Reading Instruction Done Right Can Make The Student Shine Bright!

Reading can be a very hard thing to learn how to do. Think about it, you learn some shapes are actually letters, letters represent sounds, sounds form words, and words represent objects or feelings or places. It can be very overwhelming if students are not taught to enjoy the process. The readings this week really emphasized the importance of three aspects of reading education: Integration into other subjects, A wide variety of types of reading and reading responses, and teachers monitoring their students progress. It was emphasized that teaching literacy is all about having a balanced class room.
On Pinterest I found activities that could be used in effective reading instruction:

On pages 3 and 9 Cunningham discusses integrating reading into other subjects. These 10 nonfiction activities could be used for subjects like history or science as well as reading. For example, if you have the students read an article about the metamorphosis of butterflies they could then do activity 2 and draw out words like cocoon. This not only reinforces the vocabulary from science, that can be difficult, but also causes the students to create a mental representation of the new word.

This type of activity could also be used to promote different kinds of reading and reading responses. If you are reading for history class(again integrating other subjects into literary education) about the Boston tea party you could have your students do activity 3 and act out the important parts. Activities like this can get pretty silly but they do an excellent job of promoting interest in the material and helping the students better remember what they learned.

Finally teacher assessment can be done several ways. Using activities 5 and 9 can accurately determine if the students are learning what the objectives require without the stigma and pressure of a traditional test. Getting the students involved in their self-assessments can help motivate them to do deeper thinking which is important to learning. You can encourage the students to think deeper so instead of a question like "Did Joe hit his sister?" instead ask "What caused Joe to get upset at his sister and then what happened?" Thinking about motivations in the story and more critical thinking is part of the Higher Level Comprehension discussed throughout the reading.

Keeping students excited about reading is much easier when the teacher works to think outside the box and be creative. The readings confirm that if you make reading a fun consistent part of your daily classroom activities students will read better and enjoy it more.

Question of the day: What other activities do you think could be incorporated into the classroom to encourage literacy?