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What is reading? Reading is the way a person gets information from written letters and words. A person can read using sight or touch, such as when a vision-impaired person reads braille.
How does reading work? Reading is actually a complex, multi-part process. Think about each part described below. - The words we speak are actually made up of smaller pieces of sound—called phonemes (pronounced FO-neemz).
 The English language has about 40 phonemes. When someone says a word, the sound comes out as one continuous stream (Figure 1). Our brains must be able to separate the sound pieces. For example, the word bag has three phonemes—/b/, /æ/, and /g/. When you combine these phonemic sounds and say them together they make the word—bag.
Understanding that words are made up of individual sounds is a key part of learning to read. This understanding is called phonemic awareness. Phonemes make up spoken words, and words only make sense when these phonemes are combined in a particular order. Phonemic awareness can be taught and learned using activities such as rhyming games. Another way to teach and learn this awareness is to work with single phonemes in spoken words, such as identifying the first sound in cat as /k/. Part of this learning is also realizing that a change to a single sound or phoneme can change the meaning of the word. For example, changing the /g/ in bag to a /t/ gives us the word bat, which has a different meaning from bag. - Another part of learning to read is understanding that letters of the alphabet, either by themselves or with other letters, stand for sounds or phonemes. This knowledge is called the alphabetic principle.
 When students learn how to apply their knowledge of the sounds in words (phonemic awareness), together with their skills at recognizing letters, and can use the letter-sound pairings to sound out printed words it is called phonics. To better understand phonics, think about how you read a made-up word like blit or fratchet. Even though you don’t know the made-up word or what it means, you can read and pronounce it by figuring out what sounds the letters make, and then you can sound it out and pronounce it.
Real words can be just as new to beginning readers as the made-up words are for those who can read proficiently. Phonemic awareness and phonics skills help readers sound out new words. - Knowing that a word has meaning is also a very important part of learning to read. The words we know are called our vocabulary. Learning vocabulary starts very early in life, such as when toddlers look at what you are talking about, or say their first words to get what they need or want. As they grow, they learn more and more words. By the time they start to sound out words as part of learning to read, most children can recognize the words they are sounding out, recognizing that they have heard those words before and what the words mean. This is why having a good vocabulary is so important to reading.
- As a reader continues to develop phonics skills, he or she improves reading skills to become a more fluent reader. Fluency goes beyond just pronouncing or knowing words—it actually includes many parts, such as:
- Being able to read quickly
- Recognizing the words and their meanings
- Saying words and sentences with feeling and stressing the right word or phrase so that a sentence sounds natural
- Understanding the information that words and sentences are communicating—called comprehension—is another important part of reading. Comprehension is actually the main goal of learning to read. There are many ways to improve comprehension:
- Building vocabulary can help a reader recognize more words and better understand the overall meaning of the text.
- Understanding the structure of text—or how it is organized—helps readers know what to expect and where, so they can better comprehend what they are reading. Teachers show students different ways to understand the structure of the text to improve their comprehension.
- Teachers can give students strategies or guidelines for understanding different types of texts, such as a newspaper, a fiction book, or a menu.
- Such strategies teach students to ask and answer questions about what they are reading, summarize paragraphs and stories they read, and draw conclusions about the information.
- Teaching students to think about what they are reading is an important way for them to use their skills to understand science, history, social studies, math, and many other subjects they will study throughout their education.
What is the National Reading Panel? In 1997, congress asked the NICHD, along with the U.S. Department of Education, to form the National Reading Panel to review research on how children learn to read and to determine which methods of teaching reading are most effective based on the research evidence. Specifically, congress asked the panel to: - Review all the research available at that time on how children learn to read.
- Determine the most effective evidence-based methods for teaching children to read.
- Describe which methods of reading instruction were ready for use in the classroom and recommend ways of getting this information into schools.
- Suggest a plan for additional research in reading development and instruction.
In addition, the National Reading Panel held public hearings where people could give their opinions on what topics the panel should study.
What is the best way to teach children to read? The National Reading Panel developed recommendations based on the findings in reading research on the best way to teach children to read. They found that explicit instruction in the major parts of reading (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension) was the best approach to teaching most children to read. To learn more about these recommendations, visit the National Reading Panel health topic. In addition, NICHD-supported researchers have learned other things about learning to read including: - Researchers showed that the number of poor readers in the early grades could be reduced by providing students with explicit instruction (like that recommended by the National Reading Panel). By working more intensively on reading with those in the lowest one-fifth of the classes, researchers taught all but a very few children to read.
- Using neuroimaging studies, researchers observed which parts of the brain are active when someone is reading. They also saw that the active areas of the brain were slightly different for poor readers and for good readers. After poor readers become better readers and overcome their earlier reading difficulties, their brain activity patterns during reading can change to look more like those who did not have reading problems.
How can parents help their children develop good reading skills? Parents and caregivers can try a number of things to help their children develop good reading skills: - Share conversations with your child at meal times and at other times you are together, such as during a trip to the grocery store or while running errands, to help teach new words. This activity will help your child improve his or her vocabulary.
- Read together every day, and talk about what you read. Your child will begin to understand that stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that some stories tell us about the world we live in.
- Be your child’s best advocate in school.
- Be a model for your child by being a reader and a writer yourself.
- Engage your child in reading by visiting the library often.
Where can I get more information about helping my child learn to read? |
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