Let them Read!

I've been working in education a long time in many roles and lately I've been wondering why don't we let our youngest students read? Sure, we teach reading. We control reading. We supervise reading. What I wonder is during school how much do we let children read?

In one of my jobs we were doing an audit on reading instruction across schools. One of things we asked teachers to do was record how much time during the school day children spent reading. When we met there were lots of questions about what we meant. Was word study reading? Was silent reading counted? People tended to think (with our youngest children) that reading instruction is what we meant. When we clarified by saying how much time do kids in your class have a book in their hands and they are reading. How much of this is uninterrupted or independent of the teacher. Most of the kindergarten and first grade teachers felt the children weren't able to do this type of reading because most of them didn't know how to read yet.

Not every child comes to school with the tools to begin reading. Some developmentally aren't ready, some haven't had any experience with books and text. This shouldn't stand in the way of handing a child a book and saying you can go sit on the rug and read. When he or she responds, "I don't know how to read." you can say, "Just pretend." In most cases the child understands the concept of pretending and will happily sit down with the book and look at pictures. Isn't reading the pictures a form of reading? Sure it is.

Once the child has spent some time with a book have children share what they are reading. This can be in pairs, in a circle, etc. The focus of this is letting others in the community know what is out there and why someone else might enjoy that book. The children will learn to tell about what is in their books by the pictures (and in some cases the words). Great chance for the teacher to see if children are understanding that pictures contain meaning as well as words. If you have a large selection of materials there should be something for every child. Some will gravitate toward nonfiction and some fiction. Some may choose old favorites that they already know. All of these books are for revisiting and sharing. Eventually the child will attempt the words and will have some knowledge of what should be expected by having read the pictures and shared what he/she learned.

This time for reading should be daily and the time expanded as the children mature. The teacher may be stopping by and checking in to show interest and gather data for instruction. The teacher may be running a reading group with a small group. This is definitely a part of a workshop model for reading instruction. No matter what you call your scheduled reading instruction time children should be interacting with books that they are interested in and have chosen. In their same collection of books there may be ones they've used during instruction and are practicing but this time should allow children to choose what they read.

It's important that our youngest children are being given time to read everyday. Don't worry about a book level or whether they can read the words. Give them time to explore with books and pretend. That pretending will lead to reading and the openness to get better because it is something they WANT to do not something they HAVE to do.