Reading
The Science of Reading
Myth: Reading comes naturally to us, just like speaking.
False!
Understanding the science of reading is critical to helping our students gain literacy skills. Reading is a critical component of life, no matter what work force or job students want to enter later. Lower reading levels are linked with higher likelihood of ending up in the school-to-prison pipeline, thus it is critical that we make sure that every single on of our students has the tools and support they need to access literacy and become skilled readers.
This begins with understanding the science of reading. There has been a fight over phonics and whole word/literacy workshop reading strategies. In recent years, we have the neuroscience that tells us that reading is a brain function that does not come naturally. Implementing the systemic system of the science of reading is key to ensuring that our students learn to read. This is tied together with language comprehension that involves building the love for reading and literacy through activities that are often tied to whole word instruction and literacy workshop. We need both! And we need a strong foundation of systematic phonics to get there.
False!
Understanding the science of reading is critical to helping our students gain literacy skills. Reading is a critical component of life, no matter what work force or job students want to enter later. Lower reading levels are linked with higher likelihood of ending up in the school-to-prison pipeline, thus it is critical that we make sure that every single on of our students has the tools and support they need to access literacy and become skilled readers.
This begins with understanding the science of reading. There has been a fight over phonics and whole word/literacy workshop reading strategies. In recent years, we have the neuroscience that tells us that reading is a brain function that does not come naturally. Implementing the systemic system of the science of reading is key to ensuring that our students learn to read. This is tied together with language comprehension that involves building the love for reading and literacy through activities that are often tied to whole word instruction and literacy workshop. We need both! And we need a strong foundation of systematic phonics to get there.
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Start out by watching this video on The Reading Brain
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Scarborough's Rope shows us all of the critical elements that go into reading.
From https://braintrusttutors.com/what-is-the-reading-rope/.
How do we build strong readers?
The simple view of reading:
From: https://www.themeasuredmom.com/the-simple-view-of-reading-and-scarboroughs-reading-rope/.
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~Sounding Out~
~Sublexical~ ~Decoding~ |
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Detailed and accurate spelling representations
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~Orthographic~
~Lexical~ ~Encoding~ |
How do we build Phonemic Awareness?
How do we teach Phonics?
Teaching reading is not natural.
It is critical for students to gain ample and resound phonological and phonemic awareness before they can become readers. Teaching phonics can begin from a steady foundation of phonemic awareness of words. Teaching phonics is the combination of teaching graphemes as coordinating with phonemes and is a structured process students must go through to be able to learn to read. Structure and synthetic phonics practice must be included in all classrooms from kindergarten through third grade. When students are assessed and still struggle with decoding and encoding skills, the source is often a poor phonics foundation and these students must return to structured phonics instruction to be able to advance.
Teaching reading is not natural.
It is critical for students to gain ample and resound phonological and phonemic awareness before they can become readers. Teaching phonics can begin from a steady foundation of phonemic awareness of words. Teaching phonics is the combination of teaching graphemes as coordinating with phonemes and is a structured process students must go through to be able to learn to read. Structure and synthetic phonics practice must be included in all classrooms from kindergarten through third grade. When students are assessed and still struggle with decoding and encoding skills, the source is often a poor phonics foundation and these students must return to structured phonics instruction to be able to advance.
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What is important to know about Fluency?
Fluency is not just about speed! Fluency in reading also includes prosody and voice. When students have good fluency, it means they are able to read at reasonable speeds, paying attention to punctuation, and voice. Those with good fluency, sound like they are talking rather than sounding out words. To achieve fluency, students must have begun to store many brain words so that they are automatically recognizing the words they are reading rather than sounding them out. The goal of fluency is to read as we speak. When we hear reading similar to storytelling and speaking, it increases comprehension. Comprehension is the key goal of reading and fluency is a critical step to garner comprehension.
Fluency is not just about speed! Fluency in reading also includes prosody and voice. When students have good fluency, it means they are able to read at reasonable speeds, paying attention to punctuation, and voice. Those with good fluency, sound like they are talking rather than sounding out words. To achieve fluency, students must have begun to store many brain words so that they are automatically recognizing the words they are reading rather than sounding them out. The goal of fluency is to read as we speak. When we hear reading similar to storytelling and speaking, it increases comprehension. Comprehension is the key goal of reading and fluency is a critical step to garner comprehension.
From: https://www.manicstreetteachers.com/post/focus-on-fluency.
How do we teach Reading Comprehension?
Reading comprehension is not just taught from asking students questions after they read!
When we simply ask students questions about texts they have read, we aren’t teaching reading comprehension, we are assessing reading comprehension. To teach reading comprehension, we have to teach our students the tools they need to answer questions. This means questioning throughout the reading process. Before: what might this be about? Why do we think that? As we are reading: What do you notice? Why did the author use this process? What stands out about the writing? What is happening right now? And then after we read: what did we read? Why was this important? After we finish, we can begin to start building to comprehension. We can teach our students how to ask questions, and then how to answer them. We must scaffold the questioning process to develop the critical thinking skills that lead to higher comprehension and beyond.
Reading comprehension is not just taught from asking students questions after they read!
When we simply ask students questions about texts they have read, we aren’t teaching reading comprehension, we are assessing reading comprehension. To teach reading comprehension, we have to teach our students the tools they need to answer questions. This means questioning throughout the reading process. Before: what might this be about? Why do we think that? As we are reading: What do you notice? Why did the author use this process? What stands out about the writing? What is happening right now? And then after we read: what did we read? Why was this important? After we finish, we can begin to start building to comprehension. We can teach our students how to ask questions, and then how to answer them. We must scaffold the questioning process to develop the critical thinking skills that lead to higher comprehension and beyond.
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Read more on the 3 levels of reading comprehension:
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Teaching Reading: Classroom Approaches
Multi-Sensory Teaching!
- Use felt pieces or colored paper pieces to help teach phonics aspects such as blending, subtraction, or deletion, or adding sounds.
- Use body movement techniques to help remember vowel sounds:
- Aaaaple (hold an apple and pull your hand down)
- Eeeedge (slide your finger along an edge before pulling it off)
- Iiiiitch (itch your arm and lift your hand off the arm)
- Oooooctopus (form an octopus that swims away with your hand)
- Uuuup (point up!)
Spell-to-Read!
- Brain Words by Gentry and Ouellette tells us that writing is a critical aspect of learning to read. Incorporating practice writing words helps us build ‘Brain Words.’ Brain words are the words that are stored in our memory and are readily and automatically accessible whenever we need to use them for reading or writing.
- Hear-it, Say-it, Spell-it, Read-it, Use-it
- This technique should be incorporated into the lesson plan weekly, containing a mix of both regular, high-frequency words, as well as irregular words. First introduce the regular word, then introduce the irregular words, and combine them all by the end of the week.
- Use a three column system to practice spelling and writing vocabulary words: The three columns are covered. The first column has the words written, look at this column. The second column has space for the students to then write the word they have just looked at. The third column is then checked to see if students spelled the word correctly.
- Hear-it, Say-it, Spell-it, Read-it, Use-it
Phonemic Awareness Word Walls!
- Create words walls highlighting phonemically similar parts of words. For example the word ‘coat’ has a photo of a coat and the /oa/ sound is highlighted, so students know how to write and create this sound when spelling similar words such as moat, boat, or float.
Vocabulary
Incorporate vocabulary use and instruction as much as possible!
Incorporate vocabulary use and instruction as much as possible!
- Check yourself and your own vocabulary use in the classroom. Should students tell you more, or should they elaborate. Should they walk to lunch, or could they scamper, or amble?
- Highlight key vocabulary goals or words to introduce and engage with in lessons.
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