Learning+to+Read



 Reading is one of the most important things children learn at school. Without reading an individual loses so many connections with society and their world, and can struggle to fit in. Many children before they start school have already had prior reading experience. This can mean from newspapers, watching television, books they love, or perhaps their parents or other peers have taught them letter formation and sounds. These children begin school well ahead of other children in their class, and progress faster through the levels of reading and writing.

When learning to read, children need: (Beck, I (2007) p.25)

 Each of these skills comes to each child at some stage, and begins the foundations of their reading skills, which will help them through their future lives.   ‘ Reading is the process of constructing meaning from print and from other symbols’ (Hill, 2006). SYMBOLS AND RECOGNITION Each language is made up of symbols, which stand for different letters, sounds or words. The child’s first task when learning to read is being able to discriminate the symbols used in the writing system of their language. At a beginner level this can mean simply being able to defining the symbols used for businesses, eg. McDonalds have the yellow golden arches or they know a picture of a cat means cat. Once they can interpret these symbols which they have identified, they are then able to receive the message which they were meant to express. The names of letters become familiar through the singing of the alphabet.
 * to know the speech sounds associated with written letters in words
 * to know how to put those sounds together to form a pronounceable word
 * to have a strong sense of English orthography
 * to recognize words rapidly.

ILLUSTRATIONS Children also look at pictures and expect that words they hear are associated with those pictures. Illustrations are a major part of early reading, as the child makes predictions about the meaning of the text from them. They use their memory to remember the words and rhymes in a book, and use the pictures to relate the rhymes to the write pages. Children rely on this when they first begin reading, and not until they are able to relate the spoken words to written words have they understood the concept of reading. SYLLABLES Once a child learns which sounds are associated with which letters they are able to begin reading full words, by sounding out each letter into groups called syllables. It can be difficult at first, because some letters of the alphabet don’t have constant forms. E.g. a, A and a, and sometimes letter pairs make different sounds like ‘sh’ and ‘ch’. E.g. MELANIE - me / la / nie LITERACY - li / te / ra / cy Readers bring their knowledge of the world and experiences to their reading by connecting their language skills to their previous knowledge. A child with knowledge of the topic or the story, will comprehend the meaning faster, as they already know something about it, or will be able to tell what happens next.   Efficient readers don’t read each letter of a word; they look at words as a whole, and use their knowledge to interpret what is being said. Beginner readers use cues to help them read and understand the meaning. The reader uses their skills in different ways to interpret the text on the page. Beginning readers develop skills including: (Hart & Wells (1998)  Successful readers develop skills including:   All these skills need to be taught, reinforced and encouraged. After reading, comes confidence, which increases the child’s reading ability greatly. Once they become a confident reader, they progress quickly, and develop their vocabulary at a much faster rate. Children need encouragement when learning new skills, even when they make a mistake. This encourages self correction which is an important part of becoming a good reader. Children self correct to achieve the meaning they seek from the text, and learn that correct spelling is important. As confidence and experience grow, children begin to literacy skills independently and incorporate them into reading behaviours.
 *  Looking at illustrations and asking themselves ‘What is happening here?’
 *  Predicting from developing context : ‘What makes sense here?’
 *  Predict from sense of sentence: ‘What part of speech fits here?’
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif"> Use clues from letters in words and structure: ‘What letters do I see, and how do they work together to represent sounds?’ ‘Do I see any patterns?’
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif"> Automatic recognition of high frequency words and letters of the alphabet.
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif"> The ability to know how to change their reading style to meet needs of the task e.g. finding information by skimming and scanning a text.
 * <span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif"> Reading for specific purposes.