Reading Lesson

What Is Reading?

Reading is a multifaceted process involving word recognition, comprehension, fluency, and motivation. Learn how readers integrate these facets to make meaning from print.

Reading is making meaning from print. It requires that we:

• Identify the words in print – a process called word recognition
• Construct an understanding from them – a process called comprehension
• Coordinate identifying words and making meaning so that reading is automatic and accurate – an achievement called fluency

Sometimes you can make meaning from print without being able to identify all the words. Remember the last time you got a note in messy handwriting? You may have understood it, even though you couldn't decipher all the scribbles.
Sometimes you can identify words without being able to construct much meaning from them. Read the opening lines of Lewis Carroll's poem, "Jabberwocky," and you'll see what I mean.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Finally, sometimes you can identify words and comprehend them, but if the processes don't come together smoothly, reading will still be a labored process. For example, try reading the following sentence:

---

It          isn't          as         if          the          words
      are        difficult                   to          identify          or
understand,                   but          the          spaces
                   make                   you          pause                   between
     words,                    which                   means        your
                   reading                   is                    less                    fluent.

---

Reading in its fullest sense involves weaving together word recognition and comprehension in a fluent manner. These three processes are complex, and each is important. How complex? Here goes?

Developing Reading Fluency

Fluent reading is reading in which words are recognized automatically.  With automatic word recognition, reading becomes faster, smoother, and more expressive, and students can begin to read silently, which is roughly twice as fast as oral reading.
 
How do we help children struggling with slow, painstaking sounding out and blending?  Support and encourage them.  Effortful decoding is a necessary step to sight recognition.  You can say, "I know reading is tough right now, but this is how you learn new words."  Ask students to reread each sentence that requires unusual decoding effort.
 
In general, the fluency formula is this:  Read and reread decodable words in connected text.  Decode unknown words rather than guessing from context.  Reread to master texts.  Use text with words children can decode using known correspondences.  Use whole, engaging texts to sustain interest.
 
There are two general approaches to improving fluency. The direct approach involves modeling and practice with repeated reading under time pressure. The indirect approach involves encouraging children to read voluntarily in their free time.
 

The direct approach: (Repeated readings.)  We often restrict reading lessons to "sight reading."  Who could learn a musical instrument by only sight-reading music and never repeating pieces until they could be played in rhythm, up to tempo, with musical expression?  In repeated reading, children work on reading as they would work at making music:  They continue working with each text until it is fluent.  Repeated reading works best with readers who are full alphabetic, i.e., who know how to decode some words.

Read more on Wikispace

Read more about Fluency 

Read about Buddy Reading on Webquest

Listen to "Read a book Today" song.