Developing Active Readers Everyday

D.A.R.E

Passive Reader Active Reader

What’s wrong with this picture?

Bake this cake!

Explicit and systematic teaching of necessary skills.

Opportunities to practise

skills learnt.

Language is acquired naturally, we will communicate in the language or languages we are exposed to. If you grow up in a home where Spanish is spoken, guess what, you will speak Spanish. This occurs naturally.

Reading is not naturally acquired, you will not learn the skills needed to read by being exposed to books (although vitally important), these skills need to be taught in an explicit and systematic manner.

Language Acquisition

Reading is the ability to construct meaning from

written text.

Children must develop the following skills; Decoding Skills - Written symbols are

converted into words. Comprehension Skills - Understanding

the meaning of the words.

Reading is a message getting, problem solving activity.

How Do Children Learn to Read?

There are two distinct parts to decoding.

Part 1 involves spoken language (auditory skills and strategies), and Part 2 involves written language (visual skills and strategies).

These parts must come together in order to read successfully.

Decoding Skills

Phonemic awareness is the ability to hear, separate and manipulate the sounds in spoken words, and the understanding that spoken words are made up of sequences of speech sounds.

A student needs to be explicitly taught that; speech is a group of words strung together that this group of words can then be broken down

into separate, individual words these individual words can be broken down even

further into separate sounds

Spoken Language (auditory)Phonemic Awareness

Phonemic AwarenessThe cat climbed the tree.

The cat climbed the tree .

t r ee

sentence level

word level

sound level

It is the most powerful predictor of reading acquisition. If a student has poor phonemic awareness, this will ultimately affect their reading ability and comprehension.

Students are only able to store a specific amount of words in their memory as sight words. If they are unable to recognise that spoken words can be separated into sounds there will come a time when their ability to tackle unknown words becomes an impossibility.

A student with poor phonemic awareness has to spend a lot of time predicting what the next word is going to be. This means that they are unable to concentrate on comprehension when they are reading.

Why is Phonemic Awareness Important?

A successful phonemic awareness program is explicit, systematic and multi-sensory.

The following learning experiences will develop phonemic awareness skills. These learning experiences are sensitising students to the fact that words come apart.

rhyming words - being able to tell that two words rhyme counting words in a sentence segmenting and blending syllables segmenting and blending onset and rime (bl-ack, fl-at, dr-ink) counting phonemes (sounds) in words segmenting and blending phonemes (sounds) substitution of sounds

How to Develop Phonemic Awareness

Phonics involves connections between printed letters and speech sounds.

Students are explicitly and systematically taught that sounds correspond to letters, and they now have a strategy for decoding unfamiliar words.

Students are not only articulating the sounds but they are matching the sounds to symbols.

Written Language (visual)Phonics

This is the transition from an auditory strategy to a visual strategy.

counting words in a sentence segmenting and blending syllables segmenting and blending onset and rime (bl-ack, fl-at, dr-ink) counting phonemes in words segmenting and blending phonemes substitution of sounds

Teaching Phonics

Learning is enhanced by the

use of multi-sensory

activities.

sh o p

Segmentation

The written word has the same number and sequence of sounds as

the spoken word, and letters represent these sounds.

These are words that appear most frequently in words, they do not conform to phonic rules and they need to be memorised as a visual chunk.

Some following words are examples of sight words;

said do was of all

Sight Words(visual strategy)

Fluency - Reading fluency is the ability to read a text smoothly, clearly, and at an appropriate pace. The goal is to comprehend what is being read.

Vocabulary - This refers to an understanding of the meaning of words being read. Poor vocabulary knowledge leads to poor comprehension. It is critical to develop a broad vocabulary.

Comprehension - It is important to make sense of words in context. It is simply not enough to know the meaning of the word, it is necessary to understand its meaning in relation to the words around it.

Comprehension Skills

In learning to read, students must learn to use and integrate four sources of information (processing systems).

The semantic (word meaning) processing system. The reader asks, does this make sense?

The syntactic (grammar) processing system. The reader asks, Does this sound right?

The graphological (written language) and phonological (sounding out) processing systems.

The reader checks, do the sounds I want to say match the words on the page?

The Four Sources of Information(applying decoding and comprehension skills)

All four sources of information are explicitly and systematically taught and then practised.

The reader has to access and integrate all sources of information fluently and continuously as they read.

When faced with an unfamiliar word, the reader attempts to problem solve by asking....

Does this make sense? (Meaning) Does it sound right? (Grammar) Do the sounds I want to say match the words on the page? (Phonemic awareness and Phonics)

Top Tips

It is very important to pre-read the book; this gives you a good understanding of the text, and allows you to identify any difficult words. This also directs your questioning.

When asking questions, remember to guide your child in the right direction, don't give them the answers.

Reading to a childWhat does it look like?

Good readers activate prior knowledge before reading.

When you read to a child you are modelling good reading

strategies. Use the think – aloud

approach.

More Top Tips!

Discuss the following; title, author, illustration on

the cover.

Scan through the book together, discussing the pictures and making predictions. Ask questions.

Have your child make predictions about the book, and ask why?

Before Reading the Book

Give your child the opportunity to draw on their own experiences that relate to the experiences found in the book. For example, have you even moved to a new home? Do you remember what that was like?

Make predictions Ask the who, what, when, where and why questions.

Identify and talk about difficult words.

Ask for a summary of the plot.

Sequence the events in the story.

What are the main ideas?

Use the Pause, Prompt, Praise strategy. When your child comes to an unknown word allow them a few seconds to work it out, if they still do not know the word provide them with an explicit prompt, such as what letter does the word begin with? If they still do not know the word, give it to them and show them a way of working it out. Always praise them for taking a risk and having a go.

During Reading

Summarise the plot. Retell the events in the books in the correct

order. Review and evaluate the predictions made prior

to reading the book. Ask your child how they felt about the book. Did

they enjoy it? Why? Why not? Re-read the book to further develop expression,

fluency, comprehension and most importantly for enjoyment.

After Reading

use this strategy when the child is reading an unknown word

use at instructional level (90 - 95% correct) allow a pause for at least 5 seconds encourage the child to read to the end of the

sentence give the child an explicit prompt praise the child for having a go

Pause, Prompt and Praise (P.P.P)

Meaning(What Makes Sense)

Grammar(How Sentences Work)

About Print(Phonics)

• Look at the picture.• Can you see something

in the picture which starts like that?

• Try that again and think what would make sense.

• Try that again and think about what is happening in the story.

• What would you say there?

• What is happening in the story?

• Does that make sense?• What else could you try?• Could it be....?

• How would you say it?• Try that again and think

how you would say it?• Listen to your voice.• Does that sound right?

• Do you know a word that starts with those letters?

• Do you know another word like that?

• Do you know a word which ends with those letters?

• Can you see a part that you know?

• Can you see a little word in that word?

• Can you see something that you know from somewhere else?

Prompts- How to Solve a Problem

Meaning(What Makes Sense)

Grammar(How Sentences Work)

About Print(Phonics)

• Did that make sense?

• You said....did that make sense?

• You said....does that sound right?

• Is that how you say it?• Can we say it that

way?• Did that sound right?

• You said...does that look right?

• It could be...that made sense..., but look at...

• Check to see if what you read looks right.

• That was a good try...it makes sense, but what would you see at the beginning of...?

• You make a mistake on this line...see if you can find it?

Prompts-How to Check on Your Reading

Re-reading a book has a purpose, it increases fluency, reinforces new sight words, improves comprehension and expression.

When re-reading; encourage and model fluency encourage and model expression, this can be exaggerated ensure the reader is attending to punctuation ask new questions praise honestly and explicitly. I liked the way you used your

talking voice. smile

Why Re - read a Book?

am able to decode unknown words using auditory (phonemic awareness) and visual strategies (phonics)

read fluently understand the vocabulary comprehend what I am reading actively and constantly monitor my reading

I am a successful reader because I....

Thank you!