Teaching Students How to Read Essay

Concepts of print involve both the practices involved in reading and awareness of how print works; such as knowledge of the front and back of a book, left-to-right, top-to-bottom reading and left-to-right page turning, recognition that printed words relay a message and are read the same way every time, knowledge of what words and letters are and understanding of the functions of capital letters and punctuation and how they affect meaning (Hill, 2012). It is easy to assume that when children begin school they will have had some experience with books and will consequently have a basic understanding of concepts of print. In actuality individual student experience will be diverse, with significant variance in skill and understanding, meaning that explicit teaching of these concepts should be a priority in early reading instruction (Feeley, 1984). Emerging knowledge of concepts of print can be supported when children experience a variety of texts through modelled reading and shared reading activities involving demonstration of correct book handling, repeated reading of favourite books to highlight the functions of print and rich discussions about the meaning conveyed through print, punctuation, illustrations and page layout (Feeley, 1984). Shared and guided reading exercises are effective opportunities for assessing individual student ability and determining future teaching plans (Hill, 2012, p.164). As concepts of print encompass essential pre-requisite skills for learning to read, their importance as part of cohesive reading instruction cannot be

Being the second youngest in my family out of five children, you would think that reading would be easy for me growing up. But learning how to read was a challenge. It was something that I never thought I would be able to do without a lot of help from my father.

Many students who struggle with reading ask why should we read, what is the point? The point is that being able to read opens you up a whole new world of knowledge and imagination. But to have that new world opened up you need to be able to comprehend what you are reading. The primary goal of reading is to determine the meaning of

“ Models of the reading process often depict the act of reading as a communication event between a sender and a receiver of information ”(Vacca et al., 2012). Models are developed to describe the reading process and how a reader interprets language and gains meaning from print. Bottom up models of reading “assume that the process of translating print to meaning begins with the print”, where as a top down model of reading, “assume that the process of translating print meanings begins with the reader’s prior knowledge” (Vacca et al., 2012). The bottom up model of reading is driven more by data where as the top down model is more conceptually driven. When using a bottom up model, letters, syllables and words are used in order to initiate reading. The use of letters, syllables and words helps the reader to form meaning. Where as the top down model is based off of a reader’s prior knowledge and experience. With many different literacy programs, a teacher’s belief system helps to determine how students can best be taught how to read. “One way to examine your beliefs about reading and learning to read is to connect them to theoretical models of the reading process” (Vacca et al., 2012). Depending on the teacher, he or she may have a bottom up approach or a top down approach. Teachers, who feel a bottom up method is best, may feel that his or her students must decode letters and words and feel

Reading is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information which is essential in being a productive member of society. If and when a student missed an opportunity to learn the skills necessary for reading, it’s has a profound impact on their lives. As educators we realize that teaching all children to read requires that every child receive excellent reading instruction. We are also aware that children, who are struggling with reading must receive

Phonics advocates have been arguing that in order for children to learn to read, they need to have an explicit instruction in the rules of printed text in order to read properly. The phonics approach has been described as “bottom up” as it teaches the children to decode text and then the meaning and understanding will follow while the whole word approach is described as “top down,” as the children depend on the pictures within the book, form hypothesis and make predictions of the words with the text of the book being read (Wren, 2003).

“Learning to Read and Write” by Fredrick Douglas is a story about a slave breaking the bondage of ignorance by learning to read and write. During the course of 7 years Douglas discreetly teaches himself to read and write by means of stealing newspapers, trading food with poor white boys for knowledge and books, as well as copying his master’s handwriting. Douglas learning to read gave him extreme awareness of his condition as he says “…I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy” (Page 168-169). With his new consciousness he suffered with depression envying his fellow slaves for their

Hobsbaum and Peters (1996) suggest that the purpose of Reading Recovery is to assist students in constructing a self-improving method of knowledge and strategies rather than teaching them a variety of reading rules. Furthermore, the teacher provides enough assistance, referred to as scaffolding, to help the student achieve a task that is within their zone of proximal development (Hobsbaum & Peters). In this way, the student can eventually begin to do tasks independently or with less scaffolding that are slightly more difficult than they can do already. Hobsbaum and Peters (1996) suggest that feedback and praise are critical for student success because the feedback and praise helps students recognize useful strategies they have used and encourage them to continue putting forth effort when reading.

A doctor once said ‘the more that you read, the more things you will know. The more you learn, the more places you’ll go’. That doctor was, of course, Dr Suess in his book 1978 book, I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!. Reading is the orchestration of many skills. It is much more than simply decoding words. The National Reading Panel Report (A Closer Look, 2004, p. 1) summarised a child’s reading process and teachers’ effective reading instruction into five essential components. These five critical elements are phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Each element is individually important; however, each cannot occur independently of one an other. The most effective way to teach these elements is through a balanced

Phonics are essential to literacy and children’s ability to learn to read and write. Phonics are a system of associating letter symbols with speech sounds (Orton, n.d.). They have an important role in the Australian Curriculum and Reporting Authority: phonics and word knowledge [ACARA]. There are two main concepts related to phonics they are analytical phonics and synthetic phonics. Diana Rigg (2016) states that “direct systematic instruction in phonics during the early years of schooling is an essential foundation for teaching children to read” (para. 3). Phonics are used by children to learn to read and to write, they include letter identification, onset and rime, blends and the relationships between blends and phonemic awareness (Hill, 2012, p.259) (Rigg, 2014). There are many teaching approaches that may be implemented to teach phonics effectively. This essay will discuss, critique and analyse phonics their importance and how different teaching approaches may be implemented to teach phonics to students effectively. It will maintain that synthetic phonics have been proven to be more successful in teaching children than analytical phonics, although it is imperative to use both a synthetic and analytical approach to teaching children phonics.

As the standards of education change a consistent factor remains the focus on reading. Early childhood educators must provide an atmosphere that is both developmentally stimulating to the student while also meeting the standards of education. The methods used to help recognize phonics and begin the transition into emergent readers vary from student to student. Without the foundation of phonics research shows that a child will not learn to read. All children must know the alphabet in order to communicate effectively. Phonics cannot be drilled into the child. This will only produce memorization. Instead, educators must understand a child’s individual needs as well as balance. There is no true need to teach phonics as a separate subject. Most children will develop a sense of curiosity from their own knowledge, ideas, and interest. There will of course be a select few that may benefit from a more formal instruction. When children

There are several approaches to teach children to read. Explicit Phonic Instruction is build from part to whole; children first receive instruction of the letters with associated sounds, and after they learn how to blend sounds into the syllables and into the words. Implicit Phonics Instructions moves from the whole to the smallest parts: first, students are analyzing words and looking for common phonemes in a group of words. After comparison they assume which grapheme to write and which phoneme to read. Children are identifying new words by beginning and ending letters, or by context clue.

There are different aspects to phonics that should be taken into account by teachers. The first is how important phonics is to children. It is said that “both phonics and fluency need to be taught, practiced, and nurtured in the earliest stages of reading instruction and provided to students at

How did you learn to read? Most of us do not put much thought into this question, but learning to read is a difficult task. According to Cervetti and Hiebert, the National Reading Panel identified five essential components that a teacher should use during reading instruction, which gives the student the highest chance of being an effective reader (2015, p. 548). These five essential components are also called five pillars of reading instruction. They are Phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. This paper will describe each of the five pillars, how they are related, the benefits, as well as give some effective methods of teaching phonics and phonemic awareness. It will continue by addressing the relationship between reading assessment and instruction and end by identifying ways to address the needs and different learning styles of a student. This paper will start by looking at a definition of phonics and phonemic awareness, then move onto the role that each play in learning to read, how they are related, the benefits and effective methods of teaching both.

However, the second method being discussed in this paper, the whole language approach, focuses much of its attention on making sure the student understands and enjoys what he or she is reading. Whole language instruction occurs when a student acquires language rather than learning it through direct instruction (Brooks 35-36). This method is more child centered than teacher dominated, because the objective is for the student to learn how to read through talking and doing rather than through passive listening. Unlike phonics, whole language uses a variety of ways to give students the opportunity to interact with the text they are reading. Questioning, discussing, problem-solving, listening, writing, drawing, and dramatizing are among the ways students interact with text. Students are also encouraged to implement simple strategies while reading such as: reading the sentence and guessing what word will come next, looking at the picture on the page to help figure out the sentence, and also rereading the sentence for clarification. This method also does a good job in allowing the students to engage in text at their own speed and often in their own ways (36).