The Science of Reading is not a contemporary buzzword phrase or prepackaged program, but instead more than a 40-year body of research defining how best to teach learners how to read. Its five components are:

•	Phonemic awareness (manipulating letter sounds by adding, deleting, segmenting and substituting letter sounds both in oral and written form).
•	Phonics (a method of teaching beginners to read and pronounce words by learning the characteristic sounds of letters, letter groups, and syllables).
•	Vocabulary (especially subject-related words)
•	Fluency (reading rate, accuracy and prosody (expression))
•	Reading comprehension (which is the goal of reading)


The English language features 26 letters, 44 phonemes (sounds) and 250 grapheme (written letter) combinations to represent those sounds. Building foundational phonemic awareness and phonics skills are essential to becoming a proficient reader. Even older students and adults who struggle to read need to understand letter-sound relationships to advance their reading skills.


This class complements the Simple View of Reading’s (Word Recognition X Language Comprehension= Reading Comprehension) first component:

WORD RECOGNITION
•	Phonological Awareness                               
•	 Decoding                                                 
•	Sight Recognition (Orthographic Mapping)


Grade-level academic language highlights include: 
•	Graphemes (written letter representation)
•	Phonemes (individual sounds connected to each letter)
•	Phonemic awareness (the ability to manipulate letter sounds by adding, deleting, segmenting and substituting letter sounds in both oral and written form).

The latest research confirms the importance of combining phonics with spelling (encoding) to help produce proficient readers. To orthographically map words (spelling) learners need to build a link between the letters, sounds and meanings of words. Learners can best comprehend word meaning by studying a word’s morphology (structure). This includes prefixes, Greek/Latin base words and suffixes. Understanding word morphology can increase a learner’s spelling abilities exponentially. 

Course-Weekly Breakdown:
Week 1 
•	Review consonants, vowels, academic language (including phonemes, graphemes, phonemic awareness, written representation for phonemes (/c/ /a/ /t/).
•	Preview spelling skills: oral, written and tactile (touch, using fingers and arms).
•	Introduce concept of word structure (morphology).
•	Learn short vowel sound: /a/

Week 2 through Week 6 (Design)
•	Review previous week’s phonics skills (Phonemic awareness, practicing oral, written and tactile representation of letter sounds). 5-10 minutes
•	Practice highlighted weekly phonics skills (including online flashcards and skill sheets) 25 minutes
•	Review content-related video to reinforce skills and accommodate audio-visual learners 3-5 minutes
•	Spin the Wheel of Phonics (here, learners spin the wheel and have the option to explain and/or demonstrate the skill or concept they land on. The wheel grows weekly with advancing instruction (lesson debriefing) 5-7 minutes

Scope and Sequencing of Phonics Skills:
Week 1: Short a
Week 2: Short e and short i
Week 3 Short o and short u
Week 4 Digraphs ch, th,
Week 5 Digraphs sh, ck
Week 6: Digraphs ph, wh


***Additional six-week sessions featuring advancing phonics scope and sequence will be offered depending on interest.