Last week I offered my opinion on the importance of teaching students to read. I believe that reading is the single most important skill to teach in schools (not to say the writing and arithmetic should be ignored). Students who cannot read at grade level are highly at risk for school failure. Poor literacy skills increase the likelihood of negative behavior and/or dropping out of school.

If you read this column on a regular basis (and who wouldn’t?), you have heard me say that behaviors happen for a reason. When I was asked to observe a student in an upper primary classroom last year who was misbehaving (leaving the classroom, being disrespectful, disrupting lessons), it was not at all surprising to find that he was reading at a first grade level.

Many children learn basic reading skills relatively easily. They can recognize letters and know the letter sounds in Kindergarten, and then learn to combine these sounds to form words. They develop a set of sight words, and can then decode sentences and paragraphs. Another key component of reading, though, is fluency, which is a combination of rate (speed) and accuracy. Knowing how to decode in and of itself is not enough. Students also need fluency. We have recently identified those Anguillian students in Kindergarten, first and second grades who are lacking in reading fluency. How do we now improve their skills?

The best way to improve reading fluency is to practice. However, silent reading is not the way to go. Children need to read out loud. Reading aloud allows us to provide students with feedback on their reading. One of the leading experts on reading is Sally Shaywitz, a professor of pediatrics at Yale University. She has written a fabulous book for both teacher and parents entitled Overcoming Dyslexia. She writes that the most effective reading programs share three key features: 1) They focus on children’s oral reading, 2) They provide opportunities to practice reading and re-reading words out loud in connected text, and 3) They allow for ongoing feedback as the child reads. This approach is often called guided repeated oral reading. It can easily be done by parents, at home. Try this: read a paragraph or a page out loud to your child (or student). This models good reading, and gives the child an opportunity to hear the passage read correctly. Then have your child read out loud. Provide feedback and gently correct if there are errors. Remember, accuracy is a key component of reading fluency. Dr. Shaywitz writes that guided reading programs “help improve children’s reading ability, at least through grade 5, and they help improve the reading of students with learning problems much later than this.”

Here is a quick variation of guided reading that you can do with your child at home. It is called paired reading. Read a brief story or paragraph to your child (be sure it is within his/her skill level). Then have your child read the same passage with you, out loud, at the same time. Do this three or four times. Finally, have your child read alone, out loud. It is simple to do, provides some quality time together, and will most likely improve your child’s reading fluency.

I have more techniques which I can share if you contact me.

Peter Wolinsky is the Educational Psychologist. His email is Peter.Wolinsky@gov.ai

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