The Big Six Pillars Of Literacy Instruction

Learning to read involves six key elements, each of which is critical for success with reading and writing. Like pillars of a solid structure, the big six are the essential supports needed for building literacy competency. Let’s look at what the Big Six Pillars are and why they’re important. Oral …

Learning to read involves six key elements, each of which is critical for success with reading and writing. Like pillars of a solid structure, the big six are the essential supports needed for building literacy competency. Let’s look at what the Big Six Pillars are and why they’re important.

Oral Language

Did you know that learning to read and write begins with speaking? Spoken, or oral, language is the foundation of literacy because it’s how we first encounter, learn and use words. Well before children pick up a book or pencil or start to learn the alphabet, our literacy skills begin to develop by listening to people speak and then talking ourselves. Children start to build their vocabulary and become familiar with words and sentences. We learn that words have meanings and that we can use them to communicate our needs, thoughts, feelings and desires. Words and language help us understand and be understood.

Reading to young children is encouraged not so they can start recognising written words on a page but because hearing words out loud and the different sounds used to make them is essential for gaining the first skills in acquiring language. Engaging in word play, rhyming, and even singing and clapping to the beat of words lay the foundations for the building blocks that follow. Conversing regularly with your children is a great way to get a head start on language and literacy skills; the seemingly endless “why?” questions from children are a great opportunity to build their language skills.

Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, identify, and manipulate the distinct sounds within spoken words. Phonemes are the smallest individual sounds in speech that when put together make up words. Learning to read and write starts with understanding that words can be broken apart into smaller sounds. These sounds can be joined together in various combinations to make different words.

There are around 44 phonemes in the English language. Students need to become aware of the individual sounds or phonemes in words, before learning how to join or blend them together, and how to build words. This happens before letters are even introduced – phonemes are the sounds in spoken language without the visual symbols of written language attached. Rhyming songs and oral repetition games help children develop phonemic awareness.

Most children “tune in” to the phonemes used in their own language as infants, and don’t need to be taught phonemic awareness. When it comes time to represent sounds with letters (writing), or to translate letters into words (reading), it can be very beneficial for children to practise working with the phonemes individually, in the same way that you wouldn’t expect a child to know how to bake a cake without introducing them to the individual ingredients.

Students who have strong phonemic awareness are much more likely to become successful readers. Good phonemic awareness is essential for understanding the next key component of literacy: phonics

Phonics

Phonics is about the relationship between the sounds we hear in words and the symbols used to write them. The sounds in words (phonemes) are represented visually by written symbols – letters of the alphabet (graphemes). This is where decoding the English language begins: teaching students to recognise the letter combinations that represent certain sounds enables them to crack the code.

Learning the different letter combinations for each phoneme allows readers to sound out words. This means they can read new words they haven’t seen before without having to memorise them.

English is an old language that has many interesting patterns in its orthography (the written system). Explicit literacy instruction like the Orton Gillingham Language Approach teaches students a system for recognising letter patterns and decoding the parts of words, so they can read and spell them. Research shows that systematic and explicit phonics instruction benefits all students learning to read and write but is especially important for students who struggle with reading and spelling. Skilled teachers continue to learn and understand the patterns of English orthography.  Then they can teach these clearly to children.

Fluency

Fluency is the ability to read with speed, accuracy, and proper expression. While fluency involves appropriate pacing, it’s more about being able to read smoothly without having to keep stopping to decode words. It also means making sense of what you’re reading and reflecting that in the way you read, for example knowing when to pause or change tone (this is also called prosody).  It is about noticing and understanding the purpose of punctuation.

There’s a strong relationship between fluency and comprehension. When students read more fluently they understand better what they’re reading, and when students understand what they are reading they can read it more fluently. Research shows though that fluency has a stronger effect on comprehension than the other way round. Recognising words easily, allows us to read efficiently.  When less effort is needed to decode words ‘on the go’ we can focus more on the meaning of the sentences, leading to better comprehension. This doesn’t mean reading should be a race, and the research also shows that the very fastest young readers do not show the best understanding – there is a ‘sweet spot’. Hitting that sweet spot is all about the process of ‘lifting the words off the page’ having switched from a difficult, unnatural process, to an automatic, easy process that doesn’t involve mental struggle.

Developing fluency is essential for students’ motivation because it increases confidence and makes reading more enjoyable.

Fluency is gained by practicing reading, especially out loud. The repeated sounding out of words accurately is critical for developing fluency.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary is the ‘bank’ of words a person understands and can use effectively. It’s about not only recognising a wide variety of words but knowing what they mean and how to use them, both when speaking and in print.

Vocabulary is important for literacy because students must know what the words they’re reading mean to understand the whole text. Limited vocabulary is a key cause of poor comprehension. Learning new words also improves reading fluency.

We build vocabulary through listening in conversations and by reading. It can also be grown through explicitly taught vocabulary and word-learning strategies such as those used in the Orton Gillingham Language Approach.

Studies have found that children whose parents read to them in the first five years of life hear significantly more words than those who are not exposed to books regularly as toddlers. In fact one study in 2019* reported a “million word gap” in heard vocabulary or word exposure, between children who were read five books a day from birth until starting school and children whose parents did not read to them at all. We also know that written language uses deeper vocabulary and structure than oral language, so children who read independently, are being exposed to far more language than those who don’t, which can contribute to a “rich get richer while the poor get poorer” effect in language development.

Comprehension

More than just understanding what is read, comprehension means making sense of it and being able to analyse and take meaning from the text. It involves interpreting text, understanding its intent and integrating it with previous knowledge to make connections, predict and infer.

Comprehension is a key component of literacy in itself, as well as a product of the other five pillars. It is the goal of learning to read and write.

Comprehension starts with the literal meaning of words and grows to the overall meaning of the text and then to understanding complex concepts within and beyond what is read.

In reading, comprehension is best supported when the reading is so automatic that the reader can think about what they’re reading, while they’re reading it.

Learn More

Learn more about the Big Six Pillars of Literacy Instruction with our Orton Gillingham Language Approach Basic Training. Click here for information about the Orton Gillingham Language Approach, and our training events.

* Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics

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