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Effective Reading Instruction in the Early Years of School

The teaching and learning of reading has attracted the interest of scholars and researchers across many disciplines including education, psychology, linguistics and health. Since 2000, there have been major reviews of the teaching of reading in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. These reviews, along with other research, have consistently identified five key components of effective reading programs: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. These components should be taught explicitly, systematically and sequentially.

This paper summarises the research regarding why these five elements are important, as well as how they should be taught in the classroom. The paper examines each of these five elements individually in the sequence they should be taught, bearing in mind that each element is interconnected and that accomplished reading requires mastery of all of them. The final section considers how reading instruction is currently incorporated into Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programs
in NSW.