Teaching+Reading


 * Teaching Reading **

Reading is the process of constructing meaning from print and from other symbols. It involves getting information from a range of sources. Teachers can use prompts during reading to draw the child's attention to the meaning, syntax and visual information in a text.

__Meaning:__ Prompts would include: "What would make sense here and Can you tell me what this means?" __Syntax:__ Prompts to support use of syntactic information include: "Would we say ran or run? and Does that sound right?" __Visual:__ Prompts to support the use of visual information include: "check the beginning of the word and check the ending of the word."
 * Encourage the use of all sources of information.

Encourage self monitoring
It is the ability to check yourself while reading. Emergent readers self monitor for meaning word by word matching, checking that the picture matches the meaning of the sentence and making sure the sentence actually makes sense. To encourage self monitoring:
 * ask the child to point at each word as they say it
 * direct child's attention to the meaning, "did that make sense?"
 * if meaning is lost, encourage the child to make various attempts to regain meaning

__Teaching activities for emerging concepts of print__
 * The child's name: get child to write their name and talk about the idea that the words and letters tell us information
 * Reading familiar books: provides a chance to discuss concepts like the cover page and title page.
 * Language experience texts: encourage children to draw and then write about their illustrations.
 * Reading Aloud: select a big picture book and talk about the cover, author and illustrator.
 * Making books
 * Using sentence stems: read and write high frequency words.
 * Sentence making: use sentence strips of big books
 * Making words: cut up words into letters and then recreate them.

It is important that children learn how to read, but sometimes it is just as difficult to get them to understand that what they are reading is portraying meaning. **This is known as Reading Comprehension.

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