Teaching+Children+to+Read


 * Comprehension ** refers to the ability to understand the meaning of what is being read using all resources available including text, illustrations, layout and design. Reading comprehension is when a child can simultaneously extract and construct a meaning from what they are reading. There are three elements involved in comprehension and these are the reader, the activity and the text:
 * The reader ** is the aspect that makes each individual different. This is due to there different cultural experience, knowledge, capabilities, age and gender.[[image:children_reading1.jpg align="right"]]
 * The text ** can be in a variety written in a variety of forms and genres.
 * The activity ** is made up of three dimensions - the purpose of the reading, the process the reader goes through and the consequences, the experiences they learn as a result of the reading.

In early literacy development children are more focused on decoding the word making it harder to comprehend the main idea of the text. If the word is new to the reader then context cues need to be provided to hint at its meaning. There are 5 main barriers that children face when learning to read and these are involvement, attention, persistence, reflectivity and flexibility. It is important for children to develop awareness and to take control of their learning. Firstly it is important to build an active environment in which the teacher needs to tell the child that they are in charge of the information the brain processes and therefore need to remain constantly focuses. Secondly, children need to learn to hold their attention on the text and therefore if this becomes a problem perhaps suggest writing or drawing notes to help refresh their memory of the text. When a text is difficult to comprehend the words can sometimes take longer to read and a child can lack persistence. Many children take the time to reflect on the story once they have finished reading and tend to lose some of the meaning and information that they have read. Have the child reflect on the characters, the setting, the story problems and the resolution at the end and if they do not completely comprehend then get them to reread the story. Finally it is important that children can be flexible when hearing criticism and feedback and they need to learn that mistakes are fine and a great tool to learn from.

The best way to assess a child’s comprehension of a text is to ask questions about what exactly happened during the text. These start simple and as the child’s reading develops can become more complex. The questions can be literal (How many pigs are there?), interpretive (which pig is the strongest?) or inferential (what did you learn from this story? Can you invent a different meaning?).
 * Assessing Comprehension **

This can be used as an assessment tool and also a teaching device to create generic questions. Narrative: List the events of the story in sequential order.
 * Blooms Classification Tool **
 * Generic questions for a narrative **
 * Comprehension: ** List three choices the character had to make. Why were some decisions made and not others?
 * Application: ** Discuss a similar experience you had. How was it different or similar?
 * Analyse: ** Find examples of self/self conflict, self/group conflict and self/society conflict. Describe these for the group.
 * Synthesis: ** Change a character and tell what would happen next. Change part of the plot and tell what would happen next.
 * Evaluation: ** What was the author’s message? Does it help you understand why some behaviour was valued and some was not? Is there a message within the story?

This is an effective form of assessment and helps the student focus on the main areas and the sequence of the text. However there are some important things to consider when choosing the text. 1. Before asking a child to retell make sure the story is interesting and engaging to the student. 2. Children who read to slowly or to fast generally find it harder to comprehend the meaning of the text. 3. If a child has trouble retelling the story it may be because there vocabulary is not sufficient for them to understand the text. 4. Tell the children before hand that they retelling the story and give them a book that is easier then the instructional level. 5. Use graphic image to help a child retell the story.
 * Retelling **

- Show the children the cover and ask them to predict what the book might be about. - Create questions about the book such as what will happen to the wolf in the story about the three pigs. Write these down and refer to them at the end of the story. - Encourage children to make images in their minds as to what might be happening to the characters and how they might feel. - Encourage children to ask questions to clarify what is happening in the story. - Construct summaries about what happened and what the main ideas within the story were
 * Before reading **
 * During reading **
 * After reading **

Assign the following roles within a group and read a picture book. This gives each student a chance to retell the story from different points of view.
 * Roles **
 * Social Critic: ** Is the book fair? Are there stereotypes? How could the book be more just or fair?
 * Work/image Finder: ** Ask what words or used to create feelings and list interesting words that are unfamiliar to the group.
 * Illustrator: ** Sketch an idea or an event. Ask questions before revealing what has been drawn.
 * Me: ** What does this book mean to me? Have I had experience this before? How did I feel?
 * Summariser: ** List events in sequence. Put the story in two to three sentences and ask others to listen and check whether they agree.
 * Manager: ** Manages the group and asks for predictions before the story starts. may stop the group to ask questions to clarify.

The best was to assess what level a child’s reading is at is to take a record of their reading behaviour. This involves finding a book that is at the child’s level that he/she has not yet read. The recording is written onto a transcript of the text so that the teacher has a clear indication of where the child excelled and where work needs to be done on improvement. These records can be used to follow the student’s progress and also to report back to parents on the process of their children. There are many forms of mistakes that a child can make whilst reading a book, in particular, one that has not been read before. These include a miscue, insertion, omission, repetition, attempt, ask for help and these are generally denoted as follows in a reading report. Add scan When evaluating the child’s performance: __ 80-8 __ = 0.9 or 90% 80 Add scan Reading is an activity that is based on problem solving and therefore it is a gateway into the child's thinking patterns. Sometimes readers make errors that they can detect as they sentence will not make sense or doesn’t sound right and a self correction is made, other errors are not detected. Errors and self correction form an important indication of a child's reading development and allow teaches to access a child's strategies and work out ways to help the student improve their reading.
 * Assessing reading **
 * Count the running words; these do not include sub-titles and headings.
 * Count the number of errors made by the child whilst reading the text.
 * If the child has skipped a page count that as one error and subtract the number of words on that page from the total word count.
 * If a proper noun like a name is read incorrectly, only counts this as one error however count all other words read inaccurately each time.
 * Do not count as errors words that the child self corrects, repeats or words that are pronounced differently in the child's dialect.
 * Calculate the accuracy of the child's reading as a percentage by subtracting the total number of errors from the total number of running words and then divide this number by the running words. For example if the student has 8 uncorrected errors and the text has 80 running words then the accuracy rate would be 90%
 * Once this is done the child's reading level can be considered to determine whether the child is reading at the appropriate level: Easy: 95-100% Instructional: 90-94% and  Difficult: below 90%
 * The best matches for a child’s reading level are books that are at the instructional level for the child.