“The teaching of reading—once primarily dedicated to helping beginners and nonreaders learn how to decode—is shifting to embrace the vital capacities to analyze and comprehend. This emphasis on higher-level skills responds to a need to prepare all students to compete in a world where knowledge is expanding and information is available in multiple formats everywhere and anytime. Twenty-first century learners must not only know how to scan and skim billions of bytes but they also must know how to negotiate complex, difficult text. And—a goal not to be left out, we hope—they need to learn to understand and appreciate demanding and rich literature”. Educational Leadership, Reading: The Core Skill, 2012
“If all we do is teach students to deconstruct text, will we remove all desire to read books?” Doug Fisher, Turning the Page on Reading, 2012
I was reading an article from Educational Leadership, ASCD which is an American based organization highly regarded internationally for their research and thought I would share the above quotes with you.
Reading is more than decoding (the ability to read the words). Reading is about finding information in the text, it is about being able to pick up messages that are not directly given in the text (inferential), it is about being able to reorganise (reconstructing information), it is about being able to evaluate the information (gather and infere), it is about being able to understand the meaning of unknown words (vocabulary) and being able to express an opinion about the text (reaction)
Too often we have parents requesting that their child go up a level because they can easily read the book that has gone home. However the child maybe able to “decode” the text but may have little or no understanding of what the text is about as per the skills mentioned above. The priority and emphasis should be reading mileage and NOT how quickly they can get to the next level. We purposely send home books which can be “independently” read by the student (called “independent readers”). At school the children will be exposed to books which we call “instructional” which basically means that the child can read it AND understand it with support.
One way parents can help is to try the reciprocal reading approach. This approach works best for children who are reading non fiction text or chapter books so is usually used with children in the middle to upper years.
The reciprocal reading approach varies but an approach that I found most successful is made up of the following steps;
- Get your child to read a paragraph, a page or a short chapter (approximately 100-200 words)
- Ask your child if there were any words in the text that they did not understand the meaning of (if they say there are none, ask them the meaning of a word you think they may not know the meaning of).
- Ask your child a question about the text. Not always a simple yes or no question or a question where the answer is obvious but something that is perhaps inferred e.g the text may talk about the child wearing a coat so you could ask your child what time of year do you think the story is taking place in. It may not say explicitly so the child will have to justify their answer.
- Finally ask your child to summarise the paragraph or page that they have just read to ensure they fully understood it. Did they include the main points? Did it reflect accurately what actually happened?
If you do this regularly the children automatically start to go through the above process when they are reading by themselves which ensures they are constantly reading for meaning.
Another powerful but simple strategy is to read to your child/ren. This is such a powerful tool to improve your child’s ability to read and comprehend The research (Allington, Gabriel, 2012) clearly shows the positive impact of children regularly reading something they understand (“independent reader”) and hearing a fluent adult reader read aloud on a daily basis. Take turns reading a page each, a paragraph each but be assured the more you read to your child the sooner they will become a well rounded reader (ability to decode, analyze and comprehend).