There have been, over the years, two general instructional approaches that have governed reading education. They have gone by many names, but today they are generally known as Phonics and Whole Language approaches. These approaches to reading instruction reflect very different underlying philosophies and stress very different skills. The philosophy underlying the Whole Language approach is that reading is a natural process, much like learning to speak, and that children exposed to a great deal of authentic, connected text will naturally become literate without much in the way of explicit instruction in the rules and conventions of printed text. The philosophy underlying the Phonics approach is quite different -- Phonics advocates argue that in order to learn to read, most children require a great deal of explicit instruction in the rules of printed text. Read More...
The DIBELS measures were specifically designed to assess 3 of the 5 Big Ideas of early literacy: Phonological Awareness, Alphabetic Principle, and Fluency with Connected Text (click here to link to Big Ideas in Beginning Reading for more information on each of these domains). The measures are linked to one another, both psychometrically and theoretically, and have been found to be predictive of later reading proficiency.
Measures of Phonological Awareness:
Initial Sounds Fluency (ISF): Assesses a child's skill to identify and produce the initial sound of a given word (click here for a longer description and to learn how to administer and score the ISF measure).
Phonemic Segmentation Fluency (PSF): Assesses a child's skill to produce the individual sounds within a given word (click here for a longer description and to learn how to administer and score the PSF measure).
Measure of Alphabetic Principle:
Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF): Assesses a child's knowledge of letter-sound correspondences as well their ability to blend letters together to form unfamiliar "nonsense" (e.g., fik, lig, etc.) words (click here for a longer description and to learn how to administer and score the NWF measure).
Measure of Fluency with Connected Text:
Oral Reading Fluency (ORF): Assesses a child's skill of reading connected text in grade-level material word (click here for a longer description and to learn how to administer and score the ORF measure).
These measures link together to form an assessment system of early literacy development depicted in the following figure that allows educators to readily and reliably determine student progress.
Reading Strategies
http://emu1967.tripod.com/readstrat.htm Readstrat's author says: This is a directory of strategies that can be used in the classroom. I have compiled these from a methods course. I know that it may seem pretty redundant...but you might find some thing you like!
Welcome to Poetry 180. Poetry can and should be an important part of our daily lives. Poems can inspire and make us think about what it means to be a member of the human race. By just spending a few minutes reading a poem each day, new worlds can be revealed.
Poetry 180 is designed to make it easy for students to hear or read a poem on each of the 180 days of the school year. I have selected the poems you will find here with high school students in mind. They are intended to be listened to, and I suggest that all members of the school community be included as readers. A great time for the readings would be following the end of daily announcements over the public address system.
Listening to poetry can encourage students and other learners to become members of the circle of readers for whom poetry is a vital source of pleasure. I hope Poetry 180 becomes an important and enriching part of the school day.
Billy Collins Former Poet Laureate of the United States
Within this page,the complex processes involved in reading comprehension are divided into three categories (much like the National Reading Panel Report). The categories include vocabulary instruction, text comprehension instruction, and teacher preparation and comprehension strategies instruction. You'll also find useful websites that students can visit to practice their use of comprehension strategies with fiction and non-fiction texts at a variety of reading levels.
Featuring free reading comprehension worksheets for teachers and parents to copy for their kids. They include original stories, poems, essays, and articles. They are most appropriate for upper elementary through middle school years.
Welcome to Guys Read Welcome to Guys Read, a web-based literacy program for boys. Our mission is to help boys become self-motivated, lifelong readers.
Research shows that boys are having trouble reading, and that boys are getting worse at reading. No one is quite sure why. Some of the reasons are biological. Some of the reasons are sociological.
But the good news is that research also shows that boys will read — if they are given reading that interests them.
So the biggest part of this site is the collection of book titles below. These are books that guys have told us they like.
Our idea is to help guys become readers by helping them find texts they want to read.
Get in there and start looking around. There is a little something for everyone.
And please help guys out by recommending more of your guy-favorites.
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Reading Rockets offers a wealth of reading strategies, lessons, and activities designed to help young children learn how to read and read better. Our reading resources assist parents, teachers, and other educators in helping struggling readers build fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension skills.