With two granddaughters embarking on the journey
of becoming independent readers, I've spent a good
bit of time reading and thinking on this important
topic lately. I was compelled to re-read the landmark
report of the Commission on Reading in 1985:
Becoming a Nation of Readers.
I would like to share several nuggets of wisdom that
are interspersed throughout this work. Many are
intuitive, and can be instructive for educators as well
as parents, who, after all, are a child's first teachers.
- Reading is a process in which information from the text and the knowledge possessed by the reader act together to produce meaning. Good readers skillfully integrate information in the text with what they already know.
- Teachers whose classes are motivated are described as business-like but supportive and friendly.
- The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children.
- There is no substitute for a teacher who reads children good stories. It whets the appetite of children for reading, and provides a model of skillful oral reading. It is a practice that should continue throughout the grades.
- When children do not feel too constrained by requirements for correct spelling and penmanship, writing activities provide a good opportunity for them to apply and extend their knowledge of letter-sound correspondences.
- The goal of phonics is not that children be able to state the "rules" governing letter-sound relationships. Rather, the purpose is to get across the alphabetic principle, the principle that there are systematic relationships between letters and sounds.
- The idea that reading instruction and subject matter instruction should be integrated is an old one in education, but there is little indication that such integration occurs often in practice (a pet peeve of mine).
- No one would expect a novice pianist to sight read a new selection every day, but that is exactly what is expected of the beginning reader (as a pianist, this is another of my favorite observations).
I could expound on every one of these quotes, but space does not permit. I tried diligently to incorporate these principles in my class. I reaped untold benefits from my efforts to integrate reading into all subject areas. In fact, it did not bother me at all when visitors to the classroom could not say for certain what subject we were doing. I did not want children to think that all our learning was so easily compartmentalized or that reading was only for a certain time of day.
The accepted language arts are
READING
WRITING
LISTENING
SPEAKING
VIEWING
With skill, several of these can be included in many lessons.
The following mantra came from some long-ago training
session I attended. I believe it and have seen its success
as a core belief, and certainly one that supports integration
of these skills:
What a child can think, he can say.
What a child can say, he can write.
What a child can write, he can read.
Truly, becoming a nation of readers could have a
ripple of positive effects on citizenship, the economy,
family life, and virtually every facet of our existence.
Go forth and READ!
