Louisa C. Moats Teaching Reading Is Rocket Science

Multnomah County had a survey done for kindergarten teachers. The results suggested that 19.4% of their students were not headed toward literacy success, due to a lack of necessary language and pre-reading skills. There is a 90% probability of a child that is a poor reader in first grade, still being a poor reader three years later, in fourth grade (http://www.co.marion.or.us). As Early Childhood Educators, we must help our students.

Trezek and Wang (2006) evaluated the effectiveness of utilizing the Reading Mastery I program (Engelmann & Brunner, 1995) supplemented by Visual Phonics with kindergarten and first-grade d/Dhh students. Three teachers in a Total Communication program and 13 students were included in the study that lasted over 8 months. Students’ degree of hearing loss ranged from severe to profound, and two of the first graders wore cochlear implants. Students were divided into three groups based on their age for instructions.

Early reading success is the foundation of a student’s knowledge and self-esteem. The foundation also provides future opportunities for growth. Students must learn to read proficiently so that they are able to learn more in future grades, post-secondary schools, and the workforce. Beverly Tyner’s Small-Group Reading Instruction: A Differentiated Teaching Model for Beginning and Struggling Readers states “In the United States, which offers few career opportunities for the illiterate, teaching children to read proficiently is the most important single task in education.” (Tyner, 2009). Beverly Tyner created the Small-Group Differentiated Reading Model which incorporates research-based strategies for teaching beginning reading skills and skills

In every school across America, effective practices of reading instruction are being discussed. Calkins (2012) suggests that over 85% of students being tested on grade level literacy standards are non-proficient. Research suggests that students, who are unable to read proficiently by third grade, are not predicted to ever learn to read or have successful lives when they reach adulthood (Martinez, 2008). For these reasons, it is important that districts implement literacy models and instructional reforms that have been well researched and shown to be successful. The instructional reform method of Balanced Literacy is being used throughout the country to meet the challenging standards of the Common Core. Teachers will need

The four-cueing systems that educators should incorporate within their classroom are phonological (sound), syntactic (structural), semantic (meaning), and pragmatic (social/cultural). According to Tompkins, these systems make it possible for children and adults to read, write, listen, and talk. For beginning readers and writers emphasis should be placed on the phonological system because it applies to phonics skills to decode and spell words (Tompkins, 2014). Ways that educators can apply the phonological system within their lesson is by pointing out rhyming words, decoding words when reading, dividing words into syllables, and pronouncing words. The syntactic system can be used in the classroom by adding inflectional endings to words, creating compound words, and teaching appropriate sentence structure. Educators can teach the semantic system by teaching students the meaning of a word, and studying synonyms, antonyms, and homonyms. The pragmatic system can be taught by varying language to fit a specific purpose, reading and writing dialogue in

After a century and a half of universal public education, and despite the highest per-pupil expenditure on public elementary and secondary education in the world, forty percent of United States fourth graders read below the minimally acceptable level, according to National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). And for minority students in inner-city schools, that rate is 65 percent. It is an accepted fact that children who do not read by fourth grade almost always fall behind in all other subjects. (It is even more moving to realize that children learned to read well in one-room schoolhouses before all of the debate about “best practices,” pedagogy, etc.)

Early years are the emphasis for the prevention of reading complications and research ‘conducted over the past two decades has produced wide-ranging results signifying that children who get off to a poor start in reading seldom catch up. A specific research based approach used in helping struggling readers is that of guided reading. Iaquinta (2006), stated that guided reading, is an important

What can we do?: The earlier we can identify and start to try and fix the problem (both with reading and with any subject, really), the better the chances are that the student will be able to remain on grade level and learn successfully with their peers throughout the rest of their educational experiences

In Elementary School, there are many children that tend not to pay attention when teachers are giving the reading lessons so teachers argue with them without figuring out the precise reasons for that behavior. As teachers, we need to develop the abilities to catch up when children have any kind of learning problems, in this case a reading disability. If the reading disability is not detected at an early time, many children would probably be affected for the rest of their lives as adults. The reading process has the power that benefits millions of children around the world to increase awareness of the things that happen in our world and prepare them with a great foundation for academic excellence. The reading process is valuable for our

For a child who is just starting to learn to read, they need sufficient practice in reading a variety of different books to achieve fluency. Reading can be complex and has many different aspects (Burns,1999). It is suggested that children who have problems reading and writing at a young age will find it hard to catch up as they get older and will not reach their full potential as adults, many will withdraw from school or society and some becoming involved with crime (MacBlain,2014). 40 percent of children find learning to read a challenge but with early help, most reading problems can be prevented (Reading Rockets, n.d.).

Year after year, teachers observe students who enter into their classroom without the ability to read. The inability to read effects every area of a student’s education. The

Through my close to four-hundred hours of internships in the public school setting and substitute teaching experience, I have worked with a range of children in the elementary setting. The children that I have worked with and continue to work with vary greatly in their ability to read. Some of the students I work with read at

Swanson et al. (2011) conducted a meta-analysis, A Synthesis of Read-Aloud Interventions on Early Reading Outcomes Among Preschool Through Third Graders at Risk for Reading Difficulties, to determine which interventions were the most useful for preschoolers to third graders who were at risk for reading difficulties. Their research examined the effects of five read-aloud interventions, which included: dialogic reading, repeated reading, limited questioning, computer assisted, and extended vocabulary (pg. 261).

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn the more places you'll go.” This quote by Dr. Seuss explains the importance of reading. Knowing how to read is very important to be successful in life. In 2009,a nationwide study by the National Center for Educational Statistics recorded that sixty-seven percent of 4th grade students, seventy-five percent of 8th grade students, and seventy-four percent of 12th grade students were not reading at a proficient level. This will cause many problems as the child progresses through life and later on to adulthood. According to the National assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL), forty-three percent read at the lowest 2 literacy level ("Who Needs Phonics"). They will

Teach to read is a dynamic goal of education; it is proven that reading opens a new world of knowledge and enhance children’s reading expertise. Therefore, there are a lot of reading series that improves children’s reading proficiency, however, the Real Kids Readers are the greatest language arts curriculum based book series for preK-3rd grades that practices a significant phonics centered study. Phonics is defined as a technique of teaching individual to read by connecting sounds (phoneme) with letters (grapheme) or a group of letters in an alphabetic writing system, thus Real Kids Readers book series provides the phonics instruction approaches in an effective way that enhance children’s phonic skills as well as boost their vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension aptitudes. Real Kids Readers book series is established on fiction and non-fiction stories along with the actual photographs that help children to understand the story, nevertheless the combination of the real scenario, vivid characters, and live photographs is certified to amuse the young children as well as motivate them to have a keen interest in reading.