Teaching Reading
Teaching Reading
Teaching Reading
TEACHING READING
I. LEARNING OUTCOMES:
In this lesson, students should be able to:
II. PRE-ASSESSMENT:
Instructions: Encircle the letter of the correct answer.
1. When you teach students how to look for specific details in a text you are showing them
how to
a. Skip b. skim c. scan
2. When choosing extensive reading materials for English language learners, the level
should be
a. Much higher than they are capable of reading
b. Slightly lower than they are capable of reading
c. Similar to their language level in their own native language
5. A reading task that asks "What's the main idea?" could also be worded this way:
a. Paraphrase
b. Find the gist
c. Identify the genre
8. It is a text-based reading
a. Bottom-up
b. Top-down
c. Topless
a. Top-down
b. Toptech
c. Bottom-up
III. LESSON MAP
Reading is important because it develops the mind. Understanding the written word is one
way the mind grows in its ability. Teaching young children to read helps them develop
their language skills. It also helps them learn to listen. And through this lesson, as well as
the topics in it, aspiring teachers will learn more on how to become more effective and
efficient in inspiring young minds to learn and love reading.
Once upon a time there lived a poor widow and her son Jack. One day, Jack’s mother told him to
sell their only cow. Jack went to the market and on the way he met a man who wanted to buy his
cow. Jack asked, “What will you give me in return for my cow?” The man answered, “I will give
you five magic beans!” Jack took the magic beans and gave the man the cow. But when he
reached home, Jack’s mother was very angry. She said, “You fool! He took away your cow and
gave you some beans!” She threw the beans out of the window. Jack was very sad and went to
sleep without dinner.
https://americanliterature.com/childrens-stories/jack-and-the-beanstalk
EXPLORE:
Instructions: Read the article below and present your stand with 7-10 sentences.
Consequences of Illiteracy
For most students, the ability to read is foundational to a successful education. Tomie
de Paola, author and illustrator of over 200 children’s books, one said, “Reading is important,
because if you can read, you can learn anything about everything and everything about
anything.”
The opposite is true as well. Children who cannot read are unable to keep up with
their peers in almost every academic subject. In fact, according to a study by Donald J. Hernadez
and the Annie E. Casey Foundation, “Results of a longitudinal study of nearly 4,000 students
find that those who do not read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely to leave
school without a diploma than proficient readers. For the worst readers, those who could not
master even the basic skills by third grade, the rate is nearly six times greater.”
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EXPLAIN:
Reading is a complex developmental challenge that we know to be intertwined with many other
developmental accomplishments: attention, memory, language, and motivation. It is a complex
activity that involves both perception and thought. Reading is not only a cognitive
psycholinguistic activity but also a social activity.
Learning to read is about listening and understanding as well as working out what’s printed on
the page. This helps them build their own vocabulary and improve their understanding when they
listen, which is vital as they start to read. It’s important for students to understand how stories
work too.
Teaching reading is a complex process. The best teachers develop an extensive knowledge base
and draw on a repertoire of strategies for working with struggling students.
Reading
Decoding Thinking
Phonemic awareness Comprehension
Spelling, Constructing meaning
Vocabulary Metacognition
Fluency
(From Reading Power: Teaching Students to Think While They Read. Adrienne Gear, 2006)
The skills on the left are those skills essential to mastering the code and are considered the
basics of beginning reading instruction. The skills listed on the right point to comprehension as
a separate aspect of reading that requires the same amount of direct instruction and teaching
time as the decoding skills. Once thought of as a natural result of decoding plus oral language,
comprehension is now viewed as a much more complex process involving knowledge,
experience, thinking and teaching (Fielding & Pearson, 2003).
The notion of “something happening” while we read is the essence of comprehension.
The “something happening” is the interactive construction of meaning inside our
heads, which creates understanding. Sadly, the “something happening” does not
naturally occur inside all readers and so there is a felt need to teach them how to use
their experience and their knowledge to make sense of what they are reading (Gear,
2006, p.15).
Example:
we brought who socks some who brought some wet socks
Example:
Fo-ex-mp-e, y-u-c-n r-ad-h-s-se-te-ce-it-ev-ry-hi-d I-tt-r m-ss-ng.
For example, you can read the sentence with every third letter missing.
READING COMPREHENSION
- It is the process of extracting and constructing meaning
through interaction and involvement with written language.
ORAL
Linguistic
Intensive
SILENT
Content
Skimming
Extensive -Scanning
Global
Subdivide techniques Before you read, while you read, after you read
WHY DO
WE TEACH
READING?
Giving students a variety of materials to read helps them absorb vocabulary, grammar,
sentence structure and discourse structure. Students thus gain a more complete picture of the
ways in which the elements of the language work together to convey meaning.
b. READING FOR CONTENT INFORMATION
The students’ purpose for reading is often to obtain information about a subject they are
studying. Reading for content information in the language classroom gives students both
authentic reading material and an authentic purpose for reading.
Reading everyday materials that are designed for native speakers can give students insight
into the lifestyles and worldviews of the people whose language they are studying.
READING STRATEGIES
1. previewing
2. predicting
3. skimming and scanning
4. guessing from context
5. paraphrasing
1. PREVIEWING
Reviewing titles, section headings, and photo captions to get sense of the structure
and content of a reading selection.
2. PREDICTING
Using knowledge of the subject matter to make predictions about content and
vocabulary and check comprehension.
Using a quick survey of the text to get the main idea, identify text structure and
confirm or question predictions.
5. PARAPHRASING
Stopping at the end of a section to check comprehension by restating the
information and ideas in the text.
1. Pre-reading Strategies
All reading and learning depends on what the learner brings to the task. For this
reason, the pre-reading stage is considered the most important phase of a reading
lesson. It is here where students are guided to reflect on what they already know or
think about a topic so that it can help them understand what they are going to read.
PREREADING
There is “something in our head” that we carry around with us all the time (Smith,
1985). This “something in our head” is background or prior knowledge and is referred
to as schema. According to Williams and Moran (1989), this is an abstract structure
representing concepts stored in memory. Such concepts are formed and developed into
a kind of “system” as a result of how one experiences the world which, in turn, serves
as a basis of his or her understanding and learning about it.
Ask a question to help students see whether the selection is fiction or non-fiction.
Then have students predict what the selection is all about.
2. Text Previews–A text preview helps students better comprehend a difficult text. It
helps students understand concepts, vocabulary, and structure of the reading selection
so that they can build higher level understanding.
After reading the preview, a discussion about the nature of love would
allow the students to share their own experiences to help them understand the
various types of love portrayed in the play. Sharing may be done in groups.
Students may also write journal entries about the nature of love.
b. Arrange the words vertically with arrows in the order they are presented in the
story.
c. In pairs, have students make predictions and write a collaborative story using all
the terms in the chain.
d. Have students read their assigned story and compare their impressions with the
author’s version (Mc Guinley and Denner, 1987).
To illustrate this technique, here is a story impression grid for the selection “Alexander and the
Wind-up Mouse” by Leo Lionni.
Chain of Words Your version of what the book might say. Write a
paragraph using the chain words in order.
mouse
scream
crash
ran
hole
crumbs
broom
saw
another
mouse
wheels
key
4. Group Predictions
Students in small groups brainstorm ideas that relate to a topic or theme in a
reading selection prior to the reading. After reading, students return to the
groups’ predictions to validate how much their discussion before reading
enhanced their comprehension.
To encourage students to use effective strategies when reading, the teacher can develop simple
exercises to elicit information via targeted strategies. These exercises can be divided by the
stages of reading at which they occur into:
While-reading exercises:
1. Help students develop reading strategies
2. Improve their control of the second language
3. Decode problematic text passages
Post-reading exercises:
Because the goals of most real world reading are not to memorize an author’s point of view or to
summarize text content, second language reading must go beyond detail-eliciting comprehension
drills.
According to the National Reading Panel of America, there are five critical areas that serve as
foundation of reading development. They include the following:
1. Phonemic Awareness
This is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in
spoken words. Before children learn to read print, they need to become aware of
how the sounds in words work. They must understand that words are made up of
speech sounds, or phonemes.
Children listen to sounds within words. They identify and work with onsets and rimes in
spoken syllables or one-syllable words.
Example: The first part of kite is k.
The last part of mice is –ice.
Children direct attention to specific positions of sounds within a word. They identify and work
with syllables in spoken words.
Example: I can clap the parts in my name: Ti-na.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary is the meaning and pronunciation of words that we use to communicate effectively.
It is simply the number of words that we understand or can actively use to listen, speak, read, or
write.
Vocabulary knowledge is among the best predictors of reading achievement
(Daneman 1991). It plays a vital role in every aspect of reading from understanding the
plot or gist of a simple text to interpreting and appreciating the most complex text.
Scientifically-based research tells us that children learn the meanings of most
words indirectly, through everyday experiences with oral and written language.
However, it is also important for teachers to address word learning directly. Direct
instruction in word meanings is effective, can make a significant difference in a
student’s overall vocabulary, and is critical for those students who do not read
extensively (Beck, McKeon, & Kucan, 2002). This includes providing students with
specific word instruction and teaching them word-learning strategies.
Based on the studies conducted by Robbins and Ehri (1994) the most effective
methods of vocabulary development are those instruction methods where students are
given both the definition of the word as well as examples of usage and practice with
usage. Semantic webs, word maps, and graphic organizers can help students graphically
show relationships to provide a memory link as an effective vocabulary building
technique. However, merely creating these maps without discussion around the
vocabulary term is not effective. Students must discuss and work with the words for
these techniques to produce lasting vocabulary gains.
Fluency
This is the ability to read a text accurately, smoothly, quickly, and with expression.
Some students are able to read orally with speed, expression, and smooth decoding but
they do not understand what they read. These students are not yet fluent readers
because fluency also requires comprehension. To be termed “fluent reader” with a
particular text, an individual must be able to read effortlessly, use expression, and read
and recognize words quickly. He must have developed automaticity (Samuel, 1994) and
must understand how to group words quickly to gain meaning from the text. When a
student possesses automaticity, he does not have to attend to the task of decoding and
can focus his energy on comprehension. A fluent reader has a good knowledge of
vocabulary and good word identification skills. In addition, a fluent reader can make
connections between the text and his own background knowledge. The stronger the
reader’s fluency in reading a specific passage, the greater the resulting comprehension
with the material being read is.
Fluency instruction may be the missing element in reading instruction for most
teachers because most of us learn to teach reading with a focus on accuracy and
comprehension, while few of us were taught to read quickly and automatically. Though
some students will learn to read fluently, with little direct instruction from teachers,
many will require practice and support from peers and teachers to improve their fluency
and make reading a more valid activity.
The following activities can improve fluency:
a. Reading with a model reader. The model reader can be a teacher, another adult, or an
older student.
e. Partner reading. In partner reading, paired students take turns reading aloud
to each other. For partner reading, more fluent readers can be paired with
less fluent readers. The stronger reader reads a paragraph or page first
providing a model of fluent reading.
What made a child a better reader than all the other children? In a study of proficient
readers, David Pearson (1970) was able to determine several common strategies used
by proficient readers that enabled them to make sense of the text. A condensed version
of this research is what is described as the “profile” of a proficient reader (Gear, 2006).
A good reader is metacognitive – aware of and able to use and articulate the following
strategies in order to interact with the text and enhanced meaning.
1. Make connections. A good reader is able to draw from background knowledge and
personal experiences while reading to help create meaning from the text.
2. Ask questions. A good reader asks both literal and inferential questions before, during,
and after reading to clarify meaning and deepen understanding.
3. Visualize. A good reader is able to create multi-sensory images in the “minds eye” while
reading to help make sense of the text.
4. Determine importance. A good reader is able to sort through information in the
text, select key ideas, and remember them.
5. Draw inferences. A good reader knows that not all information is included in a text, and
is able to reasonably “fill in”, hypothesize, and predict, based on the evidence on the
text.
6. Analyze and synthesize. A good reader is able to break down information and to draw
conclusions based on both the text and his or her thinking.
EXTEND:
Instructions: Within 30-45 minutes, demonstrate lessons that will incorporate principles of
effective comprehension strategy instruction before, during and after reading. Please take note
of the teaching presentation criteria below.
EVALUATE:
TOPIC SUMMARY:
POST-ASSESSMENT:
Instructions:
REFERENCES:
Jeremy Harmer (2009). How to Teach English. England: Pearson Education Limited
https://www.slideshare.net/abammar/teaching-reading-29325225