HOW TO TEACH " READING " TO YOUNG LEARNERS?

   Hi everyone! Today, I would like to focus on " reading " for our young learners. How can we teach reading to our pupils? What can we do for that? How can our pupils like to read? What are the reading strategies that we can benefit from?

   In this post, I am going to try to answer all these questions written above and I am very sure that you will feel sure after you read this informative sharing that belongs to me. :) Let's start then! 

   Firstly, I really want to underline something. If you think that your pupils should read texts aloud, will you be right or wrong? What do you think about that? ;) Let's try to give an accurate answer to this question then! 

   Most of us know reading aloud is a very common practice in class and it should not be encouraged because ;

• reading is a skill which is silent and teachers should promote " silent reading " in the classroom. In this case, if you think that your students should read aloud, then you will be wrong.
• reading aloud is a " scary " thing to do. Let's give an informative example for this explanation! For instance ; you have a student in your classroom. Her name is Sofia and you ask Sofia to stand up and start reading a short story in front of her peers. Can you predict or imagine her situation in this case? You want her to read the story aloud in front of the class. As a result of this, she may feel unsecure and scared. She may be afraid of making a mistake. Maybe, she will pronounce a word in a wrong way and her friends will laugh at her. You see all these possibilities need to be taken into account by us. That is why, I always say that reading aloud means " taking risks ".
• one can read aloud without understanding. If you let your students " read silently ", they will understand the text itself more easily as the information that they try to understand will go to their brains directly.

   SO, HOW DO WE TEACH " READING " ?

• The first thing that we need to do is to prepare our pupils for the content of the text that they're going to read. How can you do that, though? You can benefit from visuals. Benefiting from visuals / pictures is the first way of preparing your students or scaffolding the reading process. Especially in the early books, feel free to discuss the pictures that accompany the text before starting to read! By the way, I suggest you to be careful with your visuals / pictures because they had better be colorful and striking. Otherwise, they will not attract attention by your pupils.

• You can also get your students to think of some of the vocabulary items that will appear in the text. 
• Also, I can suggest you to ask some questions related to the topic of the story so as to prepare the children for reading the story. For example ; if you give a story about circus, you can ask some sort of engrossing questions like " Have you ever been to a circus? What things might you see at a circus? What things might you hear at a circus? etc. ". Those kind of warm - up questions will help your pupils to predict about the topic of the given story.
• In advance, you can elicit some of the key words that the children will meet in the text. Such a thing provides your students to read the text with ease. 
• Of course, you need to encourage and hearten your pupils to discuss the questions with their partners, either in pairs or in small groups, before having a class - wide discussion. As long as your students share their own ideas with one another, they will be able to hear new ideas which can inspire them. In short, your students will interact using English, which this means that their speaking and expressing abilities will improve.
• There is also something that the weaker students in your class gain confidence through such informal discussions. You can socialize those kind of students by incorporating such activities. ( Self - confidence ) 

   Now, I want to give some recommended advices to be followed for reading :

1. As teachers, you should read the text aloud slowly and clearly, while the class follows silently in their own books.
2. You can ask your pupils to read the text silently once again and then complete the questions. As I told you before, your students can work in pairs or small groups. Just let them work together! Such a togetherness makes them motivated and strong.
3. Then, you can go over the answers with your pupils. NEVER forget to give your pupils a chance in order to answer the question (s) ! Wait for their answers first! If he / she does not give the correct answer, ask one of his / her friends in class! If nobody finds or knows the correct answer, then you can say the correct answer as a teacher of them. 
4. You can continue through the other questions in the same way.

NOTE : If suitable, you can ask your students to read the text aloud once they have completed all the questions and are familiar with the text so as to find specific bits of information. 

NOTE 2 : It is also important that children begin to learn how to summarize a story or poem. Towards the end of the course, you can ask your pupils to summarize the given text. Namely, you can let them summarize the text as a post - writing activity. You can ask your students to summarize the text itself with their own words and sentences.