A hallmark of skilled reading is recognizing written words automatically from memory by sight. How beginning readers attain this skill is explained. They must acquire foundational knowledge, including phonemic segmentation, grapheme-phoneme knowledge, decoding, and spelling skills. When these skills are applied, spellings of words become bonded to…

The National Reading Panel (NRP) identified five pillars, or essential components, of reading instruction that lead to the highest chance of reading success--phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. A decade after the NRP's report, the majority of US states adopted the Common Core State Standards/English Language Arts…

Asserts that reading and writing skill instruction should not be taught as a set of discrete steps with phonics workbooks, but instead should be based on examples taken from texts which children write and read. (MM)

Recommends the use of a combination analytic-synthetic approach to phonics instruction, preceded by pretesting to determine the student's stage of phonic skill development. (RW)

Lists 38 ways to more effective teaching of word attack skills. (MKM)