How to Be the Best Reading Teacher
How to Teach Reading Skills
10 Best Practices
by Stacia Levy 214,047 views
Reading classes are often very…quiet.
Of course, people are reading, and nosotros generally don't concord conversations and read at the aforementioned time. And we teachers usually similar quiet classrooms, seeing the repose equally indicative of learning taking place. This is true in many cases, of class, but there are some drawbacks to these quiet reading classes: they are not interactive, and it'due south been shown that interaction between students and students and teacher leads to greater processing of the material and therefore more learning. In additions, information technology's hard to impossible to assess learning taking identify without some talking; indeed, information technology'due south hard to tell if students in a silent classroom are fifty-fifty reading and not daydreaming or actually nodding off! Finally, these quiet noninteractive classes are simply tiresome, and colorlessness is non an incentive for students to come to grade and learn. Notwithstanding, in that location are several methods to address these concerns in reading classes past making them interactive and still teach reading.
10 Best Practices for Pedagogy Reading
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i
Assess level
Knowing your students' level of didactics is important for choosing materials. Reading should be neither too hard, at a point where students tin can't empathise information technology and therefore do good from it. If students don't understand the majority of the words on a page, the text is also hard for them. On the other hand, if the student understands everything in the reading, there is no claiming and no learning. And then assess your students' level past giving them short reading passages of varying degrees of difficulty. This might take up the start calendar week or and so of class. Manus out a passage that seems to be at your students' estimate level and then hold a brief discussion, ask some questions, and define some vocabulary to determine if the passage is at the students' instructional level. If too like shooting fish in a barrel or too hard, adapt the reading passage and echo the procedure until you achieve the students' optimal level.
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ii
Choose the right level of maturity
While it'south important that the fabric be neither too hard nor too easy, a text should be at the student'due south maturity level likewise—it's inappropriate to requite children'southward storybooks to developed or adolescent students. In that location are, yet, edited versions of mature material, such as classic and popular novels, for ESL students, that will hold their interest while they develop reading skills.
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3
Choose interesting cloth
Observe out your students' interest. Often within a class there are common themes of interest: parenting, medicine, and computers are some topics that come to listen that a majority of students in my classes have shared interest in. Ask students about their interests in the first days of class and collect reading fabric to match those interests. Teaching reading with texts on these topics will raise student motivation to read and therefore ensure that they exercise read and improve their skills.
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4
Build groundwork knowledge
As a child, I attempted, and failed, to read a number of books that were "classics": Louisa May Alcott'due south "Picayune Women" leaps to heed. It probably should accept been a fairly easy read, just it was and so full of cultural references to life in mid-nineteenth century New England that I gave upwardly in defeat each fourth dimension. It was not at my independent reading level, even if the vocabulary and grammatical patterns were, because of its cultural references. Why, for example, would young schoolgirls lust after limes, equally the youngest daughter in the story, Amy, and her friends do? Cultural material like this would end me abruptly. Clearly, this was not contained reading for me because of its cultural references, and I needed help to navigate this text—to explain that limes, a citrus fruit, would have been rare and prized a century ago in New England with its freezing winters and before there were effective methods of transporting and storing fruit. Similarly, our students, many new to the U.S., would demand equal help with such fabric. Information technology is of import for the teacher to anticipate which cultural references students might need explained or discussed. This is not easy, of form, but can become so through such techniques as related discussion before the reading (east.g., "Who knows what the American Civil War was? When was it? Why was it fought?" or "Where is New England? Accept you ever been in that location? What is the climate similar?") A discussion earlier the reading on its topics builds background knowledge and the comprehensibility of the text also as giving the teacher an idea of where students' background knowledge needs to be developed more.
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five
Betrayal unlike discourse patterns
The narrative form is familiar to near students. In addition, information technology is popular to teachers. Information technology is easy to teach: we've been reading and hearing stories most of our lives. However, reports, business letters, personal letters, articles, and essays are also genres that students volition have to understand as they get out school and enter the working earth. We sympathise the discourse design of a story: that is, its pattern of arrangement. It is related chronologically, for the most part; it is in the past with past tense verb forms; it is structured around a series of increasingly dramatic events that build to a climax or high betoken, and and then forth. The soapbox pattern of an essay for instance, may exist less familiar but all the same important to understanding the text: that information technology is congenital around a serial of topics related to one master idea or thesis. Knowing the discourse pattern lets the reader know what to expect, and therefore increases comprehensibility.
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vi
Work in groups
Students should work in groups each session, reading aloud to each other, discussing the cloth, doing question and answer, and so forth. Working in groups provides the much needed interactivity to increase motivation and learning. Students may choose their ain groups or be assigned one, and groups may vary in size.
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vii
Brand connections
Make connections to other disciplines, to the outside world, to other students. Human activity out scenes from the reading, bring in related speakers, and or hold field trips on the topic. Aid students meet the value of reading past connecting reading to the outside world and show its employ in that location.
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8
Extended do
Besides often we complete a reading and then don't revisit information technology. However, related activities in vocabulary, grammer, comprehension questions, and discussion increase the processing of the reading and boost educatee learning.
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9
Assess informally
Likewise often people think "test" when they hear the word "appraise." Simply some of the most valuable cess can be less formal: walking effectually and observing students, for example, discuss the reading. Does the discussion bear witness they really empathise the text? Other means of breezy assessment might be short surveys or question sheets.
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q
Assess formally
There is also a identify for more formal assessment. But this doesn't take to be the traditional multiple choice test, which ofttimes reveals little more than the test-takers skill in taking tests. The essay on a reading - writing well-nigh some aspect of Orwell's "Beast Farm," for case - demonstrates command of the reading material in a mode a multiple pick quiz cannot as the pupil actually needs to understand the fabric to write virtually the reading's extended metaphor of the farm.
Instruction reading presents a unique fix of challenges because it is a receptive language skill.
All the same, if the instructor keeps in mind "receptive" doesn't take mean "passive" an interactive class that improves educatee reading can exist adult.
P.S. If you enjoyed this commodity, delight help spread information technology by clicking one of those sharing buttons below. And if yous are interested in more than, you should follow our Facebook page where nosotros share more about creative, not-dull ways to teach English.
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