“To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.”
Victor Hugo
The picture above is of me working with a child doing reading intervention. We completed the QRI assessment and from there determined the necessary intervention. I worked with this student for 5 months on word attack and comprehension strategies. I kept an assessment notebook on this child, which kept track of daily intervention as well as intervention plans.
There are many different goals and philosophies when it comes to teaching reading. I would like to be able to share a few with you!
My belief of what reading is comes from research by Reutzel and Cooter in their book “The Essentials of Teaching Children to Read”. Reading is a set of skills and knowledge that allow an individual to understand visual and print-based information.
“What is the primary ingredient in the recipe for every child’s reading success? A classroom teacher with the expertise to support the teaching of reading to children having a variety of abilities and needs”(Reutzel & Cooter, 2009). Teachers are one of the single factors that affect academic growth in reading. Parents and teachers are an imperative aspect for children’s reading success.
Highly effective reading teachers are excellent classroom managers and begin reading instruction by first assessing to find out what students already know and can do. It is crucial that the first weeks of school are used to assess and learn where our students are in their reading abilities. Some ways that I will engage students in literacy is by using literacy stations, for example: pocket charts, letter building centers, pointers to help them track as they read on anchor charts, and lastly a classroom library. Children need to read daily, have “big book time”, have lots of opportunities for conversations with appropriate models, learn to read book language, and have a print rich environment.
There are essential components that should be taught to an emergent reader. Some of them are concepts of print, alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, phonemic awareness, and the alphabetic principle. These 5 essential components are discussed thoroughly in the "Five Essential Components" portion of this blog.
This is just a snap shot of my views of teaching reading and philosophies.
