"But if you really want kids to love reading, teach them to read. Achievement does more for motivation than the other way around. Set up opportunities for kids to work together and with you around books. Encourage them to include reading in their daily lives away from school. If you want them to care about books, give them a chance to take on books that may be too hard for them, but that they think to be worth the effort. Give them ways to gain social rewards for using the knowledge they gain from their reading." - Timothy Shanahan
This is the sixteenth blog entry focused on Home Reading this school year, intended to help families successfully support children as they learn to read :)
Last week's blog entry focused on seven strategies parents might use at home to support their developing readers, including predicting, developing sight words, using basic decoding skills, discussing the fundamental story parts, sequencing the events in the story, using re-reading as a clarifying strategy and making connections between what they have read and their own experiences. For developing readers - those children who have already grasped most of the basic ideas about reading - using one or two of these simple reminders as they read their way through interesting books each day will certainly boost their confidence and encourage them to keep trying as they gradually become increasingly proficient readers. A few other strategies that will help them continue to develop as readers are described in this second part of the home reading blog series focused on developing readers.
Using Decoding Clues for Challenging Words
In part one of this developing readers' blog series, decoding support was focused on recognizing rhyming words, onsets and endings of words to develop an individualized set of sight words that would carry meaning for the reader. Part two of this blog series recognizes that as developing readers become increasingly adept at reading, the stories and books they choose to read will also become more complex, with words that are more challenging to decode and understand.
Identifying two and three consonant blends (eg. 'pl', 'tr', 'str') is an additional decoding tool children might use when making sense of a word in a text, and it is a natural extension of looking at beginning and ending sounds, especially since developing readers may find three-consonant onsets to be a bit confusing when they initially bump into them on the page.
Looking for 'small words in bigger words' (eg. finding words like 'ant' or 'act' in a sentence that says 'the house was distant and he was distracted by the rain'). Because the English language has so many compound words, such as 'sunflower, daydream, dragonfly, blueberry', this is also a common strategy for children to use successfully when they notice a challenging word in a text.
Understanding the purpose of word endings such as 'ing' or 'ed' will help young readers begin to make greater sense of text having a 'time frame' as a story telling technique, as will understanding the purpose of onsets such as 'mis', 'dis' or 're' at the beginning of words. These are more sophisticated decoding strategies developing readers will begin to use as their continually advancing proficiency propels them into reading books with more elaborate text.
Expanding Vocabulary
Developing readers are also expanding their vocabulary as they progress in both decoding and deriving meaning from texts. As they begin to make connections between ideas and concepts, they are also making connections between words and how meanings are connected. For example, a child might quickly recognize words such as 'cat', 'tiger', 'lion', 'kit', etc. and begin to link the meanings of these words as being part of a 'cat' family. They are able to make sense of words such as 'cub' or 'lioness' or 'cat door' as a result of having already developed a fundamental basic vocabulary. As they understand bears need a 'den', so will they discern a what a cougar's 'lair' is when they encounter it in a text.
Developing readers will also begin to make sense of root words, such as 'add', when they encounter more complex words such as 'addition', 'additionally', 'addend' or 'additive'. Root words might have meaning, although not necessarily. Base words, however, have meaning on their own - such as 'paint' in a word such as 'repainted'. As children acquire familiarity with different kinds of words, they also develop awareness of both the predictable and unpredictable patterns words follow as they morph and change in text. For example, if a child recognizes the word 'instruct', they are like to be able to figure out words such as 'instructor', 'instruction', 'instructing', etc.
Multiple Meanings of Words
Sometimes, children read a word and think they also have the meaning but the word actually contains multiple meanings in English. For example, a reader who understands that a 'field' can mean anything from a place where wheat is grown to a place where soccer is played, or a collection of athletes being considered for selection to a particular team, will be able to make sense of text only when they can identify which meaning the word has for that particular story. Being aware there is the possibility of a different meaning is essential to ensure developing readers are actually making sense of text appropriately.
Homonyms, synonyms and antonyms all have the potential to confuse young readers. Whether the queen is enjoying a 'reign', 'rein' or 'rain' in a particular story can have a significant impact on the meaning of a story, as can understanding that a 'den' and a 'lair' are similar rather than opposite in meaning. These are intricate understandings of English that are best understood in the moment of reading and are key clues to meaning offered during home reading experiences that have the potential to really enhance meaning for students and prevent the need to 'unlearn' a misunderstanding of vocabulary later on.
Using Context Clues
Using context clues to discern meaning from text occurs when a developing reader understands the meaning of an unfamiliar word based on the clues present before and after this new word in the sentence or paragraph. For example, in the text 'He wasn't as good a hockey player as his friend, Joe, nor as terrible as the newest child on the team, Mark. At best, Fred was a mediocre hockey player.', a developing reader might not be able to identify the word 'mediocre' but would most likely understand the meaning of the word. Similarly, developing readers would most likely make sense of words such as 'prey' or 'habitat' or 'predator' within the context of the words they already know in a text about animals. As parents support their children with home reading, checking to confirm a child understands text through the use of context clues is an easy and fun way to figure out what is happening in a story.
Recognizing Punctuation as a Meaning-Making Strategy
Punctuation often helps us with meaning, particularly when it is used deliberately, such as a sentence that states: Oh!! She was frozen to the spot - what was in the shadows?? The use of exclamation marks and double question marks indicates strong emotion, lending clues to meaning for the reader. Quotation marks also bring clues for meaning making, indicating speakers or thoughts as they are encountering the events in a particular story. Authors use punctuation liberally as a meaning-making strategy in simpler texts for developing readers; when parents support their children by encouraging them to use punctuation as way to make sense of text, they are encouraging the use of divergent reading strategies as well as motivating readers to look beyond the obvious - a way to draw readers unexpectedly into the text.
Text Structures
Stories in fiction texts, as well non-fiction books, use familiar structures to help students make sense of longer texts. These include chapters, headings, sub-headings of course, but also how text is arranged. Text structures such as this might include cause and effect, circle, chronological, 3-events or 2-character stories, first-then-next or before and after sequences. These are all strategies for arranging text in familiar yet interesting formats developing readers can predict and affirm as they make sense of new words and ideas.
Text Features
Features in story books come in many formats that developing readers might find helpful to making sense of text. Developing readers who begin to identify captions, text boxes, headings, charts, graphs, maps, pictographs, etc will also begin to understand information and details can be presented in multiple ways and that text features hold meaning as much as text on a page does when conveying information. Understanding the purposes of text features will help developing readers unpack meaning and make connections as they engage with increasingly complex words, sentences and paragraphs in texts they encounter during home reading experiences.
Asking Questions
Perhaps the easiest strategy for helping developing readers make sense of text is the use of 'questions'. Sometimes those questions come from the adults engaged in the home reading experience, while others come naturally from the developing reader as they try to make sense of text on their own. It is unfortunate, sometimes, when readers do not 'get it' from the beginning that they are reading for meaning all the time and they focus on decoding or knowing sight words without being simultaneously attentive to the meaning of the text. As a parent reading at home with a child, the famous '5W, 1H' strategy for asking questions will work quite effectively; my particular favourite strategy is to keep asking 'why?' with a developing reader until they actually understand they are asking questions of the text in an effort to make sense! Encouraging broad-based questions from the children is always an outstanding strategy for making sense of text.
The Power of Retell and Summary
As children end with a text, encouraging them to retell with questions is a strong and effective strategy for figuring out what meaning they actually elicited from the text. Learning to retell with the '5W1H' strategy is a tried and true approach for sure; students will sometimes offer every detail they read as evidence of reading. Summarizing is a skill that can be taught and is somewhat easier for students; pulling out the main facts in the story or a nonfiction text is a challenging task not quickly mastered without repeated practice. As a parent reading at home with a developmental reader, these are repetitive tasks that don't seem repetitive because the texts used at home can be varied easily to accommodate any interest. As the texts change, the focus on strategies does not seem repetitive to the developmental reader eagerly reading a wide variety of texts.
This two-part blog entry focused on developmental readers has included 14 particular strategies for parents to use as they support and encourage their children through their learning-to-read experiences. It is critically important, in my opinion, to remember that learning to read is not an easy task - it is a definitive journey with many halts and pauses as well as grand leaps ahead for the child engaged in the learning to read process. Reading skills and strategies continue to expand and develop in complexity as children grow and change as readers, continually expanding their repertoire of strategies for making sense of texts. As the home reading parent or partner, this is a lovely way to stay connected to children through the early years of learning and establish a love of reading together through these formative stages.
Lorraine Kinsman, Principal
Eric Harvie School
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