Before starting school children often look at pictures and make up their own stories. Television, radio, magazines and picture books help to stimulate children, who begin to associate words with pictures.
A good teacher will build on the learner’s own initiative in trying to negotiate language by creating a print-rich classroom that persuades learners to continue to develop their own experiences with words.
Teachers who are avid readers know the pleasure of sitting down with a book and enjoying a good story or acquiring new ideas and information. Every reading lesson at school should attempt to foster this enjoyment of reading to ensure that no matter how much, or how little, learners read during the lesson they have a good understanding of the text they read. Reading for meaning must come right at the start of learning to read.
Teaching reading means teaching learners to acquire a set of skills that will enable them to read text and understand it. Some children pick up the skills of reading so quickly and easily that it almost seems as if they teach themselves, but children don’t generally teach themselves to read. The teacher must teach the skills of reading and facilitate the learners’ acquisition of these skills, facilitating the practice necessary to enhance those skills.
Key skills in reading go well beyond phonics and word recognition. A reader must be able to:
- Identify sounds;
- Identify letters;
- Understand letter-sound relationships;
- Read words;
- Read connected texts;
- Identify the main idea;
- Give reasons for understanding;
- Compare personal experiences;
- Make predictions;
- Make generalisations; and
- Describe style and structure.
Routine reading in a reading programme
Teachers who are serious about developing a literacy class must commit themselves to a daily schedule devoted to comprehensive literacy. A successful teacher is an organised teacher. Learners work best in literacy classes in which routines and expectations are clearly and consistently communicated – the learners know exactly what to do and when to do it. Having a routine in the classroom saves hours of instructional time because learners know exactly what is expected of them and settle down quickly to the learning activity.
Learners must know exactly when their reading programme will take place. A routine supports a self-directed approach to literacy and allows learners to develop independent work habits for reading, writing and talking about texts. This also prepares learners to take responsibility for reading at home. The teacher must consciously teach learners about the routines. A routine will also enable a teacher to rotate groups of learners, particularly those learners who struggle and who the teacher will have to work with on a daily basis.
Reading daily, in a routine fashion, has other benefits, such as helping to increase learners’ knowledge of vocabulary. The routine should include a number of approaches to teach reading, often in combination, because learners use multiple and various approaches when learning to read.
Grouping readers
Children do not develop in exactly the same way when learning to read. Some advance swiftly, while others take much longer to reach the same level of fluency. Even in the course of a year learners advance at different rates. At the beginning of the year you need to test the reading skills of learners so that you can work with them in groups. But the learners will not necessarily stay in the same groups throughout the year. It is a good idea to mix the groups into multi-level groups on a regular basis.
In each class you will find at least four reading levels:
- Emergent readers or those who struggle with text;
- Beginner readers or those who are slow but can read easier words in the text;
- Fluent readers who can read most words and have reasonable comprehension; and
- Independent readers who can read beyond the level expected at a grade and who fully understand what they read.
Dividing learners into these four groups means that you can pitch reading activities at an appropriate level for each learner in the class. You will need to divide the class into same-ability reading groups by assessing the reading levels of the learners. Ask learners to read from a text that is specifically targeted for the relevant grade. Once assessed, put the learners into the four reading groups. The Early Grade Reading Assessment tool will make your task of grading readers easier.
A comprehensive reading programme
A comprehensive reading programme must be meaning-based and requires learners to integrate the process of reading and writing. Learners who are exposed to printed materials read more and are willing to try to read more challenging work. They are able to identify words faster, which increases their vocabulary development and develops both fluency and comprehension skills more easily. When this is followed by a short written activity based on the reading material they have read, learners can, in a sense, apply the experience by using words they have read and the stories or ideas in their own work.
Key to the reading programme is providing suitable material for learners to read. Every primary school class must have a stock of books, but a teacher can also collect a much wider range of reading material from text cards to magazines, brochures, maps or comic books that will broaden the scope of a learner’s reading experience.
Jenny Rault-Smith is chief director of curriculum and assessment in the general education and training phase. Val Kohler is assistant director for children and youth literacy in the national department of education. This article is in support of the department of education’s Foundations for Learning campaign. It aims to strengthen the teaching and learning of literacy and numeracy