There’s no doubt that it is an exciting day when a child first begins to read words aloud. As a parent, your heart swells with pride and you realize that doors of learning and entertainment are swinging wide open. What many don’t realize though is that being able to read words and actual reading are not the same. Reading words can simply enough be renamed word calling. Word calling in combination with understanding and consideration of the text is what reading truly is. In fact, Oxford Language Dictionary defines the verb read as “look at and comprehend the meaning of (written or printed matter) by mentally interpreting the characters or symbols of which it is composed.” There is no true reading without comprehension. There is no point in just calling out words. The point of reading is understanding and interpretation.
Unfortunately, we as parents have been lead to believe that reading is only word calling. We have had education experts, teachers and curriculum publishers tell us that a child is reading when word calling is all they are doing. There are even tests that are given to most school age children – both homeschooled children and children in more traditional settings – that test how quickly they can word call. The results are then sent home and parents all over the community are comparing with friends and boasting about how many wpm – words per minute – their child can read. While there is plenty of evidence to suggest that slow reading rates can and do often effect understanding there are equally plenty studies that also note the negative effects of high wpm reading rates. As an educator, give me a slow reader who is understanding what they read over a fast word calling “reader” any day.
What may be even more terrifying to me – and should be to you as well – is that many curricula and education experts strongly encourage parents not to worry about whether or not a child can understand what he or she is “reading” until at least the middle of first grade. With this as the recommendation I can see where so many children find reading boring and not worth their effort. For what is the point of just saying a bunch of words aloud? It is a terribly tedious task and there is no benefit to anyone. Rather wouldn’t it be far more effective to help children learn to call the words and pay attention to the story plot at the same time? Wouldn’t that draw them in? What if we took the time to help children consider what the text was telling them? What if we let them think about the words and what the author was attempting to convey?
Simple books with simple stories are not the problem. Our lack of helping children do more than word call is the problem. So what is the answer? One answer is to help children learn to use the strategies that all good readers use to comprehend text. These strategies – metacognition, prediction, visualizing, connection, questioning, inferring, summarizing, main idea, judgements – hold the key to deep reading. They hold the key to understanding. They hold the key enjoyment.
So as parents and educators, let’s walk this path with our children and students. Let’s commit to digging deep, thinking outside the box and allowing ourselves the time and space to truly consider what authors have so beautifully set before us. There are many ways to do this and we’ll explore many of those over the next several blog posts but for today, grab our free PDF 15 Smart Simple Questions to Encourage Deep Thinking.
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