggle with learning to read and once they fall behind,…