The Importance of Teaching Reading

Reading is one of the most important skills students need develop during their time in school.  In kindergarden, students come in ready and excited to learn how to read the books their parents are reading to them at home.  They love being able to open a book and recognize words and letters, and it is amazing to watch as they catch onto the skill and begin improving in their ability.  However, simply learning how to read is only one part of actual reading.  Students also need to develop the skills of fluency, comprehension, and phonemic awareness.  They also need to learn new vocabulary, in order to keep up with reading and real world demands (interesting fact: an 8 year old child learns 3600 words a year - crazy, right??)

In order for students to learn these important skills, someone has to teach them.  Children don't learn how to comprehend text or make inferences or determine cause and effect on their own.  No, they need teachers to help guide them and instruct them, so that they can begin to understand what they are reading.  Without understanding, what is reading worth anyways (besides "books of enjoyment", of course, but don't you learn something in those books too?)??    

So, how can I give my students the love for reading that I have, while teaching them these complicated skills and techniques for becoming understanders of the world??

Honestly, I don't know.  But, I'm slowly learning how to help my students develop their reading skills, and am really enjoying the opportunities I have had to spend time with my students, teaching them these valuable skills.  

In my field placement, a wonderful 5th grade classroom filled with many, many ornery, goofy, funny, and awesome boys, and several cute, funny, beautiful, and sweet girls (count 17:12, in boys favor), I have been given the responsibility of developing those crazy important skills in the two middle reading level groups in the classroom.  In order to do this, my mentor teacher (who is totally awesome, by the way!) has set up time each day for the students to meet in a group and read a text that is suitable for teaching comprehension skills to the students, at their instructional level.  Why is that important?  Stick a student reading at a 3rd grade reading level and struggling with comprehension with a student capable of reading and comprehending at an 8th grade level, and you might have some issues in meeting the needs of both students.  Yes, students working together and helping each other is an amazingly important thing that teachers should allow - but, guided reading groups (aka small reading groups led by a teacher) are an awesome place to allow students at comprable reading levels to read together, learn together, and develop their comprehension skills together.  Also, guided reading groups are awesome, because how often during the day do you get to spend time with just a few students alone?  Let me answer that - basically never.  With all of the demands on our time to teach students concepts they must know for MSA tests and State tests and all that other stuff, we hardly ever get a chance to just spend some time with our students, getting to know them, their interests, and their abilities.

All right, so, they're sorted into groups (based on test scores from the past and running records, or tracking students ability to read certain words and comprehend), NOW what do we do with them?  Well, we teach them those crazy important skills!

As we (my class of teacher interns and I) have learned (and are learning, and will forever be learning), there are many strategies that teachers use to develop their students' overall comprehension ability.  (Comprehension, by the way, is defined as "building understanding through reading or listening")  These strategies include:

   - Making Inferences (aka reading between the lines)

   - Drawing Conclusions 

   - Synthesizing

   - Making Connections

   - Visualization

   - Determining Importance

   - Asking Questions

   - and Making Predictions

In order to teach these strategies to their students, teaching use these guided reading groups to implement activities and instruction that expand student understanding.  To do this, teacher's implement many before, during, and after reading activities that help students to develop their skills and the strategies above.

The point of before reading activities is to prepare students for what they will be reading and learning about.  If you had a teacher sit you down in a group, start reading a book, and then tell you to make inferences, it wouldn't really make sense, right?  So, we start with activities before reading a book so that students are prepared for the learning they are going to accomplish during the group.  The best way to do this is to introduce the strategy you will be teaching, and then explain why it is important to build that skill.  Before reading activities can include:

   - Prereading Questions

   - Making Predictions

   -RIVET (game of hangman that introduces the strategy or the topic)

   - List-Group-Label (to determine background knowledge)

   - Picture Walk

   - and Anticipation Guides

Each of these before reading activities has a purpose - to prepare students for what they will be reading that day.  These activities are a way to introduce new learning, and help students get ready to accomplish what you want them to.

During reading activities are ongoing activities that engage the student as they are reading.  This is where the meat of the instruction is - this is where the students are putting into practice the skill/strategy you want them to learn.  Often times, teachers use graphic organizers to help students organize their thoughts and ideas.  These also serve as a great tool for assessment, and help teachers see which students are struggling with the skill and which students are on their way to mastering it.  These activities can include (but are not limited to):

   - Story Maps

   - Cause/Effect

   - Problem/Solution

   - Character Trait and Evidence Analysis

   - Cycle of Events

   - Plot Diagram

   - Fact-Question-Response

   - Venn Diagrams

   - Compare/Contrast

   - Text Features

   - Semantic Feature Analysis

   - KWL

   - Timeline

   - and Main Idea Chart

Each of these during reading activities teach an important skill - like mapping a story, determining the problem in the story and the solution to that problem, predicting what will happen next, comparing and contrasting two different ideas/objects, and determining the main idea.  They also help our students to develop and deepen their comprehension skills, and most importantly teach critical skills that will benefit them both in their reading, and in other areas of school and life.

After reading activities are activities that help wrap-up and reinforce the skill the students have been learning during the guided reading group.  Teachers can use different activities at the end of a reading group to remind the students of what they learned, and help the students by giving them another chance to use the skill.  After reading activities can include:

   - Summarization

   - Completion of Graphic Organizers

   - Closing Discussion

   - Personal Response

   - Written Explanation of Strategy or Skill Understanding

   - Reading Response Journal

Each of these activities are a great way to conclude a directed reading group, and really help the students to understand exactly what they should have learned from the group.  Having students discuss or write a response to questions is a great opportunity for students to share their learning with their peers, and a written explanation of the strategy/skill learned is another way for the teacher to gauge student understanding of what was taught.

Therefore, in order to teach my students how to read, and most importantly comprehend what they read, I will need to implement these strategies, skills, and activities into my future classroom.  As a teacher, I hope that I can help my students develop a love for reading like I have, while teaching them the skills they need for life and helping them to understand and comprehend the information they are consuming.  Meanwhile, as our students get older and are expected to learn these skills, reading can become a challenge and a bore for students who are frustrated because they are expected to learn something from what they are reading.  So, not only do I need to teach my students how to read and comprehend, but need to teach them in such a way that reading does not become such a challenge that my students hate reading forever.  Such the dilemma, right?!?

My only hope is that I can find that happy medium between work/skill learning and enjoyment.  By picking books and topics that my students are interested in, I hope that I can help my students develop the skills that are vitally important to their success in life, while giving them a life-long love for learning.  I know that I won't succeed every time.  Some students, despite my best effort, may still see reading as too much work and only do it because they are told.  However, I hope that I can teach as many students as I can to love reading, and to read well.

Let me leave you with a couple of interesting reading quotes:

"Books are the plane, and the train, and the road.  They are the destination, and the journey. They are home."  - Anna Quindlen

"Books are uniquely portable magic."  - Stephen King

And finally,

"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.  Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."  

   -Groucho Marx