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Learning to Read
Adapted from a Letter from Principal Cathy Howard, Barron Park Buzz, March 11, 2004
Recent research on the teaching of reading has focused on studying the processes and strategies used by proficient readers, and directly teaching those strategies to emerging readers. In the early grades we focus on teaching the letters and sounds (phonics) and on using structural and visual cues to help children learn to read. That is only the very beginning of teaching children to make meaning from the printed page.
One strategy that proficient readers use—often without realizing they are doing it—is to make connections as they read. In reading a book, magazine, newspaper, web page, or anything else, a proficient reader might be reminded of an event, a person, another book, or some fact that he knows. That additional information helps deepen the reader’s understanding of what he is reading. We teach our children how to make those connections by explicitly asking questions, sharing relevant information, and discussing the connections the children see themselves.
Proficient readers make predictions before and while they read, and notice whether or not those predictions come true. They draw inferences or “read between the lines,” and often visualize what they are reading about. They talk to each other about what they’ve read in both formal and informal settings. And proficient readers recognize when something they are reading doesn’t make sense to them. They go back over the text, asking questions, and noting unfamiliar vocabulary or sentence structure.
Children who aren’t yet proficient often just keep reading even when they have lost the sense of what they are reading. Or they may be reading quickly and superficially, and not really understanding the deeper levels of meaning. So we teach them the strategies that proficient readers use, and have them apply and practice those strategies as they read. We ask them to make predictions, ask questions, analyze the important events, look for themes, and make connections. We do this in small guided reading groups and literature circles, and during whole class read-aloud time. In both small group and whole group settings, the teacher models “thinking aloud” by verbalizing her thoughts so that students have explicit examples of what they should begin to do and how to do it. All the while we give students blocks of time to practice these strategies independently in their own reading.
As teachers, we also continue to read and learn ourselves. This year, Reading Specialist Danaé Gray led a voluntary staff study group on Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis’ book, Strategies that Work: Teaching Comprehension to Enhance Understanding. Many of the ideas in this letter come from that book.
