 Building Reading Confidence
Children become confident independent readers through:
• knowing how to build words using letters and sounds;
• recognizing words at sight;
• understanding how words go together to make sentences;
• knowing about different sorts of books and how they work.
The most profound knowledge of reading will be in the small groups where every child will improve his abilities. The teacher or teaching assistant will introduce the book, ask questions, discuss different strategies then set a reading challenge. The peculiarity is that the teachers work with every student separately while others read at their own pace. At the end of a session the whole group discusses the book to check they have understood. Sessions have the name of reader guides. They allow the teacher and children to spend much longer working with a piece of text than is possible if every child reads a different book to the teacher.
Becoming an Independent Reader
As well as group reading and reading to an adult, children will also begin to read and enjoy books in pairs or by themselves. In many schools there is a special time for that. Reading logs are often kept and these may be sent home for you to record how your child responds when reading at home. Many schools have special volunteers who are guiding the child’s process s off reading.
An equally important part of learning to read independently is hearing books read aloud. During the first years at school it can happen. Hearing language in this way allows your child to focus on the meaning without having to concentrate on working out the words. Children in that way understand different types of texts which they will read later more freely.
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