Page 19 - EL Grade 2 Skills Block - Module 1: Part 1

Implementing the Reading Foundations Skills Block
The Five Components of Reading
Comprehension is certainly the end goal. Yet we know that readers cannot independently com- prehend a text if they can’t actually make sense of the letters and sounds. And primary readers, especially those who are reading below grade level or learning a second language, need extra practice with these skills, speci cally Phonological Awareness, Phonemic Awareness, and Flu- ency. As readers become more secure in these skills, their reading can become more automatic and they can ultimately read independently and with meaning.
Instruction in the Skills Block sharply focuses on these skills. Explicit instructional practice guides students to read with automaticity and uency, ultimately freeing up their brains to focus on the end goal—comprehension—rather than laboring over every word and losing track of the meaning. The Skills Block focuses on just three of the Five Components of Reading. Comprehension and vocabulary are explicitly taught in the curriculum, primarily through read-alouds of rich, complex texts in the module lessons.
The table that follows illustrates these ve components, notates the strand of standards associ- ated with each, and identi es where each is taught and assessed within the three-hour compre- hensive literacy curriculum.
Where the Five Components of Reading Live in EL Education’s K–2 Language Arts Curriculum
The preceding table is meant to help teachers “connect the new to the known” in terms of mapping EL Education’s curriculum onto what they already know or do. And it should reassure teachers that everything they care about in terms of literacy is formally “held” somewhere in the three hours that make up EL’s Grades K–2 Language Arts Curriculum.
EL Education Curriculum xix
Component of the Big Five
CCSS Standards
Explicitly Taught and Formally Assessed
Comprehension
Reading: Informational Texts Reading: Literature
Module Lessons
Fluency
Reading: Foundational Skills
K–2 Skills Block
Phonemic Awareness
Reading: Foundational Skills
K–2 Skills Block
Phonics
Reading: Foundational Skills
K–2 Skills Block
Vocabulary
Language
Module Lessons
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