How can we teach all children to read accurately, rapidly, and with comprehension by the end of third grade? The five essential components of effective reading instruction represent ingredients that must be present in order for children to learn to read. Effective teachers know how to blend these ingredients in the right proportions to meet the unique needs of each child. They understand the roles of phonemic awareness and phonics in building word-recognition skills, and they know how to identify and correct students’ weaknesses in these areas. They also know that these two foundational components will receive less emphasis as students gain competence as readers. Effective teachers know how fluency facilitates comprehension, and they know how to use research-based strategies for helping students become fluent readers. These teachers are continually building each student’s vocabulary and the ability to learn the meanings of new words through a variety of word-learning strategies. Finally, they know that comprehension is the ultimate goal of reading instruction, and they are adept at helping students learn to apply appropriate comprehension strategies as they read. Those who accept the responsibility for teaching children to read understand that it includes a commitment to continually search for more effective ways to help children gain competence in this very important skill. An in-depth understanding of these components will enable teachers to plan an effective program of reading instruction, diagnose reading difficulties and provide instruction that targets those difficulties effectively, evaluate reading materials and instructional practices, and help others become more effective teachers of reading.
What I Believe.
I’m a firm believer in the idea that what’s good for students is good for teachers as well. If we say, for instance, that students benefit from having choices and a sense of ownership, I think the same should hold true for teachers. If students deserve time to experiment, practice and sometimes even fail as part of the process of learning, then teachers deserve that time, too. And if we think that students learn best when they’re also given opportunities to wrestle with problems in an active, inquiry-based way, then teachers need those opportunities, too, in order to more deeply understand their students, what to teach and how to best teach it. I, too, believe that empowering teachers as researchers and learners is the real secret to student success, whether it’s at the school or district level or, as most happens in my own work, at the classroom, grade or discipline level. And that means that whenever I have the opportunity, I get teachers reading and writing—and talking about their own process—to better understand from the inside-out what they’re asking students to do and how they, as learners, do it.