How
Children Learn to Read
Between the ages of four and nine, your child will have to master
some 100 phonics rules, learn to recognize 3,000 words with just a
glance, and develop a comfortable reading speed approaching 100 words
a minute. He must learn to combine words on the page with a
half-dozen squiggles called punctuation into something – a voice or
image in his mind that gives back meaning. (Paul Kropp, 1996)
Why do we read? Why do we need to read? Reading plays an avid part
in our daily lives. Whether we read the stop sign so we know to stop
our car, read a map to navigate around a city, or to just read for
pleasure, reading is important. Reading is the start of someones
future and creates the foundation for the rest of their life. Reading
takes place as soon as a baby is born. From day one, babies are
listening and monitoring their surroundings and even though it
doesn't seem like an infant that young can understand anything that
is going on, they really do. They are putting together the sounds and
babbling they hear and see and through a process, will be able to
acquire the five components of effective reading instruction:
phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
Each language in the world uses a different assortment of phonemes –
the distinctive sounds used to form words. When adults hear another
language, they may not notice the differences in phonemes not used in
their own language. Babies are born with the ability to distinguish
these differences. Their babbles include many more sounds than those
used in their home language. At about 6 to 10 months, babies begin to
ignore the phonemes not used in their home language. They babble only
the sounds made by the people who talk with them most often (Collins
& Koralek, 2013 ).
During
their first year, babies hear speech as a series of distinct, but
meaningless words. By age 1, most children begin linking words to
meaning. They understand the names used to label familiar objects,
body parts, animals, and people. From this point on, children develop
language skills rapidly. At about 18 months, children add new
words to their vocabulary at a rate of one every 2 hours. By age 2,
most children know approximately 2,000 words and combine two words to
form simple sentences such as: "Go out." "All gone."
Between 24 to 30 months, children speak in longer sentences. And from
30 to 36 months, children begin following the rules for expressing
tense and use words such as some, would, and who.
During these developmental
stages, children are learning not only their reading and writing
skills, but also listening and speaking skills (Collins &
Koralek, 2013).
Once
children have developed basic language skills now the task is to
reinforce these skills in a classroom setting. The first component in
reading instruction that is important is phonemic awareness. Phonemic
awareness is the basic understanding that spoken
words are composed of different sounds (Ruddell, 2005). The skill
sequence for the development of phonemic awareness is first students
identify a word unit (cat, kitten), next they identify a syllable
unit (kit+ten=kitten), third students identify the rhyme (kit-ten,
mit-ten), last the identification of the phoneme is recgonized
(blend: kitten= /kit/ /ten/) (Ruddell, 2005). To reinforce this
sequence, phonemic awareness can be developed in a number of ways,
such as focusing on rhyming words. Reading Dr. Seuss books or Mother
Goose rhymes are often relatable to most younger children. These
readings incorporate rhyme and using riddles that focus on sound
units that will help reinforce the concept of phonemic awareness.
As
children go through the primary grades, they gain phonics and other
word identification skills that help them decipher print. Phonics is
crucial during these stages of development because children need to
learn how to spell and read high frequency words such as was,
have, and they. In
order to do this they need to know how to identify a word based on
letter-sound and letter pattern-sound pattern relationships, which is
also known as phonics (Vacca, 2012). Knowing these beginning stages
of phonics will help children move through the stages of invented
spelling then eventually towards conventional spelling.
As
children develop the concept of phonics, they move towards fluency
and how this can affect their reading. In order for a student to
read fluently they must be able to recognize at sight—both quickly
and accurately-- most of the words in any given passage. This will
allow for more text to be covered, which is a significant factor in
developing fluency. Fluent readers are also more drawn to the text
and contribute to reading growth and comprehension. To help build
fluency, repeated reading, simultaneous reading and paired reading
are known to build confidence stimulate the wanting to read in
students (Ruddell, 2005). In most elementary classrooms, at least two
hours a day are devoted to reading and other language arts areas.
During the rest of the day science, math, and social studies are
taught. Even though we don't think of it often, learning these
content-area subject provide perfect opportunities to help children
build fluency skills. In order to read and write in these areas, they
must know specialized vocabulary; which is another key component in
learning how to read.
Vocabulary
knowledge and comprehension develop rapidlytogether. Vocabulary
knowledge has long been regarded as critical to children's
comprehension development (Cunningham, 2004). Researchers have
suggested that in order to address the tasks of teaching vocabulary,
children should be enrolled in a program of rich instruction that is
geared towards children's independent vocabulary-learning abilities.
Direct instruction to help develop vocabulary meaning is a great step
to take and help enrich the context meaning. Direct teaching of
selected words that not only are essential to comprehending the text
but to go beyond the text and understand them in a different context.
Present word-learning strategies to children so they become
independent and read outside of the classroom setting. Showing them
how to use the text to develop meaning will be crucial to identify
unknown words. Last, use a wide variety of reading materials in your
classroom. Having an extensive variety of reading materials will open
students up to many different levels of reading and multiple word
selections. Once all of these steps are taken into account, the
student will be able to comprehend the material they read.
Comprehending includes not only being able to read something but to
understand the deep meaning of the context.
Reading
is the most important skill any child needs. Beyond their classroom
years, adults still read on a constant basis. While most
children have been surrounded by language from birth and can be
fluent speakers by age three without conscious effort, a lot of
children are not this fortunate. A select few have not been
surrounded by language and their reading development is going to
happen at a slower rate. As an educator we need to understand that
all children learn differently and differentiating our instruction to
meet the needs of all learners is vital. All students need to
comprehend the five components of reading and it is our job as
educators to get them to this educational level.
References:
Cunningham, Patricia
Marr., James W. Cunningham, Sharon A. Moore, and David W. Moore.
Reading and Writing in Elementary Classrooms: Research Based K-4
Instruction. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2004. Print.
Johns, Jerry L.,
Laurie Elish-Piper, and Beth Johns. Basic Reading Inventory:
Pre-primer through Grade Twelve and Early Literacy Assessments.
Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt Pub., 2012. Print.
Koralek, Derry, and
Ray Collins (2013). "Reading Rockets." Reading Rockets.
N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Feb. 2014.
<http://www.readingrockets.org/article/386>.
Lyon, Reid (2012).
"Reading Rockets." Reading Rockets. N.p., n.d. Web.
11 Feb. 2014. <http://www.readingrockets.org/article/356>.
Ruddell, Robert B.
Teaching Children to Read and Write: Becoming an Effective
Literacy Teacher. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2005. Print.
Vacca, Jo Anne L.,
Richard T. Vacca, Mary K. Gove, Linda C. Burkey, Lisa A. Lenhart, and
Christine A. McKeon. Reading and Learning to Read. Boston:
Pearson, 2012. Print.
