Throughout this semester, we learned how these components of teaching reading create a cohesive learning environment.  But, how exactly do these parts create the whole?  Let's find out!

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Emergent Reading Skills, as the name suggests, are the skills which young students use to learn to read.  Among these are: the seven pillars of effective reading instruction, knowing how environmental and socioeconomic variations affect children's reading, and different skill sets teachers should endow their students with (syntax, grammar, etc.).  

Reading to Learn is exactly that: once a student knows how to read, they can then read content area texts to learn new subject matter.  When a student has the proper grasp of his or her own language, he or she can then put that knowledge to work acquiring other knowledge.  

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Assessment is highly important in this continuum.  Without the proper avenue of knowing whether a student understands the material presented to him or her, he or she cannot move on to more intricate subjects.  The student is responsible for putting all this together and synthesizing the information given, but we as educators need know know if our instruction has taken hold, and whether the student can go out into the world as a productive citizen after leaving school.

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Which brings us to our final topic: Instruction.  Instruction is the medium by which all these other components combine.  Without good instructional practices, the students will not grasp the emergent literacies, be able to read to learn, and we will find (through assessment) that the students don't understand the materials.