Teaching+Reading

As children learn to read, there are four major different stages they move through; Emergent, Early, Transitional, and Extending. Each stage has different levels and for each level of reading (eg Emergent) the teacher has to carefully choose text that challenges, but is not too difficult for the child to read. There are also several different ways teachers can help children to learn to read. The first method is Modelled Reading in which the teacher reads a book to the whole class. The children can hear the way the teachers voice sounds, and see the text as he/she may point to the words as they read (this is most likely the sort of method the children will have seen at home; their parents reading to them). The next method is Shared Reading, in which the teacher and the class read a piece of text together. It is usually a familiar piece of text that the teacher has modelled to the class previously. In these methods, the children learn the graphophonic, visual cues and the meaning and structure of the text. The teacher may ask the children questions based on the title of the text and any visual cues such as pictures of animals, to see if they can predict what the story might be about and any words they think might be in it. During the reading the teacher may ask questions to help the children to problem solve and figure out the print. They may ask questions related to the meaning of the text, or the syntax (ran or run) or visual cues such as looking at the beginning of the word - what does it look like (Hill, 2006). Then at the end of the reading the teacher may ask more questions to determine if the children understood the text and to help them to think further into clarifying it. There is also a third method of teaching reading and that is: Guided Reading. It is 'planned, intended, focussed instruction' (Opitz & Ford, 2001, p.2). In this method the teacher defines small groups of three to six students and gives them all the same book. The groups are usually defined by the child's reading level or an issue the teacher may want to work on with the children. The teacher will ask similar questions of the children as in Modelled or Shared Reading, to tune them to the text. The teacher will also talk the children through the book to alert them to new words and 'the importance of different text formats or book genres' (Hill, 2006, p.81). At this point the children read the book individually with the teacher listening to each child one at a time. The teacher can make assessments on the child's progress and prompt them to pick up the 'visual, phonological, syntactic and semantic cues' (Hill, 2006 p.82) so that they can problem solve while they are reading.Once the children have finished reading the teacher can lead a discussion on the book or a certain focus that he/she wants the group to work on. For example, focusing on phonemic awareness, the teacher might point out words in the text such as /og/ in /d/og/ and mention that other words have similar phonemes such as /l/og/ or /f/og/. The reason for Guided Reading as Opitz and Ford say, is 'to foster independent readers' (2001, p.2); readers who can problem solve their way through text to become competent readers. There is one final method which is independent reading. The children may have time to read independently which encourages them to practice what they know and build confidence and fluency (Hill, 2006, p.83).