Teaching someone how to read is an extremely rewarding experience. Whether you're teaching your child to read their first book or helping a friend to improve their literacy skills, use the following steps and instructions as a helpful teaching guide.
Method 1-Teaching the Essentials
1 Teach the alphabet.
The first step in learning to read is recognizing the letters of the alphabet. Use a poster, chalkboard, or notebook to write or display the alphabet. Go over the letters with the student until he or she learns them all. Use the alphabet song to help the student to remember.
Once the student knows the alphabet in order, challenge him or her by writing several letters out of order and ask them to recall the letters.
You can also name one of the letters and ask the student to point it out.
When teaching a child, start by teaching his or her the letters of their own name. This makes learning the letters personal and important. Because it is something important to the child — his own name - the child “owns” his learning, and will be excited by it.
2 Teach sounds.
Once your student is familiar with the alphabet, you will need to teach them the sounds of each letter. Learning the name of the letter is not enough, as a letter may be pronounced differently depending on the word. For example the ''g sound in the word "green" is different from the g sound in the word "giraffe." Once the student has mastered the sounds of individual letters, they can practice blending letter sounds together to form words.
This knowledge of the basic sounds of spoken language and their ability to be manipulated to form different words is known as phonemic awareness.
Go over each letter and teach the sounds that the letter makes.
Give examples of words that start with each letter and ask the student to give examples as well.
You can also try stating a word and asking the student which letter it starts with.
You can then familiarize students with common letter pairs which make specific sounds, such as “ch”, “sh”, “ph”, “qu”, “gh”, and “ck”.
3 Teach short, one-syllable words.
Introduce your student to basic reading by showing them two or three letter, one-syllable words. Beginners tend to do best with words that have a consonant-vowel-consonant pattern, such as CAT or DOG.
Start by asking the student to read a simple, one-syllable word such as "sit." Have the student name each letter, then attempt to read the word. If the student makes a mistake, ask again what sound the letter makes. The student will reflect and either remember or have to be reminded. When the word is read successfully, generously congratulate the student.
Repeat this process with other simple, one-syllable words. Once a list of about five words is created, go back to the first word and see if the student can read it more quickly.
Continue to introduce more words, gradually introducing longer and more complex words.
4 Teach sight words.
Sight words are words that need to be learned by heart as they diverge from the normal rules of spelling. Many sight words such as "father", "again" and "friend" are also high frequency words. For this reason, it is very important that readers are able to instantly recognize these words when they come across them in a text.
The most common sight words have been compiled onto lists, such as the famous Dolch Sight Word Series and the Fry List.
To teach sight words, try associating each word with an illustration. Presenting students with illustrations of sight words along with their print versions helps them to make important connections between the object and the word.
Flashcards or posters with a colorful picture and the word written under it are excellent sight word teaching tools.
Repetition is key to sight word acquisition. Beginner readers should be given the opportunity to read and write a new sight word multiple times. The repetitive reading of texts featuring certain sight words is one good strategy for helping students commit these words to memory.
5 Build vocabulary.
A student's reading vocabulary is defined as the the number of words that they know and understand as they read. Expanding your student's vocabulary is an integral part of teaching them how to read. The wider their vocabulary, the more advanced texts they will be able to read and comprehend. You can help your student to improve their vocabulary in several ways:
By encouraging them to read as much as possible and to vary the type of text they read. When reading, ask your students to underline any words they don't know, then you can explain or help them look them up the meaning in the dictionary later.
By teaching them the definitions of words or other attributes of words, such as the meanings of common roots, prefixes and suffixes.
Using association methods to help students draw connections between what they do know and words that they do not know. Pairing a new word with a known synonym is an example.
6 Build fluency.
Fluency is the ability to read quickly and accurately, with appropriate rhythm, intonation, and expression. Beginner readers do not possess this ability. As a result, they often struggle through texts that are beyond their "comfort" level. Without fluency, a reader will focus all of their energies on correctly pronouncing the words in front of them, rather than absorbing their meaning. When this happens, the reader fails to understand the meaning of the text, making the ability to read it pointless. That is why building fluency is so important.
Some non-fluent readers will hesitate when reading, unable to sound out words or figure out punctuation. Others will read without expression or changing their tone, rushing through the words without thinking about their meaning.
The best way to promote fluency in beginner readers is through repeated reading. In repeated reading, the student reads a passage many times while the teacher provides feedback about speed and accuracy levels, helps with problem words, and demonstrates fluent reading.
It is also important to ensure that the student is familiar with different types of pronunciation. Make sure that your student knows how punctuation marks such as a comma, a period, a question mark and an exclamation point will affect the flow and intonation of their reading.
7 Test reading comprehension.
Reading comprehension is the process of constructing meaning from what is read. In order to comprehend a text, a reader must associate the words they read with their actual meaning. Enabling your student to comprehend the text they are reading is your main goal as a teacher, as without comprehension, reading is meaningless.
In order to test your student's progress, you will need to assess their reading comprehension. Typically this can be done by asking your student to read and answer questions about what they have read. Formats include multiple-choice, short answer, and fill-in-the-blank questions.
You can also assess your student's knowledge of comprehension strategies by asking them questions while reading, getting them to give you a summary of what they have just read and by observing them as they read.
Method 1-Teaching the Essentials
1 Teach the alphabet.
The first step in learning to read is recognizing the letters of the alphabet. Use a poster, chalkboard, or notebook to write or display the alphabet. Go over the letters with the student until he or she learns them all. Use the alphabet song to help the student to remember.
Once the student knows the alphabet in order, challenge him or her by writing several letters out of order and ask them to recall the letters.
You can also name one of the letters and ask the student to point it out.
When teaching a child, start by teaching his or her the letters of their own name. This makes learning the letters personal and important. Because it is something important to the child — his own name - the child “owns” his learning, and will be excited by it.
2 Teach sounds.
Once your student is familiar with the alphabet, you will need to teach them the sounds of each letter. Learning the name of the letter is not enough, as a letter may be pronounced differently depending on the word. For example the ''g sound in the word "green" is different from the g sound in the word "giraffe." Once the student has mastered the sounds of individual letters, they can practice blending letter sounds together to form words.
This knowledge of the basic sounds of spoken language and their ability to be manipulated to form different words is known as phonemic awareness.
Go over each letter and teach the sounds that the letter makes.
Give examples of words that start with each letter and ask the student to give examples as well.
You can also try stating a word and asking the student which letter it starts with.
You can then familiarize students with common letter pairs which make specific sounds, such as “ch”, “sh”, “ph”, “qu”, “gh”, and “ck”.
3 Teach short, one-syllable words.
Introduce your student to basic reading by showing them two or three letter, one-syllable words. Beginners tend to do best with words that have a consonant-vowel-consonant pattern, such as CAT or DOG.
Start by asking the student to read a simple, one-syllable word such as "sit." Have the student name each letter, then attempt to read the word. If the student makes a mistake, ask again what sound the letter makes. The student will reflect and either remember or have to be reminded. When the word is read successfully, generously congratulate the student.
Repeat this process with other simple, one-syllable words. Once a list of about five words is created, go back to the first word and see if the student can read it more quickly.
Continue to introduce more words, gradually introducing longer and more complex words.
4 Teach sight words.
Sight words are words that need to be learned by heart as they diverge from the normal rules of spelling. Many sight words such as "father", "again" and "friend" are also high frequency words. For this reason, it is very important that readers are able to instantly recognize these words when they come across them in a text.
The most common sight words have been compiled onto lists, such as the famous Dolch Sight Word Series and the Fry List.
To teach sight words, try associating each word with an illustration. Presenting students with illustrations of sight words along with their print versions helps them to make important connections between the object and the word.
Flashcards or posters with a colorful picture and the word written under it are excellent sight word teaching tools.
Repetition is key to sight word acquisition. Beginner readers should be given the opportunity to read and write a new sight word multiple times. The repetitive reading of texts featuring certain sight words is one good strategy for helping students commit these words to memory.
5 Build vocabulary.
A student's reading vocabulary is defined as the the number of words that they know and understand as they read. Expanding your student's vocabulary is an integral part of teaching them how to read. The wider their vocabulary, the more advanced texts they will be able to read and comprehend. You can help your student to improve their vocabulary in several ways:
By encouraging them to read as much as possible and to vary the type of text they read. When reading, ask your students to underline any words they don't know, then you can explain or help them look them up the meaning in the dictionary later.
By teaching them the definitions of words or other attributes of words, such as the meanings of common roots, prefixes and suffixes.
Using association methods to help students draw connections between what they do know and words that they do not know. Pairing a new word with a known synonym is an example.
6 Build fluency.
Fluency is the ability to read quickly and accurately, with appropriate rhythm, intonation, and expression. Beginner readers do not possess this ability. As a result, they often struggle through texts that are beyond their "comfort" level. Without fluency, a reader will focus all of their energies on correctly pronouncing the words in front of them, rather than absorbing their meaning. When this happens, the reader fails to understand the meaning of the text, making the ability to read it pointless. That is why building fluency is so important.
Some non-fluent readers will hesitate when reading, unable to sound out words or figure out punctuation. Others will read without expression or changing their tone, rushing through the words without thinking about their meaning.
The best way to promote fluency in beginner readers is through repeated reading. In repeated reading, the student reads a passage many times while the teacher provides feedback about speed and accuracy levels, helps with problem words, and demonstrates fluent reading.
It is also important to ensure that the student is familiar with different types of pronunciation. Make sure that your student knows how punctuation marks such as a comma, a period, a question mark and an exclamation point will affect the flow and intonation of their reading.
7 Test reading comprehension.
Reading comprehension is the process of constructing meaning from what is read. In order to comprehend a text, a reader must associate the words they read with their actual meaning. Enabling your student to comprehend the text they are reading is your main goal as a teacher, as without comprehension, reading is meaningless.
In order to test your student's progress, you will need to assess their reading comprehension. Typically this can be done by asking your student to read and answer questions about what they have read. Formats include multiple-choice, short answer, and fill-in-the-blank questions.
You can also assess your student's knowledge of comprehension strategies by asking them questions while reading, getting them to give you a summary of what they have just read and by observing them as they read.
Source : http://www.wikihow.com/Teach-Reading
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