"Reading is simply a sequence of symbol interpretation.
By understanding that letters make sounds, we can blend those sounds together to make whole sounds that symbolize meaning we can all exchange with one another. By mastering the symbols and their most common contexts, reading becomes a practice in thought – less about decoding and more about understanding." Teach Thought, Feb. 2020
This is the 22nd blog post entry of the 2019-20 school year. Last entry we explored why there are so many read-aloud opportunities offered during our 'classes cancelled' COVID-19 response, acknowledging that reading aloud at home is the single most powerful thing parents struggling to make sense of a world turned upside down can do when trying to find the time and technology to access this unexpected world of online classroom learning. This blog entry, we are sharing some ideas for promoting and encouraging reading at home through these unusual days!
Our students - your children - are all somewhere on the path of their own learning-to-read journey. The great challenge for teachers and parents is that learning-to-read journeys are not all alike; there are no set of 'activities' or 'sequences' that will guarantee a child will learn to read successfully in unison with their peers. Although there are predictable things to learn to do and understand that may appear to work more successfully with a majority of students in a particular age group, reality means every reader learns in his/her particular own way, and will forge a learning-to-read pathway specific to themselves. Anticipating what the next steps are to support reading growth is usually challenging to identify accurately.
What does this mean for families with children trying to access online learning resources with a child who is in the early stages of the learning-to-read journey? Well, it probably means parents or older siblings will need to support the early reading student - at least initially - with:
- daily support with reading and understanding the instructions and directions written by teachers for daily tasks
- daily home reading support
- support with initially finding out how to locate Pod Blogs, Iris, Google Meet & Google Classroom (although this should not last - young readers may struggle with words but they usually recognize symbols - particularly on digital devices - quickly and support demands will be reduced quickly as they build familiarity)
- support with organization of tasks
However, your child will continue to strengthen and develop reading skills throughout these home-bound days with a little focused support from parents, and feel greater success as s/he begins to navigate the reading required to access the digital world more confidently each day.
Fostering early reading skills at home
Fostering the development of reading skills and strategies with young readers can look and sound quite differently from one child to another, depending on the child's current awareness of reading awareness. They do need to learn all about letters and sounds too, as they begin to 'know' the words they are reading - no doubt about it! However, I think it is really important to remember why kids are learning to read in the first place - to make sense of text and do something as a result of coming to understand the meaning of the text.
Reading is not a solitary experience - be a team :)
Because the ultimate goal of learning to read is to understand text meaning, when I am working with early readers, I try to balance the value of knowing the letters, sounds and words with the need to understand what the words actually say and mean. So, if a child is attempting to read a text and it is a huge struggle to sound out the words, I will read along with them and help them as much as possible with the exception of three or four particular words that repeat frequently throughout that text. Eventually, after a few re-reads, the child begins to 'know' some words on sight. In this way, they begin to feel like they are reading while learning sight words, following the directionality of text, noticing patterns and structures of sentences and how they are placed on a page, perhaps noting text features - such as quotation marks, upper case letters, periods, bold text - and build a comfortable interaction with the text. Getting support for reading to be smooth and understandable is not typically discouraging for children; on the contrary, they are usually grateful for the support so they can make sense of the text. And reading is not a solitary experience at young ages - it is best understood as an ongoing relationship with words that begins with some gentle nudging and encouragement.
One strategy I use often with least-experienced readers is support them with the reading through a page, and then have them go back and re-read the page - with support again if necessary. Sometimes we will do this 3 or 4 times, using different voices or intonations just for fun. It helps them build fluency and to listen for what their reading aloud sounds like as they build familiarity with language cadence and patterns.
Notice letters, patterns, rhymes
Texts written for newest readers frequently have repeating words, patterns of words and rhyming words to facilitate smooth grasp of text cadence, meaning and fluency. Dr. Seuss was a master of this, helping children to both want to read and read successfully with tons of rhymes and nonsense sentences; today many new-reader texts are filled with similar structures. Some children notice rhymes, patterns and word families easily; just as many rarely notice any similarities. I will typically stop and ask a young reader what they notice and, if they don't appear to notice any of these patterns, I will begin to point them out - usually it doesn't take long for them to begin to notice and then we can have some fun with 'what else' questions - like 'what else' rhymes with sock? Rhymes are so much fun to play with once children understand the concept! And if you have ever enjoyed the movie "The Princess Bride", it's a lovely way to showcase rhyming just for fun too :)
Highlight conversations and characters in your conversations
Early readers struggle sometimes to notice when a character in a story is speaking. Sometimes children won't even understand there are characters speaking in a story. From the earliest first reading I do with small children, I highlight the use of quotation marks to help children understand this is a text with characters and conversation. The first read through of a text with a child always prompts the question, 'what is this story about?' followed by 'are there any people in this story?' and then we are off with making sense of text. Understanding there are quotation marks present to help the reader understand who is in the story and what it is about offers an enormous boost to young readers; suddenly the story has a framework to it they can relate to and make sense of without just guessing!
Make connections; activate prior knowledge
Every time a child encounters a text, the only way for them to make sense of the story is to make sense of the words. One of the easiest strategies for making sense of the words is to make connections to our own experiences - have we ever encountered anything like this before? watched a similar movie? tv show? heard a similar story or read something similar to this one? These personal connections help us make sense of text within the contexts of our own experiences and greatly enhance the reading for meaning experience. It doesn't need to be a completely the same experience, just to evoke meaning a child can assimilate into their memory banks for later reference as needed.
These are simple, effective strategies to promote the love of reading in a gentle, nudging way for our youngest learnings on the learning-to-read journey. Learning to read is always most successfully accomplished when parents, students and teachers work together as a team to introduce, practice and polish specific reading skills and strategies - it is the ultimate togetherness project!
Next week we'll look at middle readers - grades 3 and above - who will benefit from other, focused strategies of support while learning at home.
Lorraine Kinsman, Principal
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