Four Blocks Framework

It's Just Four Blocks to Reading Skills

The Four Blocks® Literacy Framework was developed by educators Patricia Cunningham and Dorothy Hall. It's being used in elementary school classes throughout the United States. Four Blocks organizes reading instruction into four segments. According to Cunningham and Hall, the Four Blocks Framework "was developed...to provide beginning readers with instruction consistent with the four major approaches to reading,"; and "to provide multilevel instruction that meets the needs of children with a wide range of literacy levels."

Block One is Guided Reading. It encourages children to attempt different types of reading materials, including materials of increasing difficulty. The teacher seeks to develop reading comprehension using intriguing activities and helps students become fluent in oral reading. The teacher uses a basal reader, a book written specifically for reading lessons. A basal reader contains original stories or previously published stories and excerpts from books and come with a teacher’s version and workbooks or activity sheets.

Self-Selected Reading is Block Two of the Four Blocks. This block offers opportunities for children to become avid readers through hearing books read aloud and selecting books to read on their own. The teacher provides ample choices from which the child can select a book. While students are reading silently, the teacher talks with individual students about what they are reading and how they are doing with the reading material. Each student gets a chance to discuss in class what he is reading.

Block Three, Working With Words, is designed to enable students to recognize, read, and spell high-frequency words. The emphasis is on building phonemic awareness — “the understanding that oral language is made up of sounds and groups of sounds” — and teaching children to use phonics to sound out words. Children also learn about word patterns. They become better readers as they learn new words, and they learn more new words as they read more widely.

Block Four of the Four Blocks is Writing, a skill inextricably connected to reading. In this block, students develop their writing skills. The teacher models the writing process and gives students opportunities to practice writing and to receive feedback. Students write on various topics and learn writing rules, such as punctuation and capitalization.

The Four Blocks method teaches reading systematically, uses different reading activities to play to the strengths of individual students, and avoids the possible stigma for students of being placed in a leveled reading group.