reading

TEACHING READING


A.    Teaching  Procedures
In teaching practices, we should have clear cut dividing line between good readers against the poor ones. This is very essential to have realization that actually the ultimate goal of our teaching process is to move students forward into better condition of their reading ability baseline. There are a number of differences between strategic readers and poor readers during all phases of the reading process.
1. Before Reading, Strategic Readers...   
•    Build up their own background knowledge about reading and the topic 
•    Set purposes for reading.
•     Determine methods for reading, according to their purposes.    Poor Readers... 
 
•    Start reading without thinking about the process of reading or the topic.
•    Do not know why they are reading but merely view the task as "ground to cover."
2. During Reading, Strategic Readers...  
•    Give their complete attention to the reading task
•    Check their own understanding constantly
•    Monitor their reading comprehension and do it so often that it becomes automatic
•    Stop to use a fix-up strategy when they do not understand
•    Use semantic, syntactic, and graphophonic cues to construct meanings of unfamiliar words
•    Synthesize during reading
•    Ask questions
•    Talk to themselves during reading
    Poor Readers...   

•    Do not eliminate distractions from reading 
•    Do not know whether they understand 
•    Do not recognize when comprehension has broken down 
•    Seldom use fix-up strategies to improve comprehension 
•    Skip or ignore meanings of unfamiliar but crucial words 
•    Do not integrate text with prior knowledge 
•    Read without reflecting on meaning or text organization.
3. After Reading, Strategic Readers...   
•    Decide if they have achieved their goals for reading
•    Evaluate their understanding of what was read
•    Summarize the major ideas
•    Seek additional information from outside sources
•    Distinguish between relevant and irrelevant ideas
•    Paraphrase the text what they have learned. 
•    Reflect on and personalize the text 
•    Critically examine the text 
•    Integrate new understandings and prior knowledge. 
•    Use study strategies to retain new knowledge.     Poor Readers...   
   
•    Do not know what they have read 
•    Do not follow reading with comprehension self-check 
•    Rely exclusively on the author's words 
•    Do not go beyond a surface examination of the text. 
•    Apply no conscious strategies to help them remember

After realizing the good reader characteristics, then we focus on what are the steps we should follow in providing strategic reading instruction. In general, you can implement some techniques for teaching before-reading strategies.
1.    PREVIEW the text by looking at the title, the pictures, and the print in order to evoke relevant thoughts and memories
2.    BUILD BACKGROUND by activating appropriate prior knowledge through self-questioning about what they already know about the topic (or story), the vocabulary, and the form in which the topic (or story) is presented
3.    SET PURPOSES for reading by asking questions about what they want to learn during the reading process.
Two techniques prove valuable for teaching before-reading strategies are:
Think-Aloud
A think-aloud is a procedure in which students or teachers simply think out loud as they work through a procedure. Think-aloud may be used before, during, or after reading by teachers to model new strategies. After demonstrating new strategies through the think-aloud, teachers should structure activities where students may practice, likewise using the think-aloud technique with new text and working with a partner. Think-aloud are useful also after reading as an assessment device in a reading conference: Students read a text aloud and say what they think as they read, making audible the comprehension strategies they employ.
When using a think-aloud to teach before-reading strategies, the teacher verbalizes the thought processes used by effective readers in order to set a purpose for reading, to preview the text, to recall prior knowledge, and to make predictions. For example, the teacher might model a think-aloud in the following way to demonstrate how to set a purpose for reading the autobiography of Anne Frank: 
1.    Hold up the autobiography Anne Frank .
2.    Read the cover and internal blurbs to the children, interjecting such comments as, "I've always wanted to learn more about the Holocaust, but I know it will be sad," or "Can you believe that a sixteen year old could keep a diary about these experiences? It makes my diary look silly."
3.    Read the copyright page and dedication, making comments aloud such as, "This book was first published in 1947. I wasn't even born yet."
4.    After previewing the book, predict aloud what might happen in the book or give a reason for wanting to read the book: "I'm going to read this to find out if she lives through it."
5.    Direct the students to work in pairs to practice the same procedure with novels of their own choice.
Previewing
Previewing is a strategy to motivate students to read. The teacher might consider the following suggestions:
6.    Recall and consider prior personal experiences that are relevant to the text.
7.    Build the necessary background knowledge for the text.
8.    Review textual elements that aid in later composition (cover blurbs, dedication, and copyright information).
9.    Read about or contact the author.
10.    Establish an organizational framework (chapter construction and length, prologue and epilogue, explanation of terms, etc.).
11.    Predict the novel events.
12.    Reflect on personal purposes for reading text.
Example:
When previewing December Stillness by Mary Downing Hahn, for example, the teacher might share a map of Vietnam and briefly explain the conflict and controversy of Vietnam. The teacher might read The Wall (a large picture book with reminiscences of the war and visits to the wall) by Sally Lopes to the students. The students might share their experiences with Vietnam veterans and then examine the textual elements of December Stillness in order to predict novel events. After reading the front and back covers, copyright page, and dedication, the students use a visual organizer to predict novel events. The teacher might then save the organizer for later review and give a copy to each student, asking each to record a personal purpose for reading the novel on the prediction sheet.
What are some techniques for teaching during-reading strategies?
During reading, strategic readers:
a. CHECK UNDERSTANDING of the text by paraphrasing the author's words.
b. MONITOR COMPREHENSION and USE FIX-UP STRATEGIES: use the cueing systems to figure out unknown words and imaging, imagining, inferencing, and predicting.
c. INTEGRATE new concepts with existing knowledge; continually revise purposes for reading.
Self-monitoring is the active awareness strategic readers have of their own understanding and control over that understanding while reading. It enables readers to measure their comprehension and take steps to enhance it. When students become conscious of their thinking and comprehension, they can deliberately apply different fix-up strategies when comprehension breaks down. A major goal of reading instruction is to expose students to equip them with productive self-monitoring strategies. Several of the following techniques are useful to this end.
Self-Questioning
Self-Questioning is technique in which students generate story-specific questions about the important elements of a text as they read in order to better integrate prior knowledge with the text and the reading context. Story elements whose meanings are extended by self-questioning might include the main character, goals, obstacles, outcomes, and themes of the story. Students move from a general question to a story-specific question. The generated questions may be used for group response and discussion. They may also be used with explanatory materials.
Teachers may implement the self-questioning technique in the classroom using the following steps:
1.    The teacher models general questioning techniques for the students.
2.    The teacher models how to generate text-specific questions based on the general questions while reading a text.
3.    The teacher and students generate questions about a text together.
4.    After all story elements have been covered, the students generate their own story-specific questions. 
The following general-questions (GQ) and story-specific questions (SQ) for The Outsiders, by S. E. Hinton, show how this process may be applied in the classroom.