Introduction:
- The skills holding many students back from reading proficiency are word-level reading skills, specifically decoding and word identification.
- The key distinguishing factor between skilled readers and poor readers is the ability to sound out unfamiliar words.
- Additionally, skilled readers have the ability to remember the words they read, while struggling readers fail to remember these words even after being exposed to them many times.
- Struggling students typically have poor phonemic awareness skills as well. Phoneme skills are necessary for the two skills listed above (sounding out unfamiliar words and remembering words).
Important Takeaways from the Webinar Clip:
- We know that all skilled readers of an alphabet-based writing system have phonics skills because they can read nonsense words once they hit 3rd grade.
- No skilled reader is good at remembering words but not able to read nonsense words. The ability to sound out unfamiliar words precedes the ability to remember them.
- We utilize an alphabetic writing system. We write sequences of characters that are meant to represent phonemes within spoken words. Therefore, phoneme skills are necessary to be successful.
- Phonic decoding depends on 3 skills: (1) letter sound knowledge, (2) blending ability, and (3) knowledge of familiar patterns or syllable types
- The ability to blend sounds is necessary to decode unfamiliar words.
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