Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary and Comprehension are the five areas of reading instruction that are focused on during the Literacy Hour.
Phonemic Awareness:
- Phonemic Awareness teaches children to notice, think about and work with sounds in spoken language. This activity helps pupils to understand that words are made up of speech sounds.
- Activities that can be used to develop this skill are:
- Recognizing individual sounds in words e.g. What is the first sound in the word man?
- Recognizing the same sound in different words e.g. What sound is heard in all of the following words - hat, him, hen.
- Recognizing the odd sound within a set of words e.g. Select the odd sound in the following words – bus, bun, rug.
- Combining phonemes to form words e.g. What word can be formed from combining b/i/g
- Breaking up a word into separate sounds such as bag to b/a/g.
- Recognizing the word that remains when a phoneme is removed from another word, such as brake to rake.
- Adding a phoneme to an existing word to make a new word e.g. from room to broom.
- Substituting one phoneme for another to make a new word such as bet to let
Phonics
- Phonics is a method of teaching reading by associating letters and speech sounds.
- Phonics involves being able to read, pronounce and write words by associating letters and sounds.
- Teacher should include modeling of sounds and application of sounds learnt.
- Activities that can be used are:
- Providing practice with letter – sound relationship in a predetermined sequence.
- Teaching the alphabet
- Converting letters into sounds and combining sounds to create a word.
- Examining parts of words and exploring letter – sound relationship.
- Listening to stories also factual texts read aloud.
- Writing letters, words, messages and stories.
Fluency
- Fluent reading is reading effortlessly, with speed accuracy and proper expression.
- Fluent reading helps readers gain meaning from what is read. Fluent readers recognize words and comprehend at the same time.
- Activities to develop this skill include:
- Practicing repeated and monitored oral reading or reading passages several times with guidance and feedback from the teacher.
- Providing children with models of fluent reading. (Teaching and parent should read aloud daily to children.)
Vocabulary
- Vocabulary refers to the words that children know so tat they can communicate through speech or recognize words when listening or when these are in print.
- Vocabulary plays and important part in learning to read.
- There are four types of vocabulary – listening vocabulary, speaking vocabulary, reading vocabulary and writing vocabulary.
- Activities to develop this skill include:
- engaging in oral language daily (learning word meanings through conversations with other persons)
- listening to adults read to them
- reading extensively on their own.
Comprehension
- Comprehension Instruction ensures that pupils can demonstrate what they understand from what they read.
- Activities to develop this include:
- reading fluently
- retelling what is read
- responding to different kinds of questions about what is read, drawing pictures, stating whether statements are true or false.
Structure of the Literacy Hour
- The Literacy Hour begins with an ‘Introduction’ to the day’s programme. This lasts for 7 minutes. Activities planned for the day and the objectives are discussed during this time.
- Phonemic Awareness is taught to the whole class for the next 15 minutes. This may include songs and rhymes.
- Phonics is taught for the following 15 minutes. During this period letter sounds are taught systematically.
- Small group activities involving guided and shared reading, drawing, tracing, writing and vocabulary development activities are done.
- The final session of the ‘Literacy Hour’ is called Reflection. During this time there is teacher/pupil discussion about what was done and what was learnt. The teacher uses this information to improve future lessons.
