Comprehension

                         What ideas do teachers and parents find to be important, when thinking about children learning how to read? What do we use reading for in our lives? How does this compare with the reasons young children are learning to read? Comprehension and being able to take away meaning from a text is a very important focus. We read something with the intention to understand the text and take some kind of meaning away from it. Texts sometimes have different layers of meaning to them. Therefore, different skills are needed to find the true meaning of these types of texts. Children are trying to develop skills or certain methods that help them understand or comprehend what they are reading. Teachers play an important role when it comes to helping children develop strategies to comprehend what they are reading.

                         Knowing how important reading is in our society it is teachers’ responsibility to give quality and balanced instruction about these types of strategies. This process should start when children are young so that they can use and develop these strategies throughout their life. Children are learning how to make connections, “infer information, understand humor and sarcasm, understand a characters point of view, and more” (Johnson & Keier). When children learn these skills, it helps them comprehend what they are reading. Teachers should “model strategies, explain his or her ideas behind those strategies, have students to be involved, create guided practice opportunities, and have classroom discussions about these different strategies” (Johnson & Keier). Teachers can help students learn the skills they need to comprehend meaning from what they are reading on their own. 

Sounding Out Words

            Children often believe they are in the habit of sounding words out, when they do not know what they are. This is one of the most common know strategies for learning how to read, even though this method focuses on a individual word rather than the overall meaning of the text. Our society often focuses on “reading accuracy” rather than gaining meaning from a text. 

        When looking at this subject it is found that “children use a range of strategies to solve words while reading”. Parents sometimes feel that sounding out words is their main tool when teaching their children how to read. Children take meaning from their readings to figure out words they have difficulty with. They think about what is going on in the pictures and text to solve the puzzle of the unknown word. Another way they find out a word they may not know is through using the structure of the sentence as clues. Children also use visual clues such as looking at the letters to figure out the word they are stuck on. Children are using other strategies when they may think they are just sounding out words. 

          Children have to do more than just sound out words because “sounds change with context”.  Children often go beyond sounding out words to become successful readers. When looking at how children learn to read there is much more to this process than just sounding out words.