awareness (PA) to children was "highly effective" with a variety of children under a variety of conditions. (Note: Phonemic Awareness is the ability to manipulate sounds (phonemes) in spoken syllables and words. Phonemes are the smallest units of sounds comprising spoken language. For example, the words go and she each consist of two sounds or phonemes, g-o (IPA ) and sh-e (IPA ), respectively. Reading instruction that taught PA improved the children's reading ability significantly more than those that lacked this instruction. PA helped normally achieving children to spell but was not effective in helping disabled readers to spell better. "Systematic synthetic phonics" instruction had a positive and significant effect on helping disabled readers, low achieving students, and students with low socioeconomic status to read words more effectively than instruction methods that lacked this approach. Systematic Phonics instruction improved the ability of good readers to spell. Poor readers experienced a small improvement in spelling. Other findings of this report are: Guided Oral Reading (reading out loud and receiving systematic and explicit feedback from a teacher) "had a significant and positive impact on word recognition, fluency, and comprehension". The value of Independent Silent Reading is unclear; however it is clear that it should not be the only type of reading instruction to develop fluency and other reading skills. Vocabulary, both oral and print, should be taught directly and indirectly because it leads to gains in comprehension. Teaching a combination of reading comprehension techniques is the most effective, however more research is needed to determine which techniques are the most effective. In 2014 the California Department of Education stated "Ensuring that children know how to decode regularly spelled one-syllable words by mid-first grade is crucial". It goes on to say that "Children need to be phonemically aware (especially able to segment and blend phonemes)". The skills of segmenting and blending phonemes are a central aspect of synthetic phonics. In grades two and three children receive explicit instruction in advanced phonic-analysis and reading multi-syllabic and more complex words. In 2015 the New York State Public School system began a process to revise its English Language Arts Learning Standards. The standards were revised in 2017 and call for teaching involving "reading or literacy experiences" as well as phonemic awareness from prekindergarten to grade 1 and phonics, word recognition, and word analysis skills in decoding words from grade 1 to grade 4. They will become