IN HOUSE TRAINING SJKC DO NANG 2023

Teacher-in-Charge : Chia Sing Yee

Date /Time: 23 June 2023 / 1300-1500

Venue: Library

HOW TO TEACH READING SKILLS : 10 BEST PRATICES

Various studies show that promoting reading can have a major impact on children and their
future. In this article, we’ll look at strategies and methods to support the teaching of reading
and comprehension in early elementary school and beyond. There’s more than one way to
teach children to read. So, it’s important to have a range of different strategies and methods
to encourage learning in different students.

 Teaching reading: strategies & methods

1. Read aloud to students

2. Provide opportunities for students to read, write and talk about texts
3. Read texts repeatedly to support fluency
4. Teach children the tools to figure out words they don’t know
5. Provide time for studying spoken language, including vocabulary and spelling
6. Use prior knowledge to make connections
7. Predict
8. Visualize
9. Summarize
10. Teach critical thinking skills

 The early years: strategies for teaching reading

Literacy teaching and learning are core responsibilities of teachers and schools. Yet teaching
reading and writing is a complex and highly skilled professional activity. Many young
learners start school with little knowledge about how to read and write. Teachers are tasked
with helping children to bridge the significant gap between linking their written and spoken
language. Learning to read is critical, with research showing that reading for pleasure can:

 Promote improved health and wellbeing

 Help build social connections and relationships
 Increase the chances of social mobility.
Literacy development is an evolving and non-linear process that encompasses foundational
skills (phonemic awareness), word recognition, reading fluency, vocabulary, and reading
comprehension (Simms & Marzano, 2018).

For a student’s ultimate success, teachers must:

 Understand how students learn these skills, and

 Implement best practices when teaching these skills.

Learning to read should include exposure to a wide variety of exciting books from different
genres. Here are 10 strategies you can use to support your students in developing their
reading skills and boosting comprehension.

1. Read aloud to students

Read-aloud regularly in the classroom and encourage parents to do the same at home.
Reading aloud has many benefits for students, including improving comprehension,
building listening skills, and broadening their vocabulary development.

2. Provide opportunities for students to read, write, and talk about texts

Regularly giving students time to read, write, and talk about texts can enhance their skill
development across multiple areas. For instance, reading more helps you become a better
writer. By talking about texts and hearing the perspectives of classmates, young children
also have the opportunity to deepen their comprehension. Encourage parents to
further engage young readersby asking them to help their child attack difficult words and
ask questions about the text that will promote discussions.

3. Read texts repeatedly to support fluency

Allow students to read the same texts multiple times. By doing this, they not only build
fluency but also build confidence. The more confident they become in their reading skills,
the more likely they will enjoy reading.

4. Teach children the tools to figure out words they don’t know

Teaching students to read for the ultimate goal of producing independent readers begins
by explicitly teaching the code we use to decode words. That starts with teaching phonemic
awareness.

Here are some other strategies that support phonics instruction:

  For beginning readers, target words that are decodable. These are regular spellings
with regular sounds. (Ex. such – /s/ /u/ /ch/ not gone)
 Sound out each phoneme and blend as you go by going back to the first sound
everytime a sound is added. Hold the sound (sing) then add the next sound. Ex.
/g/, /r/, gr—, /ow/, grow.

Note: Students may want to look at pictures for context, but this does not help them decode
words. As we encourage students to read more difficult texts, they won’t have pictures to
rely on, so encourage them not to use the pictures to decode difficult words.

This might involve combining strategies, such as:

 Sounding out a word using phonics knowledge

 Looking at the pictures
 Skipping the word and coming back to it after reading the rest of the sentence

As an elementary teacher, you can support the families of your young students by
sharing phonics resources. By providing parents with practical resources, you are setting
them up for a productive and positive reading experience with their child.

5. Provide time for studying spoken language, including vocabulary and spelling

A comprehensive approach to teaching reading also includes providing time to develop

complementary skills, such as:

 Spoken language, including through conversation or oral presentations

 Vocabulary, such as building class lists while reading texts
 Spelling
 Grammar, such as through bite-sized video content like the Grammar Miniclips
series.

6. Use prior knowledge to make connections

Each student brings unique prior knowledge to their reading education. This knowledge is
the sum of all experiences they bring to the reading or viewing of a text. This could include
personal experiences, cultural or religious experiences and concept knowledge. Prior
knowledge helps young readers infer meaning from text, a skill recognized as a predictor of
reading comprehension at various developmental stages and one of the drivers of
sophisticated reading ability. An early reader can activate prior knowledge and make
connections at each stage.

 Before reading, they could ask ‘What do I already know about this topic?’
 During reading, they could reflect ‘This part of the text is just like…’
  After reading, they could offer ‘I know more about this topic now.’

7. Predict

Prediction is about anticipation and working out the actions and ideas coming next. An early
reader can use prediction at each stage of reading.

 Before reading, they could suggest ‘From the cover, I think this book will be about…’
 During reading, they could predict which word comes next in a sentence.
 After reading, they could comment on whether their predictions were correct.

8. Visualize

Visualizing combines using your senses and activating prior knowledge to create a mental
picture. Ask students to create a “mind movie.” Young readers, especially with a teacher or
parent prompting, can draw on their senses to imagine smells, sounds, tastes, and images
that go with the story they are reading – like a show or movie in their mind.

9. Summarize

Teaching students to recall the main points or ideas of a story is not easy. First, they need to
be able to put the story in order, then put it in their own words before they can articulate a
‘summing up’ of the author’s main ideas. To start to learn to summarize, young students can
practice:

 Selecting the key words from a paragraph

 Locating the topic sentence (often found at the start or end of a paragraph)
 Responding to general questions about a story
 Talking through the story in their own words

10. Teach critical thinking skills

Critical thinking gets readers to think about why an author creates a text in a particular way
(author’s purpose). You can encourage young readers to ask some of the following
questions to get them thinking critically about what they are reading:

 Why did the author write this story?

 How do I feel about this story?

Prepared by:
Chia Sing Yee