Comprehensive Early Reading Strategies

Comprehension Strategies

            Comprehension reading strategies are plans used by readers to derive meaning out of a text. Comprehension reading skill helps leaders to read purposefully (Gnaedinge, Hund & Hesson‐McInnis, 2016).  Besides, they become active readers from a very early age, and thus they can control their reading. Teachers and parents should be ready to help the young readers build up this crucial reading skill by ensuring children always read aloud whenever they are reading a comprehension text. This ensures that the child not only sees the words but also hears them.

Graphic Organizers

            This kind of strategy is used to provide children with a visual representation of the information, concepts, or ideas when learning. It is easy to organize and report information that has been presented in the form of graphics.  It helps teachers to break up reading and writing projects into smaller projects which are easy to teach to young learners. Thus, teachers or parents can print out these organizers, draw them using free hands, or even use the fillable ones (Lopez & Campoverde, 2018). The choice of the type of organizer to use highly depends on the preferences of the teacher and learners.

Independent Practice

            Independent reading practice is where children are allowed to read a book, a magazine, or any other text on their own without any assistance from their teacher or parent. Independent reading helps children to develop fluency in reading as well as enriching their writing with vocabulary. Also, learners build background knowledge of the subject and improve in spelling. This strategy requires teachers and parents to help children find a book that they enjoy reading. Books should not be too difficult for learners to understand their content. Finally, the parents and teachers should avail of a variety of reading materials from time to time so that learners are not bored with similar reading materials.

Model-Lead-Test

            Model-lead-test is an effective strategy of teaching children, especially mathematics and sciences. A teacher models or demonstrates the desired skill to the learners as they observe. Here the teacher guides the learners on how to perform the task, but they are actively involved. Afterward, the learners perform the task on their own as the teacher tests their ability to understand. This strategy helps the children to improve their active participation in learning and to promote success and achievement. Teachers have to make use of multiple examples as well as appropriate teaching aids.

Peer Tutoring

            Peer tutoring is a strategy that encourages learners’ partnership and provides a link between the best students in the class and the academically challenged students. The best students guide the poor students by navigating them, for example, through reading comprehension or help in solving a math problem (Topping, Duran, & Keer, 2015). This strategy is economical since the learning takes place without an external tutor. Peer tutoring strategy can be implemented through study groups and homework assignments. The teacher should be involved in setting up study groups within the learners and make sure the peers are distributed based on their reading capabilities.

Repeated Reading

            Repeated reading is a strategy used to help learners with reading difficulties to develop decoding ability. The learner is meant to read a short text repeatedly until a certain level of success is achieved. The benefits of this strategy come in handy as the learner can effectively improve their reading skills. The learner gains fluency in comprehension, speed, and accuracy in reading. Teachers have to encourage children to read frequently and even supervise their reading whenever possible. The learner should read at least three times a text between 50 to 200 words before proceeding to another text.

References

Gnaedinger, E. K., Hund, A. M., & Hesson‐McInnis, M. S. (2016). Reading‐specific flexibility moderates the relation between reading strategy use and reading comprehension during the elementary years. Mind, Brain, and Education, 10(4), 233-246.

Lopez, J., & Campoverde, J. (2018). Development of reading comprehension with graphic organizers for students with dyslexia. JOTSE: Journal of technology and science education, 8(2), 105-114.

Topping, K., Duran, D., & Van Keer, H. (2015). Using peer tutoring to improve reading skills: a practical guide for teachers. Routledge.