5+-+Teaching+Reading

Teaching Reading ** When teaching reading there are three main steps in a lesson: before reading, during reading and after reading. Before reading, teachers need to build up the student’s knowledge and link it to the book that is going to be read. (Hill, 2006, p.176) During reading “teachers often use prompts to support children to problem solve and use several information sources such as the meaning, syntax or the sounds and letters to figure out the print” (Hill, 2006, p.176). After reading teachers plan a variety of activities and tasks to help the students further develop into independent readers. Teachers need to be aware that not all children will be at the same level when learning. Some will be far more advanced than others. Teachers need to spend time helping those students but also remain teaching the rest of the class. Some students may come from families who, have not put time into already developing their children with a basic knowledge of reading. Most children will be familiar with books but some children may not. Some children will know how to do some reading and others will have great difficulty starting their reading journey.

When teaching children to read, a teacher moves from having total control of the reading to having children read and write independently. (Hill, 2006, p.72) Modeled reading, shared reading, guided reading and independent reading are all aspects of the scaffolding approach to learning to read. Guided reading is usually in small groups. The teacher listens to the student read and then intervenes if the meaning is lost. The teacher asks questions relating to the pictures and content, including what happened, where it happened, etc. Individual reading is the most important part. The students read the book on their own. The students have a challenging book but not to challenging. The teacher will then go around and work with each child individually. While with each child the teacher writes down notes and gives encouragement, but never tells them the answers. The teacher starts with modeled reading and moves their way through to independent reading. This is “the goal literacy teachers aspire to for all their students” (Hill, 2006, p.72).





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