TTC Session 3

Language skills: reading, listening, speaking, and writing

understanding basic concepts and terminology used for describing reading, listening,
speaking, and writing skills, applying this to teaching

reading

• basic concepts and terminology used for describing reading

1. Phonemic Awareness

Phonemes, the smallest units making up spoken language, combine to form syllables and words. Phonemic
awareness refers to the student’s ability to focus on and manipulate these phonemes in spoken syllables and words.
According to the National Reading Panel, teaching phonemic awareness to children significantly improves their reading
more than instruction that lacks any attention to phonemic awareness.

2. Phonics

Phonics is the relationship between the letters (or letter combinations) in written language and the individual
sounds in spoken language. Phonics instruction teaches students how to use these relationships to read and spell
words. The National Reading Panel indicated that systematic phonics instruction enhances children’s success in
learning to read, and it is significantly more effective than instruction that teaches little or no phonics.

3. Fluency

Fluent readers are able to read orally with appropriate speed, accuracy, and proper expression. Fluency is the
ability to read as well as we speak and to make sense of the text without having to stop and decode each word. The
National Reading Panel’s research findings concluded that guided oral reading and repeated oral reading had a
significant and positive impact on word recognition, reading fluency, and comprehension in students of all ages.

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4. Vocabulary

Vocabulary development is closely connected to comprehension. The larger the reader’s vocabulary (either
oral or print), the easier it is to make sense of the text. According to the National Reading Panel, vocabulary can be
learned incidentally through storybook reading or listening to others, and vocabulary should be taught both directly
and indirectly. Students should be actively engaged in instruction that includes learning words before reading,
repetition, multiple exposures, learning in rich contexts, incidental learning the ing, and use of computer technology.

5. Comprehension

Comprehension is the complex cognitive process readers use to understand what they have read. Vocabulary
development and instruction play a critical role in comprehension. The National Reading Panel determined that young
readers develop text comprehension through a variety of techniques, including answering questions (quizzes) and
summarization (retelling the story).

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• 4 Different Types Of Reading Techniques

1. Skimming

Skimming, sometimes referred to as gist reading, means going through the text to grasp the main idea. Here,
the reader doesn’t pronounce each and every word of the text but focuses their attention on the main theme or the
core of the text. Examples of skimming are reading magazines or newspapers and searching for a name in a telephone
directory.

2. Scanning

Here, the reader quickly scuttles across sentences to get to a particular piece of information. Scanning involves
the technique of rejecting or ignoring irrelevant information from the text to locate a specific piece of information.

3. Intensive Reading

Intensive reading is far more time-consuming than skimming and scanning as it needs the reader’s attention
to detail. It involves close reading that aims at the accuracy of comprehension. Here, the reader has to understand the
meaning of each and every word.

4. Intensive Reading

Extensive reading lays more emphasis on fluency and less on accuracy. It usually involves reading for pleasure
and is more of an out-of-classroom activity. It is highly unlikely for readers to take up the extensive reading of text
they do not like.

• Teaching Reading: Strategies & Methods

1. Read aloud to students

Read-aloud regularly in the classroom and encourage parents to do the same at home. Reading aloud has
many benefits for students, including improving comprehension, building listening skills, and broadening their
vocabulary development.
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2. Provide opportunities for students to read, write and talk about texts

Regularly giving students time to read, write, and talk about texts can enhance their skill development across
multiple areas. For instance, reading more helps you become a better writer. By talking about texts and hearing the
perspectives of classmates, young children also have the opportunity to deepen their comprehension. Encourage
parents to further engage young readers by asking them to help their child attack difficult words and ask questions
about the text that will promote discussions.

3. Read texts repeatedly to support fluency

Allow students to read the same texts multiple times. By doing this, they not only build fluency but also build
confidence. The more confident they become in their reading skills, the more likely they will enjoy reading.

4. Teach children the tools to figure out words they don’t know

Teaching students to read for the ultimate goal of producing independent readers begins by explicitly
teaching the code we use to decode words. That starts with teaching phonemic awareness.

Here are some other strategies that support phonics instruction:

For beginning readers, target words that are decodable. These are regular spellings with regular sounds. (Ex.
such – /s/ /u/ /ch/ not gone)

Sound out each phoneme and blend as you go by going back to the first sound every time a sound is added.
Hold the sound (sing) then add the next sound. Ex. /g/, /r/, gr—, /ow/, grow.

Note: Students may want to look at pictures for context, but this does not help them decode words. As we
encourage students to read more difficult texts, they won’t have pictures to rely on, so encourage them not to use
the pictures to decode difficult words.

This might involve combining strategies, such as:

▪ Sounding out a word using phonics knowledge

▪ Looking at the pictures
▪ Skipping the word and coming back to it after reading the rest of the sentence
▪ Thinking about what would make sense.
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▪ As an elementary teacher, you can support the families of your young students by sharing
phonics resources. By providing parents with practical resources, you are setting them up for
a productive and positive reading experience with their children.

5. Provide time for studying spoken language, including vocabulary and spelling

A comprehensive approach to teaching reading also includes providing time to develop complementary skills,
such as:

▪ Spoken language, including through conversation or oral presentations

▪ Vocabulary, such as building class lists while reading texts
▪ Spelling
▪ Grammar, such as through bite-sized video content like the Grammar Miniclips series.

6. Use prior knowledge to make connections

Each student brings unique prior knowledge to their reading education. This knowledge is the sum of all
experiences they bring to the reading or viewing of a text. This could include personal experiences, cultural or religious
experiences, and concept knowledge. Prior knowledge helps young readers infer meaning from text, a skill recognized
as a predictor of reading comprehension at various developmental stages and one of the drivers of sophisticated
reading ability. An early reader can activate prior knowledge and make connections at each stage.

▪ Before reading, they could ask ‘What do I already know about this topic?’
▪ During reading, they could reflect ‘This part of the text is just like…’
▪ After reading, they could offer ‘I know more about this topic now.’

7. Predict

Prediction is about anticipation and working out the actions and ideas coming next. An early reader can use
prediction at each stage of reading.

▪ Before reading, they could suggest ‘From the cover, I think this book will be about…’
▪ During reading, they could predict which word comes next in a sentence.
▪ After reading, they could comment on whether their predictions were correct.

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8. Visualize

Visualizing combines using your senses and activating prior knowledge to create a mental picture. Ask students
to create a “mind movie.” Young readers, especially with a teacher or parent prompting, can draw on their senses to
imagine smells, sounds, tastes, and images that go with the story they are reading – like a show or movie in their mind.

9. Summarize

Teaching students to recall the main points or ideas of a story is not easy. First, they need to be able to put
the story in order, then put it in their own words before they can articulate a ‘summing up of the author’s main ideas.
To start to learn to summarize, young students can practice:

▪ Selecting the keywords from a paragraph

▪ Locating the topic sentence (often found at the start or end of a paragraph)
▪ Responding to general questions about a story
▪ Talking through the story in their own words

10. Teach critical thinking skills

Critical thinking gets readers to think about why an author creates a text in a particular way (author’s purpose).
You can encourage young readers to ask some of the following questions to get them thinking critically about what
they are reading:

▪ Why did the author write this story?

▪ What did the author leave out of the story?
▪ How do I feel about this story?

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• How To Proceed With Teaching Reading

1. Warm-up up

Since students will mostly be sitting at their desks during a reading lesson, use the five to ten-minute warm-
up period to get students moving and speaking. You are also going to want to generate some interest in your reading
topic so that the warm-up activity flows into your introduction of the material.

One way to do this is to have students stand in a circle and ask them to tell you what they know about a certain topic.
This can be as simple as giving you some related vocabulary. After a student has given you a word or phrase you can
write it on the board, and he can call on a student to go next. If appropriate you can bring a ball to class and ask
students to gently toss it to the next person. This is good because it gives students something to focus on other than
the words being written on the board which you will be able to review later.

2. Introduce

Your introduction may have been made quite easy by the warm-up activity. Now, while students are seated,
ask them to use some of the vocabularies they came up with in sentences and add any key vocabulary to the list. Now
you can distribute the reading passage and ask students to read it silently to become acquainted with the new
material.

3. Practice

Practice reading the material aloud. You can do this through a series of steps. First, have students do some
slash reading. You should read the passage aloud pausing where appropriate. Have students repeat each section after
you and place slashes in their text.

A sample sentence might look like this “For Christmas dinner / I ate ham, / mashed potatoes, / and green
beans.//” This will help students read more naturally. Now you can have students read the passage by repeating
sentences after you and then call on students to read one sentence at a time. If students struggle with the
pronunciation of certain words, take this opportunity to practice pronouncing them too. You may wish to have
students read the passage again silently to focus on its meaning before moving on.

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4. Practice More

With reading lessons, it is important to ensure that students understand the material as well as any new words.
To check vocabulary, you can ask students to match synonyms, antonyms, or pictures or ask them to complete
sentences with the correct vocabulary words. To check overall comprehension, you can start with some true or false
questions. Be sure to ask students why a particular statement is true or false when checking the answers. You can also
have fill-in-the-blank sentences or basic comprehension questions in this section.

5. Produce

Prepare some discussion questions related to the reading and some that require students to use key phrases
in their answers. For beginners, discussions will be quite challenging but intermediate and advanced students will gain
a lot from discussing their thoughts and opinions. In smaller classes, there will be more opportunities for students to
share their viewpoints while with larger classes you may simply have to ask who agrees or disagrees with a particular
statement and then call on three or four students to express their opinions.

6. Review

Ask students to summarize the reading or what they learned in class. If you have not already done so, you can
also have students search for the topic sentence and discuss why students chose certain sentences whether they chose
correctly or not.

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