12.3 Five Essential Components of Reading
Key Takeaways
- PECT 0006.3 names five essential components that require explicit, research-based instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and text comprehension.
- Explicit means the teacher names the skill, models it, guides practice with feedback, and plans independent practice in a systematic, cumulative sequence — not waiting for the skill to 'emerge' from exposure alone.
- All five are interdependent (Simple View / Rope): dropping one leaves a hole that the others cannot permanently fill.
- Differentiate dosage, grouping, text difficulty, and scaffolds for individual needs and growing skill; do not differentiate by deleting a component.
- This section is the map. Chapters 14–16 go deep on print, phonological/phonemic awareness, and phonics; Chapters 17–18 go deep on fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
12.3 Five Essential Components of Reading
Quick answer: PECT objective 0006.3 tests best practices in early and emergent literacy and reading, including the importance of explicit, research-based instruction in the essential components — phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and text comprehension — and differentiating literacy instruction for individual needs and growing knowledge and skills. This section is the map. Chapters 14–18 teach each component in depth. Do not skip a component here because a later chapter will “cover it.”
0006.1 was which Pennsylvania language arts targets. 0006.2 was how reading works in research models. 0006.3 is what you actually teach every week so those models become classroom practice. National Reading Panel (2000) research is the lineage; Pearson lists the five components in the official descriptor. If an option names only crafts, only silent reading, or only one of the five, it is not 0006.3.
The five components at map scale
Keep definitions sharp. PECT separates phonemic awareness from phonics (0007.2–0007.3 versus 0007.4–0007.6). Do not blend them on this exam.
| Component | What it is (map definition) | Why it cannot be dropped | Deep dive later |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phonemic awareness | Oral skill: hear, identify, blend, segment, delete, substitute individual sounds in words | Without phonemes, letters have nothing to map to; Simple View decoding never starts | Ch. 14 (keep separate from broader phonological awareness) |
| Phonics | Print skill: letter–sound correspondences, blending in print, word analysis | Orthographic + phonological processing for word identification | Ch. 15–16 |
| Fluency | Accuracy, rate, and prosody so word reading is automatic enough for comprehension | Slow, effortful decoding fills working memory; the Rope’s language strands never get to run | Ch. 17 |
| Vocabulary | Word meanings in oral language first, then in print; multiple exposures and uses | Language-comprehension factor; you cannot understand a text whose words you do not know | Ch. 17 |
| Text comprehension | Understanding literary and informational text — before, during, and after reading | The goal of reading; strategies still need words identified and language understood | Ch. 18 |
Why all five. The Simple View says decoding × language comprehension. Phonemic awareness and phonics (and then fluency) build the decoding factor toward automaticity. Vocabulary and comprehension instruction — plus the oral language in 0006.2 and Chapter 13 — build the language-comprehension factor. Fluency is the bridge: accurate, automatic, phrased reading lets meaning processing happen in real time. Teaching four and hoping the fifth “comes along” is how PECT constructs wrong answers.
Early and emergent literacy is not “wait until they are ready.” It is the same five, at emergent grain size: phonological/phonemic play, some letter–sound links, adult-modeled fluent reading, robust oral vocabulary, and prompted comprehension of read-alouds. Name writing and shared reading are emergent literacy. They still have to be intentional.
What “explicit, research-based” means
Explicit is a teaching pattern, not a personality.
- Name the skill (“Today we will blend three sounds into a word”).
- Model (I do): the teacher shows the mouth, the letters, or the think-aloud.
- Guided practice (we do): children try with immediate feedback; errors are corrected, not celebrated as cute guesses.
- Independent practice (you do): children apply in a task they can actually do.
- Systematic sequence: a planned order (for example, simpler phonemic tasks before deletion; high-utility letter–sounds before rare ones), with cumulative review, not a random letter-of-the-week that matches the snack.
Research-based here means the component and the method match SBRR (0006.2), not that the program’s catalog uses the word research on the cover.
Implicit-only is the contrast: “They will pick up phonemes if I read enough picture books”; “They will infer new words from a single exposure”; “Comprehension cannot be taught, only tested.” Read-alouds still matter — they are explicit language and comprehension opportunities when the teacher names vocabulary, models retell, and asks text-based questions. They are not a substitute for explicit phonemic or phonics lessons.
Exam trap: “Explicit” does not mean worksheets for four-year-olds, whole-group lectures, or humiliation. PreK explicit phonemic awareness can be a two-minute oral game with puppets. Grade 4 explicit vocabulary can be a 10-minute morphology mini-lesson before an informational article. Grain size is developmental; clarity of the target is not optional.
How the five sit in a PreK–4 week (without stealing later chapters)
You are not yet writing a full phonics scope-and-sequence. You are protecting time so none of the five is a leftover.
- PreK–K: Daily oral phonological/phonemic play; letter names and some sounds; teacher fluent read-alouds; talk that grows vocabulary; prompted retell and prediction. Shared writing. Short, playful, explicit.
- Grade 1–2: A protected word-reading slot (phonemic awareness as needed, phonics, connected decodable practice that builds fluency) plus read-aloud and increasingly student-read literature and informational text for vocabulary and comprehension plus writing. This is the standards-aligned block from 0006.1 with the five components inside it.
- Grade 3–4: Word recognition and fluency continue for multisyllabic words and for students who are not yet automatic. Vocabulary and comprehension take more minutes because more of the reading is independent — not because phonics becomes illegal. Students who still cannot decode need more explicit word-reading, not only a harder novel.
If the schedule is 90 minutes of independent “read whatever you like” with no explicit component, it is not 0006.3, even if the room looks print-rich (print-rich environments are 0006.4–0006.5 in Chapter 13).
Differentiating without dropping a component
0006.3 ends with differentiation for individual needs and growing knowledge and skills. Differentiation changes intensity, grouping, text, scaffolds, and practice amount. It does not issue a private curriculum that deletes phonics for “meaning-makers” or deletes comprehension for “strugglers.”
| Need you observe | Differentiate by… | Do not… |
|---|---|---|
| Weak phonemic awareness | Smaller group, more oral blending/segmenting minutes, simpler items (initial sound before deletion) | Skip phonics forever, or skip comprehension read-alouds |
| Weak decoding | More explicit phonics and decoding practice; controlled text for application; still hear rich language in read-alouds | Put the child only in arts-and-crafts “literacy”; guess from pictures as the main strategy |
| Accurate but slow | Fluency work (repeated reading, a proficient model) with text the child can already decode | Drop vocabulary and comprehension until a magic words-correct-per-minute number |
| Decodes but thin word knowledge | Direct vocabulary, morphology, more oral language, knowledge-building text | More speed drills only |
| English learner | All five, with more oral language, visuals, home-language links, and explicit academic vocabulary | Wait to teach phonics or content until English is “complete” |
| Student with a disability | Same components, more explicit modeling, more practice, IEP accommodations; UDL access (Chapter 7) | A parallel cute curriculum that abandons PA Core ELA intent |
| Already automatic in Grade 4 | Harder text, morphology, deeper comprehension and writing — still watch for holes | Busywork packets as “enrichment” |
Growing knowledge and skills means yesterday’s kindergarten phonemic lesson is not a Grade 4 lesson. The component remains; the grain changes (phonemes → morphology; listening comprehension → reading complex informational text). Assessment that later objectives cover (0007.8, 0008.8) is how you know which component is the bottleneck. On 0006.3 items, choose the teacher who finds the weak component and teaches it more clearly, while the child still meets the other four at an accessible level (teacher read-aloud for comprehension while decoding is rebuilt; decodable text for phonics while vocabulary is taught orally).
Scenario: “He’s not ready for phonics”
A kindergarten team wants to postpone all letter–sound instruction until children “love books.” Love of books supports motivation and language. SBRR and 0006.3 still require explicit phonemic awareness and beginning phonics at kindergarten grain size. The PECT-correct plan does both: joyful read-alouds and a short explicit word-work block. Readiness is created by teaching, not by waiting (Chapter 2 maturational trap).
Scenario: Grade 3 decoding bottleneck
Ava reads far below grade level. The teacher gives her the same Grade 3 novel as peers “for fairness” and a coloring packet during small group. Fairness is access to the five components. Differentiation: explicit decoding/fluency at her word-reading level, teacher-supported grade-level ideas through read-aloud or scaffolded informational text so vocabulary and comprehension keep growing, and writing that uses those ideas. Dropping comprehension until decoding is perfect produces a word caller later. Dropping decoding produces a child who never reads the novel independently.
Exam traps for 0006.3
- One-component literacy. Only phonics, only novels, only vocabulary posters.
- Implicit-only emergence. Skills will not reliably appear from exposure.
- Differentiation as deletion. Removing a component is not an accommodation.
- Identical tasks as fairness. Fairness is the same essential components with adjusted support.
- Stealing later chapters. You do not need syllable types or running-record codes here. You need the map: five named components, explicit teaching, differentiate dosage.
- Confusing phonemic awareness with phonics. Oral sounds versus print. PECT keeps them separate.
If a stem asks for best practice in early literacy, choose explicit teaching of all five, adjusted for the child in front of you. Chapters 14–18 supply the how-to for each strand.
Which set names the five essential components of reading that PECT 0006.3 requires teachers to teach with explicit, research-based instruction?
A kindergarten teacher says phonemic awareness will emerge if children hear enough stories and should not be taught directly. What does explicit, research-based instruction require instead?
A Grade 3 student decodes slowly. Which differentiation best matches 0006.3?