Concepts
In reading, there are 5 key concepts that all work together to create the reading experience: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. As children move through primary school, they develop skills in all 5 of these areas to be successful readers.
| Reading concept | Explanation |
| Phonemic awareness | Phonemic awareness is the ability of the child to recognise that all words have phonemes within them and be able to manipulate the phonemes. They should identify patterns within words when they hear them before they can notice these patterns in print. |
| Phonics | Phonics is the study of the relationship between the sounds we can hear in a word and the letters that spell them. This allows children to decode a word by segmenting the phonemes and blending them to spell a word. |
| Fluency | Fluency is the ability to read with accuracy and speed. When children can read fluently, their confidence in reading grows and they are able to access a wider range of books. |
| Vocabulary | Reading vocabulary is all the words a child needs to recognise and understand when reading in order to comprehend a text. There are 3 types of vocabulary words: Tier 1 (basic, everyday words), Tier 2 (contextual, descriptive words) and Tier 3 (subject-specific words). |
| Comprehension | Comprehension is being able to understand and interpret what a child has read. We do this by asking a range of questions using E (explain), R (retrieve), I (interpret) and C (choice). |