Teaching+reading

Teaching reading:
There are a multitude of different activities that can help when teaching children to read. From the most preliminary, such as singing the alphabet to the tune of ‘//Twinkle twinkle little star’//, written by W. A. Mozart when he was of primary school age, to more complex activities that require an understanding of certain aspects of phonics, children can learn information relevant to their level of understanding. Much of teaching reading involves seeing, hearing, saying and writing letters and words. After the letters are recognized, their relation to sound must be taught. There are many different methods being used which includes: the Spalding approach uses VAKT (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, tactile) (Spalding & Spalding 1962), which teaches letters and sounds aimed at these senses. Each letter is ultimately seen, said and heard, written, and made (with modelling clay). From here the different stages of phonics are introduced in many ways. Key words can be used as a basis to decode other words. It is a system of particular words that are taught as tools to decode unfamiliar words. There are other ways to teach reading, including approaches that focus on spelling, making words, anticipating words, relating words to similar words, and so on. In order to effectively teach children to read they must first observe reading, and as their understanding of text progresses, so does their involvement in class reading. There is a four step process that can be adhered to as an approach to teaching reading: -Modelled reading -Shared reading -Guided reading -Reciprocal teaching Modelled reading is modelling reading to children, Shared reading is an instructional approach to reading where certain words are read out or worked out by students, and others are read by the teacher. Guided reading usually involves an unfamiliar text, a small group of students, each with a copy of the same text, and a teacher to “prepare them to use a range of problem-solving strategies to read the text” (Hill p.80). Reciprocal reading is for more experienced readers, about grade 3-4. It involves a teacher leading a discussion on a selected text, modelling and “explaining the use of the four strategies that are features of this approach”(dso ). 1, predicting, 2 clarifying – concepts and words that are unfamiliar,3 question generating, 4 summarising – teacher summarises, recapitulating the main idea of the text, encouraging student input. Predicting is done before each child reads the text silently, clarifying occurs when appropriate, and the final two strategies happen after the text has been read. Certain things not to overlook when teaching the reading of English are fundamental, such as reading from left to right, top to bottom, which is the front and which is the back of the book. There are many indicators that children need to be shown, that can help them understand a text such as illustration and repeated words, repeated phrases and words that rhyme. Apart from learning phonics and words, punctuation is an important feature of text that indicates to readers ‘who’ is speaking, when to take breaths, and when ideas finish. Ultimately children need to learn “that the purpose of reading is to gain meaning from the text and understand ideas that words convey”(WETA 2004).