Five strands of effective instruction

According to the National Institute for Literacy, the five components of effective reading instruction include: 

Phonemic awareness
the ability to notice, think about and work with the individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words

Phonics
the relationships between the letters (graphemes) of written language and the individual sounds (phonemes) of spoken language. Phonics instruction teaches learners to use these relationships to use and write words.

Fluency
the ability to read a text accurately and quickly. When fluent readers read: silently, they automatically recognize words automatically; they group words quickly to help them gain meaning from what they read; and, they read aloud effortlessly and with expression. Fluency is important because it provides a bridge between word recognition and comprehension.

Vocabulary
includes the words we must know to communicate effectively. Vocabulary is also very important to reading comprehension. Readers cannot understand what they are reading without knowing what most of the words mean. Learning to read more advanced texts means readers must learn the meaning of new words that are not part of their oral vocabulary.

Comprehension
is the reason for reading. If readers can read the words but do not understand their meaning, they are not really reading. Good readers are both purposeful (they have a reason to read) and active (they think to make sense of what they read).