All About Reading

Why do we read?

• The purpose of reading is to create meaning and each person takes away something slightly different from a story or book. It is important for students to understand we read to learn and for enjoyment. Reading is more than getting all the words right or reading quickly. Students should understand their fluency and decoding are important skills but their main goal is to understand what they read.

Things all readers do:

• Predict (We make guesses about words and ideas that might happen)

• Confirm (We check our prediction to see if it makes sense and fits with the story)

• Ask questions (We wonder about things before, during, and after reading)

• Make inferences (We use our background knowledge and information from the story to predict. This is different from a prediction because it might not be specifically stated in the story.)

• Visualize (We create images/pictures in our brain about what we are reading)

Strategies to figure out the unknown:

• As beginning readers, it is important the students learn a collection of strategies they can use when they come to something they do not know while reading. Although they may only know one or two strategies in the beginning, the goal is for them to try several. As readers, I want my students to attempt to figure out an unknown word using a strategy familiar to them. If that doesn't help, they should try a different strategy.

• After the student attempts the word, they need to reread to see if it makes sense. This part of reading is very important because it teaches students the goal of reading is to create meaning. If they reread and it does not make sense or their first strategy didn't help, they need to try again until it makes sense.

• I want the student to attempt to figure out the word using one of the following strategies:

• Sound it out

• Look for a smaller word inside the word

• Read on to see if the rest of the sentence will help them and then go back and work on the word

How to Help

• Encourage them to read as much as possible

• Build their confidence by praising any moments of success (small or big)

• Have them tell you about the story. They can tell you about...one or more characters, their favorite part, the problem in the story and how it was solved, something they learned, any connections they made to their life, the world, or another book, any questions they had, or a prediction they made and whether or not it happened.