So when did reading become so difficult? Five parts to the reading process, I hear you ask? Those of us old enough, remember the old SRA readers during the 60’s and 70’s. You worked your way up a color coded category of readings. I believe red was the lowest and gold was the highest. When the teacher wasn’t instructing, or you were done with your work, you would run over to the SRA books and read an assignment. Each assignment came with questions that you would answer and put on a sheet of paper for your teacher to look over. When you completed every reading sheet in a particular color, you moved on to the next. No one ever told us there were five parts to our reading. We simply read and answered questions.
Over the years, those in the education system have figured out that if a child is lacking in reading skills, they won’t be able to succeed in their core subject areas – social studies, english, and science. Even math applies to this. As the math work gets more complicated, how can you solve complex word problems if your reading skills are below grade level?
That is when researchers and educators decided to break reading down into its components, in order to pinpoint where each child had difficulties. Not every one is the same, so children have difficulties in different areas. Anyone of the reading areas can lead to a child being frustrated in their school work and finally even giving up. Maybe this strategy of solving the child’s particular reading problem would have saved many a person from dropping out of school when they thought it became to difficult.
So what are those five areas of reading? They are phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. A child might have a problem in one specific area or in a combination . Let’s look at each area and what it entails.
We are all familiar with phonics. Some of us learned to read with Dick and Jane, or what is called the sight word method. Others of us learned through the phonics method. Remember your teacher going over the sounds of each of the letters? Pure and simple, this is phonics.
Phonemic awareness carries phonics to another level. It is good to know what a C says, what short A says, and what a T says. But can the child put them together? That is where basic spelling instruction comes into play. Also, when the teacher goes over simple phonics rules – such as a word with a silent E on the end, makes the vowel in the middle long. Research says we are suppose to figure this out automatically in our brains. but some children have problems with this and need direct instruction.
What is the purpose of trying to help a child read, if they don’t understand the vocabulary words? The child will not comprehend what they read. There are many strategies to help a child in this area. I found out during my last school year teaching, that you tell each child to get a dictionary, or read the pages in the book. story, etc, and pick out words they don’t know. They then look them up and find the definition. But where you run into problems, is when the reading material is above the child’s level. That is why it is so important to find out beforehand what the student’s reading level is, so they won’t become frustrated. All children do not have to be reading out of the same books. This is hard to set up a classroom with the different levels, but I have done it, so it is possible. It takes a lot of hard work, and a teacher who is constantly on her feet helping the children.
Fluency is a new idea to a lot of people. We think of fluency as being able to speak a language well, as in ” he is a fluent speaker of the spanish language.” But fluency in reading has more to do with your tone, whether you read choppy or smoothly, if you are aware of punctuation and intonation of your voice. We tried an experiment in our recent class. We had two articles. Both of them were hard. We were told to read to our partner out loud, and make it sound boring and monotonous. We then took a quiz on the material. We read the next article, and read it with feeling, watching for feeling words, and punctuation marks. Again, we took a short quiz on the article. Believe it or not, almost all of the teachers in the training class, scored higher on the article where they read with feeling. So fluency is an important part of the reading process.
Last but not least is comprehension. This is pretty self explanatory. If you can not comprehend what your read, you aren’t getting anything out of it. This has to do with how the mind processes information. We all work differently. Some need to take notes, some need memory cues to remember, while others need nothing. It has been found that the majority of children with comprehension problems do will with several strategies. They do pre reading beforehand, or looking at the assignment, noting any bold words, checking out pictures and headings. Children are encouraged to read anything in the margins, or preface to the assignment. That way you have an idea what you are reading. During the reading, there are a number of different note taking strategies that can be taught. Children need to remember reading for comprehension is not a race, and if they need to stop in the middle of the article and take notes, it is OK. This helps comprehension of the material. And last but not least, there are graphic organizers, or mind mapping worksheets that help children. most of us are familiar with the Venn Diagram. This is a big help to children. For example, if you are reading an assignment on comparing the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, and George Washington, you might list on one side of the Venn diagram, what the presidency of Abe was like. On the other side you would list what George’s was like. In the middle you would list how they were alike – for example, they both served during major wars. This strategy helps students better comprehend what they are reading.
If a teacher or parent understands and knows strategies to use to help a child, chances are the child will do better in their school work. The school I teach at has required all teachers to implement these strategies in their classroom. As a result, students are scoring higher on reading scores on standardized exams. If we had only known all of this years ago, students could have been helped sooner.
Reference:
- experience.
