Getting Ready To Read

Each school has its own way of helping children learn to attack and recognize new words and to read fluently and with understanding. Primary teachers generally follow these principles: That children develop a readiness for learning to read, not as a group, but as individuals; that many play-type experiences contribute to reading readiness; that careful study needs to be made of each child's progress.

In a Utah class, for example, each pupil was observed reading in a different place in a pre-primer or from a different pre-primer. The teacher had a record of each child's progress. While some children worked with the teacher in their pre-primers, other children were engaged in self-selected activities: digging at the sand table, painting on the floor, reading, matching words to pictures, putting cut-out calendar numbers in order to make a calendar, putting a jig-saw puzzle together, and working in clay. In one case, two children sat together at the back of the room reading aloud to each other, each one helping the other. As the teacher changed reading groups, a visitor asked her about the absorption of the two children who were reading together and she said: "Those two were slow in the beginning, but I decided not to push them. Instead, I encouraged them to do other things. About 3 days before Christmas, they came up to watch one of the reading groups. I asked 'Do you want a book of your very own?' 'Yes,' they said. After a bit I gave them a start in a pre-primer. Up to now (January 16) they have read several pre-primers. They can't stop reading."

The teacher explained further that to some children who had shown signs of reading readiness she had given daily help and had "pressured them a bit, just to experiment with the pressure idea." These children were not making such good progress as the other two and were not so much interested.

"I am changing my ideas about teaching reading," she said. "I've decided to provide rich non-reading experiences for the children and let them move at their own speed."

After a reading group had finished, the teacher said, “We'd better clean up now."

At once the children started to put things away: the clay, the paint, the books, the toys. As they finished, they came to sit on the rug in the front of the room.

"Somebody needs to rearrange the clay table," said the teacher, and immediately "somebody" did so.

"Can you move the table so it is even?" she asked, and the children pushed the table until every leg was even. Then they came and sat with the others.

"Now let's make our calendar for the week," said the teacher. As the teacher wrote the word Wednesday on a chart the children spelled it with her, "W-E-D-N-E-S-you can spell day." A voice, "D-A-Y!"

"Find Wednesday on the calendar. Today is the middle Wednesday-what number is it?"

"Sixteen."

"Year?"

"1952."

“Read it.”

Linda, one of the two presumably slow readers, read it rapidly: "Wednesday, January 16, 1952."

They began to dictate news. Samples of news on other days written on the blackboard in manuscript writing include:

Reading About Our Own Experiences

One of the means that most of the teachers use in helping boys and girls develop a readiness for reading at different stages is to give them opportunities to read about their own experiences. The purpose of the activity is to strengthen their understanding that reading is getting ideas. Here is the way one Alabama first grade worked.

The children were intensely interested in some ducks that one boy owned. He brought one of the ducks to school each day for the children to enjoy. The boys and girls covered a corner of the floor with newspapers and built a house of blocks on them. They

put the duck into the house, and he seemed quite at home and willing to stay. One day the teacher helped them make up a story about the ducks, as follows:

We have three baby ducks.
The ducks are at Joey's house.

One is named Puff.

One is named Spot.

One is named Tom.

The teacher gave the pupils opportunities to read and reread the story for different purposes, such as: (1) finding the part that tells something; (2) recognizing names and comparing them with the names of people and other pets; and (3) deciding whether to include the chart in their collection of favorite chart stories to be read for fun from time to time.

In a third grade in the same school, experience reading is continued at an appropriate level through a daily blackboard newspaper. From the children's dictation, the teacher wrote stories of interesting events that happened to the boys and girls each day. In this collection, items that the children reread were about exciting trips, interesting class or school visitors, school parties, and outdoor fun. Iowa and Louisiana schools also were observed using blackboard and chart newspapers.

Reading for a Specific Purpose

One of the commonest of good practices observed was children reading for information needed for one of their activities or to answer a question. Many teachers appear to be trying to avoid reading merely for practice. When children read, they do it for a purpose; and they read often. As a result, many children are having opportunities to discover by reading that books have information for them, information that is interesting and that will help them to do the thing they want to do or to understand something that has baffled them. For example, there are the South Dakota children reading to learn more about the flowers of their community-reading and looking at pictures and comparing them with the real flowers; the Ohio children studying about agricultural wealth of South Africa, which they had once thought to be rich only because of its diamonds; the Kentucky children in a rural school reading about strawberry growing which they wanted to develop as a means of raising money.

In the third grade of a Massachusetts school, it is the job of the pupils to receive the school mail, glance at the letters, and put them in different piles for the teachers. Different committees attend to this work from week to week, learning through this practical experience that knowing how to read is important.

An Oklahoma second grade had a project called "Cookie Making." As part of this project, they prepared a lunch for their parents. The plan involved studying recipes, learning how to spell certain words, deciding what kind of cookies to make, and finally making the cookies. In addition to reading, the project gave the children experience in using spelling and arithmetic.

Reading for Pleasure and Appreciation

That children are reading for pleasure is obvious from observations by many of the visitors. Children crowded around a bookmobile in Kentucky looking over books to which the teacher called their attention, trying to decide which ones to check out to take home for themselves and whether or not certain other books were the ones their parents wanted. Children in Connecticut returned library books to one of the neighborhood mothers who was helping receive books for the week, and asked if they might take others their teacher or a pupil had recommended for use in school or at home. North Dakota children were encouraged to take home for reading, if they wished, not their textbooks, but interesting supplementary books suggested by the teacher.

When encouraged to do so, children gradually learn to find pleasure in reading and to appreciate literature. Third-grade children in the school referred to above sometimes gather around the

teacher and she reads familiar poems that are favorites with the children or new poems that she thinks the children will enjoy. On a wall chart is a list of favorite poems to which the boys and girls add titles from day to day. On another chart the boys and girls write the names of books they like. A Vermont teacher in oral reading now and then calls the children's attention to colorful expressions in a story or asks them to look for turning points in the narrative. They discuss ways in which the author creates atmosphere.

A California school helps children form small groups when they read for pleasure or fun. The teacher encourages the children to read with the children they like to be with and to learn to know and to like more people. She believes that "To be with the people you want to be with makes a good feeling." She tells the children to think of ways of telling others about the books they have read as individuals. They consider telling about the stories, reading part of the stories, and dramatizing skits from the book. Once they decided that reading a part of the book was the least successful way of letting others know about it. "Telling about a book is better than reading, if you don't tell too much," one said. Teacher and children also work for tactful ways of evaluating the reading done in groups. Once they decided, for example, that it was a good idea for the chairman to ask a reporter such questions as:

What character appealed to you?

Did you think the book was true to life?
What do you think others in the group might
like about the book?

Organizing Reference Materials

Skill in organizing reference materials helps anyone get more out of reading. In a library project in Colorado fourth-grade children collected and painted orange crates and apple boxes. Out of these the boys and girls make sections for books, arranged so as to form a nook apart from the main classroom. The material placed in the library consisted of textbooks, supplementary books, general information books and bulletins, children's current events papers, children's encyclopedias, books of fiction, and magazine articles, and exhibits. The boys and girls classified the materials and made cards, giving particular attention to materials on their State, Colorado, which they were studying at the time. They discussed ways of using the library and made rules for study and for borrowing books to use in the library or to take home. The activity