Learning+to+Read+and+Phonics

**__ LEARNING TO READ __** There are many different ways teachers can be of a great help to children when they are learning how to read. Modeled reading, shared reading, guided reading, and independent reading are all components of the Literacy Program and all play a vital role in the students school life when learning how to read.

**__MODELLED__** **__READING__** In modeled reading, the teacher models how to read by reading from different text types out aloud to the students in the class. The students can then engage in reading material that is slightly more difficult than the level they would be able to read at. The students can then understand how the writers develop characters, plots and settings within a certain book. After a while the students will start to include a much wider range of vocabulary in their sentences, and their sentence structure will become more complex. **__SHARED__** **__READING__** Another strategy to help the children understand and l;earn to read id the shared book experience. This is very helpful in developing the children's awareness of words and identifying characters and things in the book. It is important that when reading a book to the class, the teacher must choose a book with many large pictures to aid the children in their learning of words and discussion of story. **__GUIDED__** **__READING__** When the teacher works with a small group of students that all have the same text, it is referred to as guided reading. The texts are at the same reading level the students are currently up to in reading and of course they will have a few problems along the way, but the teacher encourages the students to use problem solving strategies to read the text. **__THE LANGUAGE EXPERIENCE APPROACH__** The Language experience Approach gives the students an opportunity to dictate a story about an experience important to them to their teacher, who will then write it down. This gives the students a chance to demonstrate the following principles:
 * what i can think about,i can write.
 * what i can say, i can write.
 * what i can write, i can read.
 * i can read what i can write and what other people can write for me to read.

**__INDEPENDENT __**  **__READING__** Building fluent reading and motivational reading is all included in independent reading. The students are strongly encouraged along the way to read at their independent reading levels so they become a lot more confident and therefore their reading will be significantly more fluent. Hill, Susan 2006, p.73

__**PHONICS**__ Phonics is based on the sound-letter relationships which are commonly used when reading and writing. To understand phonics, understanding the alphabetical principle is critical as we are able to relate sounds back to individual letters. Even though there are only 26 letters in the alphabet, there are 44 different sounds that rise from them. The English language is extremely complex due to the fact it is not a regular phonetic language. The content of phonics consists of five stages, each of which vary in difficulty. Stage one of these contents is the letters of the alphabet which requires the recognition, pronunciation and actually writing the letters of the alphabet down. Using onset and rime is a great way for children to break down words into smaller sections to make it easier for them to understand rather than breaking them down into individual phenomenes. As stated by Hill, “the onset in a syllable is any consonant(s) that precedes the vowel” (Hill 2006). Therefore an example of this may be in the word //pie,// the onset would be simply the letter /p/. The rime is the vowel and consonants that appear after the onset. Using the word //pie// from the previous example, the rime would be /ie/. There are many advantages throughout using onset and rime but the biggest one would be that children are able to pick onset and rimes rather than individual phenomenes (Hill 2006).

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**__ READING ALOUD AND STORYTELLING __**  Tasks, homework and tests are commonly associated with reading texts, but to share a book by reading it out aloud, whether to the whole class, or to a friend comes a lot of enjoyment and imagination for students. When a teacher reads a book out aloud, it is extremely important that they read it in such a manner that the students are captured and amazes in the book, so much so that they become ‘lost’ (Trelease 1984) in the thrill and suspense of the book. Read in such a profound way, the students will develop a desire to read and become more likely to be long term literacy learners in the classroom. **__STORYTELLING__** The absence of a picture to aid the teacher while telling a story makes it a much more challenging task. The eyes, hands, voice, body and face all play major key roles when telling a story, so much though that if your tone of voice or facial expressions are boring to the students, they will get side tracked, but listen to the story and most of all will not get lost in the story. Storytelling not only develops the students literacy skills, but also develops a range of vocabulary skills,comprehension skills, and turns them into great listeners.
 * __READING ALOUD__**

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**__ READING DEVELOPMENT __** <span style="color: rgb(42, 108, 213)">**__THE__** **__READING__** **__PROCESS__** Reading every single letter is not the reading process you would use when reading a very familiar book. The reading process as described by Susan Hill (2006), is the process of constructing meaning from print and from other symbols. During the reading process, another important fact would be to bring to the process the knowledge of the world and past experiences. <span style="color: rgb(244, 223, 67)">**__READING DEVELOPMENT AT SCHOOL__** During the development of reading within schools, emergent, early, transitional and extending stages take place. So that the children progress throughout these stages, teachers can arrange the books in the classroom from least difficult and the children can work right up to most difficult. The levels of difficulty within a text are based on: - Complexity of concepts in the texts - Complexity of syntax and vocabulary - Length of text - Size and placement of text on pages - Amount of contextual support in the illustrations

<span style="color: rgb(37, 239, 147)">**__ASSESSING__** **__READING__**

Hill, Susan 2006, p.162