Steps and Strategies for Teaching Reading

         Teaching students to read is not as easy as one may think. There are numerous details and steps that go into this process. For instance, phonemic awareness and word recognition are both crucial processes when learning to read.  In every classroom, grade level, and school there will always be students who struggle with reading. It is our job as future teachers to learn strategies and activities in order to help these students. In “What can I say besides “sound it out”? Coaching word recognition in beginning reading” “Supporting Phonemic Awareness Development in the Classroom”, and Chapter 5 in the book I found many unique strategies and activities that I would love to use one day in my own classroom.

         Kathleen Clark's article, “What can I say besides “sound it out”? Coaching word recognition in beginning reading”, starts out by giving highly effective instructional techniques to use when helping a student to read. It is important to allow the student to sound out the word on their own rather than just simply telling them how it is pronounced. While I was reading the article one small sentence really stuck out to me. Clark states that, “The teachers all said that coaching was critical to their success in helping children learn to read, and they indicated it was a technique they acquired after completing their teacher certification program.” This made me feel a lot better because as of right now I am not very confident in my own ability to teach/coach a child to read. I will be student teaching in a Kindergarten class starting in August where I know learning to read will be an everyday activity for these students. I really look forward to learning how to become an effective reading teacher myself and after reading this article I feel like that will be possible sooner than I expected!

         Hallie Kay and Ruth Helen Yopp’s article, “Supporting Phonemic Awareness Development in the Classroom”, talks about the importance of phonemic awareness. If I had been asked to define this word prior to reading this article, I do not believe I would have been able to. They define the term as a construct relatively new in our understanding of how children become readers. Therefore, without phonemic awareness researchers would not be able to have a great understanding of how children learn to read.  Throughout the article there were several activities that I found to be very interesting. For instance, I really liked the Twenty Kids Have Hats oral reading. I thought this was great because first of all the students are able to interact in the read aloud which is important because it keeps them involved.  Also, student made work is important to have around the classroom and this would be a great opportunity. This one activity has the student reading, writing, drawing, and most importantly thinking. This is a very effective activity in my opinion and really helps the students become aware of rhyme schemes.

         Chapter 5 in the book really hits on important strategies and ideas for teaching phonics and spelling patterns. When I was little I remember my teachers discussing the importance of using context clues. This is something that I still use up to this day and I know is really effective when reading. I liked the idea of the Guess the Covered Word. I thought that this would be a great opportunity for students to use context clues in order to figure out the word that has been covered up. Also, this activity can allow the class to create a story to be posted up on the wall. This activity helps the students with spelling as well as word recognition. Chapter 5 is very resourceful and would be nice to have as a reference in the future.