The National Reading Panel Report

Reading is an acquired skill, developed through explicit teaching and founded upon a child’s innate ability to hear and process sounds from birth. Beginning at birth exposure to oral language, gestures and the functions of communication (Fellows & Oakley, 2010 p.165) allows exploration of sounds and words and their connection to each other, and introduces cue systems that will later assist in decoding complex text as development of reading ability occurs. Cue systems including linguistic rules of speech, such as grammatical, pragmatic, semantic and syntactic structures (McDevitt & Ormrod, 2004, p. 324), provide readers with strategies and knowledge for comprehension and phonological awareness (Gascoigne, 2005, p. 1). Rich language exchanges

Learning to read is a complex task which involves active problem solving through the implementation of several intertwined skills. When providing reading instruction, it is not feasible to expect that children will pick up these skills implicitly. Effective reading instruction requires an explicit and systematic approach which aims to develop the specific skills and understanding required for successful reading. As children move through the stages of reading, learning is supported through methodical and integrated instruction in concepts of print, phonemic and phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. However children are active learners rather

The Simple View of Reading (SVoR) model suggests that children must have language comprehension and word recognition skills to be proficient readers, Medwell et al (2014). Jim Rose’s report (2006, p. 40) outlined the Simple View of Reading as a useful framework, which would make explicit to teachers what they need to teach about word recognition and language comprehension (see appendix 1). Before the Rose report, reading was defined as decoding black marks, Graham and Kelly (2012). After this the searchlights model suggested that phonics, grammatical knowledge, reading comprehension and graphic knowledge are equally useful tools when learning to read, Ward (2008). The Rose report’s Independent Review of the Teaching of Early reading reconstructed this model and created the SVoR. Rose (2006, p. 38) determines word recognition as a process which allows you to use “phonics to recognise words” and language comprehension as the means by which “word information, sentences and discourse are interpreted.” The SVoR suggests that, to become a fluent reader, the skills of language comprehension and word recognition are equally important and dependent on each other. Gough and Tummer first mentioned this model, as stated that “comprehension is not sufficient, for decoding is also necessary” Wyse et al (2013, p.

Building vocabulary is an important task in the early grades. There has long been debate on how one should go about teaching vocabulary such as, it is better to teach a limited number of words fully and more intense or expose children to many words to enhance “incidental learning”. Research has proven that incorporating both into instruction is most effective. Read-aloud and teachers increase use of vocabulary have also been proven to help vocabulary and word knowledge. There are three tiers of words that children are presented in their life. Tier one words are those that they are most familiar with such as park, tier 2 are the increasingly hard words such as fortunate and finally the tier 3 words are words that students have rarely been exposed

“Put Reading First” talks about the most important elements of reading such as phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. The article explains the purpose and importance of these concepts, due to the idea of how hard it is for some children to read. It also offers the idea of instructional strategies to use for the concepts. For example, Phonemic awareness is being able to hear, distinguish between the sounds being heard, and make sounds in spoken words. This involves understanding that some words have the same beginning sound or segmenting the beginning and ending sound in the words. The article also goes on about the individual breakdowns of the concept such as graphemes and phonemes. It then goes over the strategies

As a child, reading was an activity that I loved and grasped from the moment I opened my eyes and saw the world around me; one full of big letters, long syllables, descriptive words, and jazzy sentences that combined to create exhilarating descriptions of everything I would come across in my thrilling adventures. From the earliest stages of my life to my first simple words, to recognizing how a colorful picture matched the plot of a story, I grew, developed, and spent time with the wonderful people around me whom I was blessed to call my uncles, aunts, and cousins. They had spent hours upon hours pouring their time into teaching me the arduous process of reading, instructing everything they could about sounds, syllables, pronunciation, and

Whichever way you learned to read, chances are you never knew what the terms “phonics” or “whole language” meant. However, these are the terms that are at opposite ends of an on-going debate over the best way to teach children how to read. “Simply stated, supporters of the whole language approach think children's literature, writing activities, and communication activities can be used across the curriculum to teach reading; backers of phonics instruction insist that a direct, sequential mode of teaching enables students to master reading in an organized way” (Cromwell, 1997).

Reading begins with a foundation in spoken language. Children must understand the relationship between the ways words sound and how they look and relate to one another on paper. Early exposure to reading and writing introduces children to emergent literacy. They learn that printed words are meaningful, there are different forms of printed matter, there are rules for spoken language transcribed and there are some predictable conventions of written language. Children are effective readers when they exhibit phonological awareness and are capable of identifying distinct sounds that make up words. When presented with phonological awareness,

Learning to read is one of the most important and critical skills you learn in you're early years of elementary school. For some kids it clicks no problem, but for other such as myself it is one of the more difficult skills you learn through the your time in school. For me I was lucky enough to have a teacher who wanted to invest her personal time to help me grow and conquer my struggle with reading.

If parents take interest in their children learning process early on, then they will have a head start in being successful in reading. As teachers, we build on the children’s phonemic awareness to be able to teach phonics and

When children have been exposed to reading, Children have the opportunity to learn rhythms, letter’s sound, phonemic awareness that will help them to develop reading skills.

As we know learning to read at a young age can be a tedious and frustrating time for young children. In school one of the

Having the right methodic strategies to teach and encourage fluency reading can be a tedious task for an educator. All students including those like Chloe in the IRIS scenario do not read alike. One particular strategy might work for one student but not another. However some of the tried and true strategies have work are Reader’s Theater, Musical/Choral Reading and Tape-Assisted Readings. These strategies not only can be used in the classroom but reiterated and reinforced at home with the parent interacting with the student.

One of the things that I have learn and that are interested to me is to know how teaching children to read can be complex and challenging but, if you have the right tools and the skills you can prevent most reading problems and help children who has difficulties reading. Moats on the first chapter, mentions that reading problems can be improved through appropriate instruction; and according to findings, a classroom instruction that builds phoneme awareness, phonic decoding skills, text reading fluency, vocabulary, and various aspects of comprehension is the best antidote for reading difficulty. She also mentions a concern about how many teachers can be licensed with one course or a little background on reading methods and reading psychology, or language structure leaving the without the understanding and tools that enable instruction.

Reading comprehension is a complex life skill that we need to be efficient in to successfully integrate in society. From an early age most children are exposed to literature, whether that be picture books, street signs or words on certain objects, all children, will in one way or another, encounter text and eventually be required to decipher it for its meaning. Teachers have a critical part to play to help the development of a child’s reading. There are several key elements that are imperative for young learners to be competent readers. These include phonological awareness, phonics and also their home and socioeconomic environment they are exposed to. Phonological awareness enables children to focus on the sounds of speech as opposed to its