Five+Pillars+of+Literacy

The five pillars of literacy consist of phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Each of these pillars is no more important than the other one. Without the successful learning of each, the five pillars would not be complete. It is important that each of these skills is taught at an early age, so students do not struggle in their later elementary years. If a student lacks in one these pillars of literacy, it increases their chances to begin struggling with the others. As teachers, it is our job to make sure we give students the best education we can when it comes to literacy. The first pillar of literacy deals with phonemic awareness. This is a skill where a child recognizes sounds or the different letters. The do not need to see the letter or print to determine if they know a certain sound. For example, if I say the letter /b/, they do not need to see that letter on the chalkboard to know what sound I just made. My Reading block dealt with third graders. I did not do much of phonemic awareness because more than half of my class had this skill mastered. There were maybe one or two in my class that still struggled with this concept, but it did not show up that often. However we did deal with poetry by reading it and writing it. At the end of sentences in the text or in their writing, I would ask them why certain words rhymed or why they didn’t. Even my below level readers were able to determine which sounds rhymed and which ones did not. The second pillar of literacy is phonics. Phonics is the sound and symbol relationship of letters and words. Phonics was not a concept that I taught my third grade class as a whole. I used this instruction while working with my one on one student. He was one of my below level readers and he struggled a lot with reading aloud with his peers. He even lacked the confidence when it came time to read aloud to just me. I realized it was because he was thought he was bad readers. Once I encouraged him and informed him that I was just there to help and everyone struggles with reading, he opened up to me. Once he began reading, I noticed that he did not have the common basics of reading. He would see a word and not know to break it into the different sounds. For example, when he would come across the word: //calendar//, he would not even know how to try to pronounce this word. I would begin by sounding out the word first. I would show that the first part of the word sounded like the /k/ sound and then continue with the rest of the word. Once he heard me do it, he would mimic it. We would use this same process with any word that he was stuck on or just didn’t know how to sound out. This seemed to really help him with his reading skills and confidence. The third pillar of literacy is fluency. Fluency is the ability to read with proper phrasing and expression. We dealt a lot with this skill in my third grade Reading block. We read aloud every morning, no matter if it was out of our text or just a passage from a favorite book they have been reading. When we started any story, we never just read it once and put it away. We would read it everyday until it was time for them to take their test. We would reread, reread, and reread. Even though this may have been a bit monotonous for me, I found out that my students at this age actually loved reading stories over and over again. A particular story that we read was called //__The Crowded House__//. This story was written in a play format. I had printed out parts and handed them out to everyone. When their part came up, they would have to read their line(s). Once we finished reading all four scenes, they begged me to switch everyone’s parts so they could read it again. We read this story aloud two times every morning with each student taking part in it. I found that any story that interested my students, they would love to read over and over again. However, we did have a few stories that were not too interesting, but they never objected to reading it aloud or reading it several times. I think that fluency is very important no matter the age. Reading something several times will help your reading skills as well as influencing and benefiting the last two pillars of literacy. The fourth pillar of literacy is vocabulary. Vocabulary is being able to understand a word that had been read. Again, I dealt a lot with this pillar in my third grade classroom. They had new words every week that went along with their story. On Monday when I would introduce these words, I had them find that word in their story. Before we would look up the definition, I would have them try to figure out the words using context clues. I think that this is important because they need to try to figure out some things on their own before asking for help or just looking it up. Once we had a guess at what each word meant using these clues, I would have each of my students to look up those particular words in their dictionary. They would get really excited when they found out that they were right about some of the meanings of the words. Once we had a clear definition of each vocabulary word, we would use them in sentences and reread the sentence that included that word in their story. My students really caught on to their vocabulary words very quickly early in the week. Every day we would do something new with their words. For examples, I would challenge them that they try to use a vocabulary word in their conversations with a teacher or classmate. They loved trying to do this because they said that they sounded //smart//. Another activity we did pertaining to their vocabulary words was putting the wrong word into a sentence to see if it made sense. Then they had to figure out the correct word that fit that sentence. I found that teaching vocabulary was not always an easy skill, but a fun one to work with. The fifth and last pillar of literacy is comprehension. Comprehension is the ability to understand the story or text. I know from previous experience as a student that this was my most difficult skill to succeed at. I was always a great reader, but I had trouble understanding anything that I read. While teaching my third grade class, I found that using the Five Finger Retell really helped when comprehending their story. By the end of my first week there, they had each finger memorized and was able to use this new strategy with each story from there on out. It was an easy tool that really helped them comprehend a story or text. I found that when my students read a story or text aloud, they comprehended a lot better than when they just listened to it. I did several read alouds throughout the week and they had trouble hearing something and then being able to retell it back to me. When I did this task with them I would teach it a whole group rather than have them just write their answers on paper. While observing DIBELS, I noticed that some of my best readers could not retell what they just read. Sometimes, I think that my students just read to be reading and not trying to actually comprehend the text. I would stress that not understanding a story mean that the words they read were meaningless. So, each time after reading so far into the story, I would have them retell me what they just read. I found that breaking their stories into different parts helped them with their comprehension skills. It also helps with making predictions and checking for their outcomes. To me, comprehension is a very important skill that is sometimes hard to teach, but will better prepare them for tests and later years in their education. Each of these five pillars of literacy goes hand in hand with one another and needs to be taught in a sequential order. You don’t need to be teaching comprehension when a child still has trouble reading. A teacher needs to take each pillar at a time. It’s also very important that when they skills are taught, that they have a way of being assessed. Once a child has shown that he/she has succeeded a step, then they need to move on to the next one. Teaching each of these pillars of literacy was somewhat of a challenge for me, but my students made it fun. I loved to see when they finally understood something or began improving in a particular area. I believe that each of these pillars was taught while completing my third grade Reading block.
 * The Five Pillars of Literacy **