Fluency • Reading fluency refers to reading with accuracy, automaticity, and prosody (e.g., appropriate intonation and rhythm). Reading words accurately ensures an appropriate basic understanding of the text. At the same time, automaticity “allows readers to devote more cognitive attention to comprehension. Reading with prosody (e.g., appropriate expression, phrasing) both reflects and supports comprehension” (Duke & Cartwright, 2021; Duke, Ward, & Pearson, 2021). • Fluency bridges decoding and reading comprehension (Pikulski & Chard, 2005). • Children must understand how print represents speech to access the meaning of what is being read. Explicit, intentional instruction to build this skill is critical for early language learners. However, as students become more fluent readers, decoding requires less explicit focus (Carreker, 2021). Vocabulary • Vocabulary plays a pivotal role in reading comprehension. Not only does it directly predict word recognition (Duke & Cartwright, 2021; Tunmer & Chapman, 2012), but it is also highly correlated with later reading achievement (Grimm et al., 2018; Lee, 2011; Mesa & Yeomans-Maldonado, 2019). For example, researchers have found that a child’s vocabulary size at two years old significantly predicts a child’s reading skills through fifth grade (Lee, 2011). • Research shows that relatively few words comprise the bulk of written English. Leading literacy experts Elfrieda Hiebert, Amanda Goodwin, and Gina Cervetti examined over 10,000 digitized texts written for students across grade levels and content areas. Their analysis identified a “core vocabulary” that accounts for more than 90 percent of the words in school materials (Hiebert et al., 2018). • Effective vocabulary instruction: • Focuses on a small number of high-utility words, including generic academic words; provides both contextual and definitional information about the target words; teaches words in context; offers repeated exposure to novel words across a variety of contexts; and incorporates frequent opportunities for interactions in which students talk about and use academic words (Beck et al., 2002). • Teaches words in conceptually-linked groups, with particular benefits for teaching words in taxonomies (Hadley et al., 2018,). • Provides opportunities to actively process a word’s meaning—through comparing/ contrasting, answering questions about the word, and semantic mapping—which has a greater effect on comprehension than simply writing the definition (Wright & Cervetti, 2017) • Has students cluster words into categories to facilitate comprehension, accelerate learning, and enhance word retention (Neuman et al., 2011).
SCHOLASTIC LITERACY FRAMEWORK EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 6
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