Implications for Instruction
Information derived from the TPRI will assist teachers in planning targeted instruction for their students. Instructional plans and activities that teachers use are generally developed in their own classrooms, picked up from the district or campus-adopted English language arts and reading programs, or taken from supplementary materials. Some ideas that can serve as a basis for additional instruction are discussed below.

Book and Print Awareness
Students must understand that printed language serves many purposes and is all around them on signs,
billboards, and labels, and in books, magazines, and newspapers. Activities that focus on the use and
appreciation of print are important in fostering book and print awareness. Instruction in book and print awareness can include activities that help students understand that print represents spoken language. Highlighting the meanings, uses, and production of print can be fostered through classroom signs, labels, notes, posters, calendars, and directions. Activities that teach print conventions include helping students practice turning pages, locating the tops and bottoms of pages, and identifying the front and back cover of a book. Lessons in word awareness help students become aware of individual words, their boundaries, their appearance, and their length. Practice with predictable and patterned language stories helps students realize the connections between written and spoken language.

The ability to think about individual words as a sequence of sounds (phonemes) is important to learning how to read an alphabetic language. Students’ phonemic awareness, that is, their understanding that spoken words can be divided into separate sounds, is one of the best predictors of their success in learning to read. Instruction that promotes student understanding and use of these building blocks of spoken language includes language games where students manipulate the sounds of words, separate or segment the sounds of words, blend sounds, delete sounds, and substitute new sounds for those deleted.


Graphophonemic Knowledge
The understanding that written words are composed of patterns of letters that represent the sounds of
spoken words is known as graphophonemic knowledge. Becoming aware of the sounds of spoken language and their relationship to the letters of written language prepares students to understand the alphabetic
principle. Targeted instruction provides students with explicit and systematic teaching of sound-letter
relationships in a sequence that permits them to begin reading. Such instruction helps students understand the alphabetic principle and learn the most common relationships between sounds and letters. Activities may focus on alphabetic awareness that printed words are made up of patterns of letters that relate to the sounds of spoken language. Activities that combine and manipulate letters and word parts to change words and spelling patterns further develop this understanding.

Reading Accuracy
Comprehension depends upon the ability to identify words quickly and rapidly in order to reach a level of reading fluency in which students are able to concentrate on the meanings of words. Efficient readers
quickly and automatically translate the words and sentences they are reading into meaningful ideas. Beginning readers should have opportunities to read and reread passages and books that allow them to practice
successfully what they are learning about sounds and letters. As students develop effective decoding
strategies and become fluent readers, they read books and other texts that are increasingly complex in
vocabulary and sentence structure. Providing students with many books, both narrative and informational, is of primary importance. Classroom and campus libraries should offer students a variety of reading materials, some that are easy to read and others that are challenging.

Once students begin to decode individual words automatically and rapidly, they are on their way to becoming fluent readers. Fluency is a combination of reading rate—the speed with which text is decoded—and accuracy. The ability to read fluently has a great impact on the ability to comprehend text. Fluency and
comprehension are closely related. Fluent readers are able to focus less time on decoding, leaving more
attention free for comprehension. Having the ability to read fluently is demonstrated by the ability to read with prosody or expression, appropriate phrasing, and attention to punctuation. Fluent first grade readers have a reading rate of about 60 words per minute. A first grade student who is reading at 40 words per minute or less, needs help achieving automaticity through practice opportunities on a regular basis. Fluent second grade readers have a reading rate of about 90 words per minute. A second grade student who is reading at 60 words per minute or less, also needs help achieving automaticity through practice opportunities on a regular basis. Students who read 10 or fewer words per minute are considered nonfluent. Nonfluent readers are characterized as reading haltingly, ignoring punctuation, and combining phrases and sentences. They often read with little expression. These students need multiple opportunities for practice because nonfluent readers often lose interest in reading altogether. Monitoring student progress in fluency can help motivate students to read, aids in selection of appropriate practice books, and provides data for graphing growth.

Listening Comprehension
Listening to and talking about books on a regular basis provides students with pleasurable and beneficial reading experiences. Story reading introduces students to words, sentences, places, and ideas. They are also exposed to the type of vocabulary, sentences, and literary elements they will find in their schoolbooks. Reading aloud to students every day and talking about books and stories supports and extends oral
language development and helps students connect oral to written language

Reading comprehension depends upon the reader's understanding of word meanings, ability to extract
meaning from groups of words (e.g., clauses, sentences, and paragraphs), and ability to draw inferences. Comprehension also depends upon the demands of the text and the background knowledge the student brings to it. The discussion of good books among friends and classmates is one avenue for deepening
understanding. Such discussions will help students appreciate and reflect upon new aspects of written
language. Activities that will heighten comprehension and enjoyment include previewing selections,
anticipating content, and making connections between what students already know and what they are
reading. Comparing the elements of different stories, including specific events, themes, and characters will also help students gain a deeper understanding of what they are reading.