How to Teach Reading: What I Wish I Had Known
Teach Reading? But How?
Looking back, I can remember how excited I was in my first teaching job. I had the degree, certification, lesson plan writing skills and an open mind. I loved teaching (still do), and I knew that this was what I was meant to do. I taught special education, at the upper elementary school level. Many of my students were lower leveled readers. I remember wishing that I knew a better approach when it came to how to teach reading.
While I had all the skills and tools needed to properly assess their reading skills in various areas, there was something that I soon realized that I was missing. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I started to feel as if I needed to do more for my struggling readers. I just wasn’t sure what or how. At the time, schools were also still using a whole language approach and teaching kids to “guess and check”.
Fast forward a few years later. I was at a new school. A new student moved in. She was about 4 years behind in her decoding skills, but had learned strategies to get by. I remember wondering how she had made it this far without these skills being remediated. But I still didn’t know exactly what to do to help her.
An Eye Opening Experience
About a year or two after having this student, I had the opportunity to be trained in a reading program that would teach us how to teach reading in a multisensory, structured, sequential method that had been proven to work. I had been one of those kids who just automatically learned to read. (The “whole language” approach in the 90s must have just worked for me.) I didn’t know what it was like to need a different approach. But I remember the moment that it “clicked”. The experience that changed my perspective.
One the first day of our intro workshop for this training, the trainer had us do some activities. We had to memorize unknown, meaningless words and attempt to comprehend a reading passage. Then we had to use symbols to try to read and spell words. Our trainer explained that often, when students with reading disabilities don’t have the phonics skills that they need, they feel that they need to memorize thousands of words. This makes reading feel impossible. I began to understand more about the perspective of my struggling readers, and also about the whole process of reading and how it can be different for all learners.
Full Circle
It’s easy to look back and wish that I had known how to help my struggling reader who had moved in. But at the same time, there’s something else that I shouldn’t forget. It’s a conversation that I overheard a few years later. After school one day, my practicum student (from the reading program I described above) was walking to the bus. I heard her excitedly tell her friends, “That’s Mrs. C. She taught me how to read!”
I remember feeling as if my heart was full. I already had the data. I could see that she had made great progress. But to hear her say it out loud and to know that it had made a difference to her was an experience that I will never forget.
A Recent Shift in Teaching Reading
Fast forward years later, and I’ve been happy to see that the field of education is shifting. There is a current focus on the science of reading. Many states are either encouraging or requiring teachers to take professional development in teaching reading through a research based approach. Below, I’ve attached a link to the Letrs Professional Learning for Educators. I’m currently working through the program, and I’ve found it to be the best professional development I’ve ever taken.
I’ve found it helpful to use task cards (especially in a game like manner) in order to practice phonics skills. Check out some of my products below.
