The Importance Of Reading Instructional Practices

Another form of assessment skill that teachers use is running records. Teachers give a copy of the text to the student, one text is familiar and one is unfamiliar. The student reads to the teacher and the teacher records the words the student reads correctly, analyses miscues or errors (Tompkins et al., 2015). Teachers need to be able to identify the aspect that the student is having difficulty reading. Is the student struggling with semantic or meaning cues, structure or syntax cues or visual cues (Tompkins et al., 2015). Then the teacher can calculate the error rate 5-10 percent is useful text for assessment, above 10 percent is too difficult and below 5 percent is too easy (Tompkins et al., 2015). The student should be asked to explain/retell

Research shows that students are only taught how to read using a phonics-based approach will achieve good results on tests that test the pronunciation of words, but struggle to understand the words, and the words meaning (Emmitt, Hornsby & Wilson, 2013). Students need experience with a variety of different reading instructional practices not just phonics. For example shared reading, guided reading, choral reading, songs and nursey rhymes, interactive read-aloud, collaborative books and morning messages (Tompkins et al., 2015). These instructional practises provide students with the necessary experiences and opportunities to practice and succeed with their reading

A balanced approach is using phonics and a whole language approach with a variety of instructions from different sources, that best suits the individual students reading needs (Department of Education, Science, and Training, 2005; Tompkins et al., 2015; Winch, 2010). Using a balanced approach allows the teacher to use the best aspects of phonics and whole language and combine them to provide that opportunities reading experiences for each student. It is important that teachers understand the process that students must experience to learn to read.

Furthermore, there are five important stages that students must learn, pre reading, reading, responding, exploring and applying (Tompkins et al., 2015). During these stages students need to be encouraged to read for pleasure, reading is not something a student has to do and the student should also read for enjoyment (Tompkins et al., 2015). If students read for pleasure they will gain practice reading in their own time and improve their reading skills. The more a student reads the more skills and strategies they are able to develop to decipher different