Tutor profile: Gloria S.

What is the difference between phonics and phonemic awareness?

Phonemic awareness involves the teaching of sounds, with no print involved. Students learn to orally segment, blend, manipulate, and isolate sounds in words. Phonics is the relationship between sounds and symbols and involves print. It involves rhyme, alliteration, counting words in a sentence, and syllables as well as understanding that letters represent sounds.

What does the teaching of English involve for the elementary student?

English/Language Arts involves many pieces that come together for the good of comprehension and writing. Grammar, main idea, story elements, context clues, punctuation, to name a few are critical to reading and writing development.

How important is vocabulary in teaching students how to read and comprehend text?

Learning vocabulary is critical in a child's reading development and for understanding text. While much of the vocabulary is learned indirectly, there are key words that are learned directly by being taught explicitly. This is important to comprehension development.