The Big 5 are five components of instruction that, when combined together, develop beginning reading skills. These five components are: Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Fluency, Vocabulary and Comprehension. Each component focuses on strengthening different skills that beginners will need to grow as a reader. Phonemic Awareness can be described as the ability to notice, think about and manipulate individual sounds. Phonics is teaching the relationships between the individual sounds and letters. These work hand in hand to show beginning readers how words are formed, and that there is a relationship between the sounds we make and what we read and write. Fluency is the ability to read quickly, accurately and with expression. A person’s Vocabulary is the knowledge they have of different words in the language, and Comprehension is making sense of what is being read. They all are connected because the idea of reading is Comprehension, and fluent readers with a large vocabulary will not have to spend as much time decoding and piecing together words like they do when they practice Phonemic Awareness and Phonics. As we develop these skills, we become stronger readers. These five components are important because they are the foundations that all reading skills are built on.

Click on each of the Big 5 for more information