4.+Teaching+and+assessing+reading

__** Teaching approaches to reading **__
Early readers take on four roles when they begin to read. These are called ‘The four roles of a reader’ and include the //code breaker//, the //meaning maker//, the //text user// and the //text critic//. These four roles must be incorporated and each child must experience all the roles before they can become a fluent, flexible and confident reader. As a teacher being able to identify these roles will enhance your students literacy skills. (Hill 2006, p.172) Code breakers apply their familiarity of letter-sound relationships (1. Phonics) as well as high-frequency sight words ([|Fry's 300 High Frequency Sight Words]) to read. Teachers can aide the code breaker by giving opportunities for the reader to understand the alphabetic principle. (Hill 2006, p.173) Meaning makers read to understand, they use the illustrations, sentence structure and print to find the meaning. By asking questions and initiating conversation at different stages of reading will enhance the children’s comprehension. (Hill 2006, p.175) Text users determine how to read the text by identifying it form and genre. Teachers can help children to become text users by asking questions such as ‘what kind of text is this? And ‘Is this book a recount or a narrative?’ (Hill 2006, p.176) Activities based on the ‘four roles of a reader’ help children learn to explore and solve problems as they read. There are many activities suggested by Hill that are divided into the roles, however, roles overlap and many of these activities are appropriate for small groups and learning centres. (Hill 2006, p.184)

When planning for a reading lesson teachers use three stages, //before reading, during reading// and //after reading//. //Before reading// the teacher makes connections to the children’s prior knowledge and interests. //During reading// the teacher will ask questions along with problem solving prompts to help engage the students as well as support the children as they integrate the information. //After reading// is the time when teachers use activities designed for the four roles of the reader. (Hill 2006, p.189)

= __Teaching comprehension__ = Gaskin suggests that through research studies it was found that there is between five and eight comprehension strategies that readers use constantly (Cited in Hill 2006, p.197). Teachers can choose from these strategies to suit certain children. There are various people with their own thoughts on what these strategies may be. For example, Pressley suggests the following, predicting, questioning, making images, seeking clarification and constructing summaries. (Cited in Hill 2006, p.197) Reciprocal teaching is a technique used to show children how to use predicting, questioning, summarising and clarifying to understand different texts. These four strategies are put into roles known as the predictor whom makes predictions and reads the text, the clarifier clarifies the concepts making sure they all understand, the questioner asks each group member a question regarding the text and the summariser sums up the book. Within these groups, teachers introduce what they call the ‘five W’s’ this is the why, who, when, what, where. (Hill 2006, p.200) When planning activities for comprehension it is suggested by Gaskin that teachers need to make sure that the activity is suitable for the student and goes at an appropriate pace. (cited in Hill 2006, p.200) That the children are reading a variety of texts, that they will find interesting, pleasurable and useful to their schooling. Provide opportunities for the students to use the comprehension strategies suggested by Pressley (Cited in Hill 2006, p.197). Encourage discussions where interpretive and critical responses are expected. (Hill 2006, p.200)

= = =__ **Assessment** __= For a teacher to be able to find an appropriate text for students, the teacher must first make note of the Childs reading behaviours and document what words the child can read. The data taken from this can be used in assessment of the child’s reading. The process for this recording is as follows, select a book from the child’s reading level, ask them to read it and then mark what the child’s incorrect responses. This is called a running record. Once the information is recorded the teacher must analyse the data for evaluation. There are a few steps the evaluation process and these involve, 88-5/88 = 0.943… or 94% The percentage is a guide to whether or not the text is appropriate for the child’s reading level. 95-100% = Easy 90-94% = Instructional 90% and below = Difficult (Hill 2006, p.160) Books that are at an instructional reading level are the texts that teacher wants to set for the child’s reading. The analysis made from this data collected will aide the teaching in planning activities for the child. Running records provide an opportunity for the teacher to observe the child’s reading strategies as well as discover possible ways to help support the child’s development. Each error made by the student should be analysed for meaning cues (M), visual cues (V) and syntactic cues (S). With this analysis Clay (2002) suggests that teachers need to ask themselves ‘What led the child to say or do that?’ As described by Clay and cited in Hill P. 161 these cues stand for; “M-did the meaning or message of the text influence the error? S-did the structure (syntax) of the sentence up until the error influence the response? V- did the visual information from the print influence any part of the error letter, cluster or word?” When conducting the running record assessment the teacher should include M, S and V for the child’s errors. (Hill 2006, p. 161)
 * Count how many running words are in the text (do not count titles and subtitles)
 * Errors are counted for, miscues, omissions, insertions, words proved by the teacher, no responses and words skipped in a line.
 * A skipped page is considered one error and the teacher needs to subtract the word count for that page from the total amount of words in the text.
 * Proper nouns read incorrectly are counted only once, however, all other words read incorrectly are counted each time.
 * Errors are not counted if the child, self-corrects words, words that are repeated by the child and words that the child pronounced differently due to their language.
 * The work out the percentage of accuracy, the teacher must subtract the number of errors form the amount of total words in the text and then divide that by the number of running words. For example, the child made five errors and there was eighty eight running words. The sum looks as so