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Teaching Reading

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Teaching ReadingDocument
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General Advice and Teaching Tips

  • Utilize pre-reading activities, which prepare students for what they are going to encounter in the text and get them interested in the story before they even start reading. Pre-reading activities may include:

    • Vocabulary—make sure that students are equipped to understand unfamiliar words or concepts.

    • Brainstorming—very quickly allow students to interact with a question that introduces the theme of the story.

    • Hooks—give a question that has no answer, share a personal anecdote, show a picture prompt, use an object that is related to the story, predict what may happen in the story based on the title, etc.

    • Graphic organizer—use something like a KWL chart (letting students fill in what they already Know about a subject and what they Wonder about. After reading, they can fill in what they have Learned about the story). Bubble maps or Venn diagrams work well also.

  • Use questions to explore stories. This leads students to discover the truth for themselves (instead of you simply telling them what you think the meaning of the text is).

  • Some students struggle to understand what they’re reading. Teaching them the following tools may be helpful:

    • Think aloud

      • Model for your students how you can have an internal dialogue while reading a text. Project the first page of a story or a difficult section of a textbook. Read the text aloud, stopping often to share your thoughts. Point to the words in the text that trigger your thinking. Ask questions. Connect information from one concept to the next.

    • Mark the text

      • If a student has a personal workbook, the marking can be done directly in the book; if the student is using a shared textbook, the marking can be done on sticky notes and placed in the text.

      • Have students mark main ideas, background knowledge, or questions they have about the text.

  • When it comes to vocabulary, be aware that there is a lot of academic-specific vocabulary that students will only interact with in the classroom. In addition, there will be a vast span in the known vocabulary of your students based on their language exposure up to this point. It is the responsibility of the teacher to address these discrepancies so that every child can understand what they’re reading.

  • Use reading class as an opportunity to develop the following skills:

    • Summarizing

    • Identifying the main idea

    • Inferring (reading between the lines)

    • Distinguishing fact from opinion

    • Applying wisdom principals to life

    • Narrating (retelling the story from memory)

  • Use a variety of oral reading methods to maintain engagement:

    • Round robin—students read assigned portions in order, going around the room

    • Pulling sticks—randomly select readers using popsicle sticks with names

    • Chain reading—set a timer (e.g. 45 seconds) for each reader

    • Readers’ theater—assign dialogue or narration roles

    • Fill-in-the-word—teacher reads, students chime in with specific words

    • Popcorn reading—students read one sentence each

    • Group/pair reading—small groups read together

    • Whisper/blab reading—students read aloud softly and simultaneously

Learning to Read (Kindergarten--First Grade)

  • Teaching students how to read is a complex and important task. The following concepts should be cornerstones in your teaching:

    • Develop auditory skills. A student must be aware that words are made of individual sounds. Before you teach children how to blend sounds, they must be able to hear the individual sounds in words. Practice this orally by saying a word like “mat.” The students repeat “mat” and then break the word apart: /m/ /a/ /t/, holding up a finger for each sound. Do this daily for weeks (at a minimum).

      • Curriculum like Heggerty Phonemic Awareness do this type of training very well and can be added to your reading curriculum (lessons are only ten minutes per day).

    • Review. Learning how to blend and read words takes more review than you may realize. A child who can fluently sound out words and comprehend them is multi-tasking, which is a very high-level process. Drill the sounding out and blending process again and again until it becomes automatic.

    • Keep flashcards in circulation until competency is reached. Don’t switch out the words in your flashcard pack too soon.

    • Develop fluency before comprehension. Focus on teaching students how to read fluently first—developing comprehension and more interaction with the text can happen later.

Elementary

  • Work to create a culture of reading in your classroom. This can be achieved through the following:

    • Model a love for reading

    • Incorporate reading into every school day

    • Offer a diverse classroom library

    • Design an inviting classroom that encourages reading through a cozy reading corner or literary-themed bulletin boards

    • Teach engaging reading lessons

    • Promote reading at home through reading challenges or setting individualized reading goals

Recommended Resources

Below you will find some general, multi-use application resources. However, the Dock contains hundreds of reading and literature resources shared by teachers, such as worksheets, powerpoints, study guides, tests, and more. Go to https://thedockforlearning.org/ and search for your specific theme or work of literature—you may find that another teacher has shared something that can be useful to you.

Sources

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