Best Practices in Teaching Reading

INCREASE the following TEACHING PRACTICES

• Read aloud to students
• Provide time for independent reading
• Teacher models and discusses his/her own reading processes
• Instructional emphasis on decoding as a means to comprehension
• Measure success of reading program by students' reading habits, attitudes, and comprehension
• Teach reading as a process: (use strategies that activate prior knowledge, help students make and test predictions, structure help during reading, and provide after-reading applications)
• Provide primary instructional emphasis on comprehension
• Encouraging invented spelling in children's early writings
• Encourage children to use knowledge of structure of English language to spell words
• Encourage children choose their own reading materials
• Expose children to a wide and rich range of literature
• Teach skills in the context of whole and meaningful literature
• Write before and after reading
• Social, collaborative activities with much discussion and interaction
• Group by interest or book choices
• Silent reading followed by discussion
• Use reading in content fields (e.g. historical novels in social studies)
• Evaluation that focuses on holistic, higher-order thinking processes

DECREASE the following TEACHING PRACTICES

• Little or no chances to write
• Segregation of all reading to reading time
• Solitary seatwork
• Teacher selection of all reading materials for individuals and groups
• Exclusive stress on whole class or reading group activities
• Teacher keeps own reading taste and habits in reading private
• Teaching reading as a single, one-step act
• Primary instructional emphasis on reading skills as an end in themselves and not a means to understand print
• Primary instructional emphasis on reading sub-skills such as phonics, word analysis, syllabication
• Relying totally on selections in basal reader
• Grouping by reading level
• Round-robin oral reading
• Teaching isolated skills in phonics workbooks or drills
• Punishing pre-conventional spelling in students ’ early writings
• Evaluation focused on individual, low-level sub-skills
• Measuring the success of the reading program only by test scores

(Source: A Guide to Reinventing Schools: Chapter 2 -Develop a Balanced Instructional Model Page 142, Chugach School District)