3 Reading – Key Issues

a. Defining reading

As we do for the wider topic of literacy, we work with our first year undergraduates to arrive at an agreed, albeit somewhat tentative, definition of reading, through examining the Rose Report (2006), Letters and Sounds (2007) and the Primary National Strategy (2006), and discussing what is meant by grammatical awareness, contextual understanding, graphic knowledge and phonics. Meaning has to be in the forefront in learning to read and the strategies should contribute to this end. After they have completed a series of activities to further their understanding of the strategies, we read them The Colour of Home (Hoffman and Littlewood, 2003). Reading a powerful story offers an engagement with the text, and involves the student teachers’ emotions as they empathise with the predicament facing the characters.

Young children need these complex and powerful experiences: “Learning the forms and meanings of written language is an essential part of learning to read, not a ‘higher order reading skill’ to be postponed until a child has learned to decode” (Dombey, 2002:21). At the same time, children need to learn the regularities of our spelling system. To be readers they need to develop independent strategies of word recognition so that they become free to focus their attention on meaning. From the beginning of their experience in school, they need to be taught phonics; this will help them learn as efficiently as possible.

See also 6 a–e Reading