How Do People Become Literate?

The next chapter in The Reading Essentials: The Specifics You Need to Teach Reading Well is about teaching with a sense of urgency.  Not necessarily with stress and frustration, but to ensure that every moment spent in the classroom is filled with effective strategies and using optimal contexts and curriculum. 

Before you go on take a minute to ask yourself “What are the top five things you do to ensure that your students become excellent readers? “ Write down what you do, and not just what you think you should do.

According to Routman some of the top things we do to ensure students become excellent readers are:

·         Introduce students to all kinds of genres.

·         Have lots of books they like to read and that are at their level.

·         Read good literature to them.

·         Share our love of literature.

·         Give students time to talk about their reading.

·         Set aside significant blocks of time for reading.

·         Give children choice in what they read.

·         Tell kids, “You are a reader.”

·         Make reading fun.

·         Model.

·         Link reading to the curriculum.

Routman introduces in this chapter the “Optimal Learning Model” which is depicted in a diagram below:

Dependence                                                                                          Independence

To Learners	With Learners		By Learners
I Do It	We Do It	We Do It	You Do It
Demonstration	Shared Demonstration	Guided Practice	Independent Practice

This model applies across all disciplines and to all language learning.  The model is dependent on:

·         Students who have bonded with their teacher.

·         A knowledgeable teacher who models the values of literacy as she demonstrates, supports, encourages, and affirms.

·         A collaborative learning environment.

·         Tasks and skills that are worth knowing and doing.

·         Successful engagement with task.

·         Enjoyment and pride in learning.

Putting the Learning Model into Action

Integrate Basic Skills into Challenging, Relevant Curriculums

Students learn best when skills are taught using meaningful curriculum and not in isolation.  When drilling of isolated skills are being taught students learn to fail.  However, when these same skills are integrated into meaningful curriculum students succeed because the works is interesting and relevant. When teaching phonemic awareness use language play such as nursery rhymes, poems, chants, songs and manipulating sounds using student’s names.

Use interactive reading strategies during read-alouds.  Reflect during specific moments throughout the text.  When reading fiction, ask:

·         What do you think will happen next?

·         Why is the character behaving a certain way?

·         How might the story end?

When reading nonfiction, have students talk about:

·         One interesting way the author (and/or illustrator) presents information.

·         Something they learned.

·         A question they have.

When reading poetry, have students talk about:

·         Images that come to mind.

·         Words they especially like.

·         Other language features they notice.

And finally connect reading to writing.  Have students respond about what they have read.  Having students respond to their reading by writing will help prepare them for the high-stakes testing that begins in 3^rd grade, which includes writing.  With your students create classroom texts for shared, guided and independent reading.  This is especially important for struggling readers because they willingly reread these texts.