In the 1980s and 1990s, there existed a debate revolving around the question: What is the best approach to teaching reading?

Phonemes are the smallest units in our spoken language that distinguish one word from another. Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, identify, and manipulate phonemes in a spoken word.

Phonemic awareness is the awareness that words are composed of sounds, and those sounds have distinct articulatory features. It is a critical skill and a strong predictor of future reading success in children.

Decodable passages and books with illustrations serve as stepping stones toward chapter books.

Structured Literacy™ is a term created by the International Dyslexia Association in 2016 to help unify the names of the researched approaches to reading, including Orton-Gillingham, phonics-based reading instruction, systematic reading instruction and synthetic phonics.