Essential Reading Skills:  A Guide for Families

Print Awareness

Children who have an awareness of print understand that the squiggly lines on a page represent spoken language. They understand that when adults read a book, what they say is linked to the words on the page, rather than to the pictures.  Learn more here

The Sounds of Speech

To understand a spoken language, a child must be able to hear and distinguish the sounds that make up the language.  Learn more here

Phonemic Awareness

Although phonemic awareness is a widely used term in reading, it is often misunderstood. One misunderstanding is that phonemic awareness and phonics are the same thing. Phonemic awareness is not phonics.  Learn more here

Phonics

Children's reading development is dependent on their understanding of the alphabetic principle – the idea that letters and letter patterns represent the sounds of spoken language. Learning that there are predictable relationships between sounds and letters allows children to apply these relationships to both familiar and unfamiliar words, and to begin to read with fluency.  Learn more here

Fluency

Fluency is the ability to read a text accurately and quickly. When fluent readers read silently, they recognize words automatically. They group words quickly to help them gain meaning from what they read. Fluent readers read aloud effortlessly and with expression. Their reading sounds natural, as if they are speaking. Readers who have not yet developed fluency read slowly, word by word. Their oral reading is choppy. Learn more here

Vocabulary

Vocabulary plays an important part in learning to read. Beginning readers must use the words they hear orally to make sense of the words they see in print.  Learn more here

Spelling

Many people think spelling comes naturally to some and not to others. Actually, good spellers aren't born, they're taught. Nearly 90 percent of English words can be spelled if you know the basic patterns, principles, and rules of spelling.  Learn more here

Writing

A child's writing development parallels their development as a reader. Print awareness develops in young children as a result of being read to by adults and having other literacy experiences.  Learn more here

Comprehension

Comprehension is the reason for reading. If readers can read the words but do not understand what they are reading, they are not really reading.  Learn more here

Reading to Learn

Reading is an essential part of language instruction at every level because it supports learning in multiple ways.

• Reading to learn the language: Reading material is language input. By giving students a variety of materials to read, instructors provide multiple opportunities for students to absorb vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, and discourse structure as they occur in authentic contexts. Students thus gain a more complete picture of the ways in which the elements of the language work together to convey meaning.
• Reading for content information: Students' purpose for reading in their native language is often to obtain information about a subject they are studying, and this purpose can be useful in the language learning classroom as well. Reading for content information in the language classroom gives students both authentic reading material and an authentic purpose for reading.
• Reading for cultural knowledge and awareness: Reading everyday materials that are designed for native speakers can give students insight into the lifestyles and worldviews of the people whose language they are studying. When students have access to newspapers, magazines, and Web sites, they are exposed to culture in all its variety, and monolithic cultural stereotypes begin to break down.

When reading to learn, students need to follow four basic steps:

1. Figure out the purpose for reading. Activate background knowledge of the topic in order to predict or anticipate content and identify appropriate reading strategies.

2. Attend to the parts of the text that are relevant to the identified purpose and ignore the rest. This selectivity enables students to focus on specific items in the input and reduces the amount of information they have to hold in short-term memory.

3. Select strategies that are appropriate to the reading task and use them flexibly and interactively. Students' comprehension improves and their confidence increases when they use top-down and bottom-up skills simultaneously to construct meaning.

4. Check comprehension while reading and when the reading task is completed. Monitoring comprehension helps students detect inconsistencies and comprehension failures, helping them learn to use alternate strategies.

Strategies that can help students read more quickly and effectively include:  

• Previewing: reviewing titles, section headings, and photo captions to get a sense of the structure and content of a reading selection
• Predicting: using knowledge of the subject matter to make predictions about content and vocabulary and check comprehension; using knowledge of the text type and purpose to make predictions about discourse structure; using knowledge about the author to make predictions about writing style, vocabulary, and content
• Skimming and scanning: using a quick survey of the text to get the main idea, identify text structure, confirm or question predictions
• Guessing from context: using prior knowledge of the subject and the ideas in the text as clues to the meanings of unknown words, instead of stopping to look them up
• Paraphrasing: stopping at the end of a section to check comprehension by restating the information and ideas in the text