Effective Reading Instruction

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Literary competence, simply stated, involves the development of deciphering print and comprehending what it means. (Department of Education, Science, and Training, 2005). Reading is described as a complex developmental challenge that is a combination of many elements that include, responsiveness, memory, language skills, and motivation (Reutzel & Cooter, 2012). When considering ‘reading’ from a teaching perspective there must be many factors that be taken into account. For effective reading instruction to occur, it is important to understand not only the processes of how and when a child learns to read and write, but what inspires them to read. There are multiple notions on the right age and readiness for early literacy learning, but there …show more content…

The first commonly agreed upon notion is that effective reading instruction is successful by implementing strategies that include structured literacy elements (Konza, 2006). One critical element is phonological awareness. This relates to the child’s ability to understand the sounds, words, and syllables in spoken language (Hill, 2012, p. 133). These cues also include timing, intonation and stress often heard in early reading story books (Hill, 2012, p. 133). Branching off phonological awareness is phonemic awareness. This requires the reader to recognise the individual small units of sound or ‘phonemes’ that in sequence, create different words (Hill, 2012, p. 134). Phonemes are made up of letters of the alphabet, so to be able to grasp this concept and start learning to read, there has to be, at least a basic prior knowledge and recognition of these letters, also known as, ‘the Alphabetic principle’ (Sedl, 2015). Effective instruction should include strategies to improve phonological awareness. One strategy is modelling and correct pronunciation, which involves …show more content…

(Department of Education, Science, and Training, 2005). Effective reading instruction occurs when a child successfully learns to read fluently, confidently, with full comprehension of meaning and context. A teacher should understand the developmental aspects of how a child learns to read, but also how to engage a modern day child with rich, authentic texts that motivates them and connects to their social backgrounds. An educator should incorporate curriculum and also be open to choose, adapt, and structure approaches using techniques that best fit their teaching styles and situations. Approaching literacy with a balanced approach of both meaning and skill orientated methods, supports a child’s phonological awareness development and comprehension skills, and supports the elements that surround these components. Each area needs to be explicitly and systematically taught for learning to occur, and strategies set in place to work towards developing independent readers who can read text fluently, but also create meaning from it, which is both beneficial and critical in the long-term success in a child’s literacy

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