Depаrtment оf the english lаnguаge аnd literаture cоurse wоrk оn theme: “Develоping students' cоmpetencies thrоugh brоаd reаding”

1.2 Instructional strategies to teach reading
1. Phonics instruction: Phonics is a method of teaching reading that focuses on the relationship between sounds and letters. This strategy teaches students to decode words by sounding out individual letters or groups of letters.
2. Guided reading: In this strategy, teachers work with small groups of students to read and discuss a text together. Teachers provide support and guidance as students learn to read more complex texts.
3. Shared reading: Shared reading is a strategy in which teachers read aloud to students while pointing out key elements of the text, such as vocabulary, grammar, and plot structures. This helps students develop comprehension skills and understand how language works.
4. Independent reading: Independent reading allows students to choose their own books and read them at their own pace. This strategy encourages a love of reading and helps build fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension skills.
5. Reading aloud: Reading aloud is an effective way for teachers to model good reading habits for their students. It also helps improve listening skills, comprehension, vocabulary development, and overall literacy skills.
6. Vocabulary instruction: Vocabulary instruction involves teaching students new words through explicit instruction, context clues, word analysis strategies, or vocabulary games. This helps improve comprehension skills and overall literacy development.
7. Comprehension strategies: Comprehension strategies include predicting outcomes, summarizing information, making connections between text and prior knowledge, asking questions about the text, visualizing the information presented in the text among others.
8. Graphic organizers are also effective tools for teaching reading as they help organize information visually for better understanding.
9. Technology-based instructional strategies like online learning programs can also be used for teaching reading where learners interact with digital texts using various interactive features such as videos or audio recordings.
Overall, there are many instructional strategies available to teachers that can help improve student's literacy skills in all aspects of reading including decoding words accurately; fluently; understanding what they are reading; enhancing their vocabulary and comprehension skills.
While there are many instructional strategies for teaching reading, here are 10 of the most trusted amongst educators and reading specialists.
1. Assess Student Ability First 
Begin the school year by getting a baseline reading of each student’s current reading level. This will help you to A: Understand the abilities(s) that you are working with and how to group students (which is another effective instructional strategy) and B: Determine what reading strategies and tools will work best for each student’s individual needs.
2. Choral Reading/Partner Reading
Choral reading is an exercise where the teacher and class read a text aloud together in unison. This allows struggling readers to still participate in the practice of reading without embarrassment, and it has been shown to improve fluency and confidence. Partner reading is a small version of choral reading, where students are grouped together to read a text aloud with a partner, alternating sentences or paragraphs. 
3. Use Visual Aids
This practice is aimed at improving students’ reading comprehension more than their actual reading ability, but comprehension is a key element in overall reading skill. Many educators find that using visual tools like graphic organizers to help students break down the text they are reading helps make it more digestible and easily understood. These can be completed individually or in a group brainstorm session, which helps readers see different perspectives and deepen their comprehension. 
4. Assign Reading Buddies Across Ages & Grades
Think of this like a mentorship program, where older students with demonstrable reading abilities are paired up with younger, new readers to help them improve. Younger readers get to see high-level reading modeled by the older student, and the older students learn the valuable skills of mentorship, patience and how to give direction. What’s more, if there are older students who are struggling with reading at their grade level, a reading buddy program would allow them to be exposed to more approachable reading materials with the younger student, only helping to build their confidence and ability. 
5. Implement Audiobooks 
Using audiobooks while reading — also known as ear reading — is a great way to assist struggling readers. While this shouldn’t be your primary practice, using audiobooks in conjunction with focused phonics instruction has been proven to help students improve their reading accuracy. And that benefit applies to students across all abilities and skill levels.
6. Teach Academic English
To teach academic English means teaching general and domain-specific vocabulary in accordance with a subject or unit. While vocabulary is sometimes thought of as separate from reading instruction, it is actually an integral part in improving reading abilities. This has been a proven tactic especially for English language learners, but these practices help readers of all levels and backgrounds.
7. Have Students Summarize What They Read
As a quick comprehension check, try asking students to write a brief paragraph summary of what they just read, immediately after they complete the reading task. Writing summaries helps them to break down large concepts, focus on the most important details and retain what they read. If a whole paragraph is too much for some students, getting a simple who, what, when, where, why and how explanation is an equally effective tactic.³
8. Expose Students to Different Discourse Patterns
Most academic reading is in the form of narrative discourse, and it is what most students are familiar and comfortable with. To help expose them to different types of text and diversify their skills, introduce alternative discourse patterns in the form of an article or a personal letter. These are comprehension abilities they will need to have and will support their ability to read and understand narrative writing as well.
9. Let Students Choose the Books They Read
Students are much more likely to be excited to read when they get the opportunity to read about something they’re interested in. Curate a short list of options for students and let them pick — this will improve their engagement and create enthusiasm about reading. 
10. Have Students Read the Same Content Multiple Times
As they say, practice makes perfect, and that rings true for reading too. Formally, this practice is known as fluency-oriented reading instruction (FORI) and calls for students to read the same text multiple times in different settings — silently, out loud, in pairs, in groups, solo, etc. This helps students improve their pronunciation and comprehension and solidifies the skills they are learning in individualized reading instruction.
Literacy teaching and learning are core responsibilities of teachers and schools. Yet teaching reading and writing is a complex and highly skilled professional activity. Many young learners start school with little knowledge about how to read and write. Teachers are tasked with helping children to bridge the significant gap between linking their written and spoken language. Learning to read is critical, with research showing that reading for pleasure can:
Promote improved health and wellbeing
Help build social connections and relationships
Increase the chances of social mobility.
Literacy development is an evolving and non-linear process that encompasses foundational skills (phonemic awareness), word recognition, reading fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension.
Learning to read should include exposure to a wide variety of exciting books from different genres. Students should also experience reading through different mediums, such as interactive apps and web content.
Here are 10 strategies you can use to support your students in developing their reading skills and boosting comprehension.
1. Read aloud to students
Read-aloud regularly in the classroom and encourage parents to do the same at home. Reading aloud has many benefits for students, including improving comprehension, building listening skills, and broadening their vocabulary development.
2. Provide opportunities for students to read, write, and talk about texts
Regularly giving students time to read, write, and talk about texts can enhance their skill development across multiple areas. For instance, reading more helps you become a better writer. By talking about texts and hearing the perspectives of classmates, young children also have the opportunity to deepen their comprehension. Encourage parents to further engage young readers by asking them to help their child attack difficult words and ask questions about the text that will promote discussions.
3. Read texts repeatedly to support fluency
Allow students to read the same texts multiple times. By doing this, they not only build fluency but also build confidence. The more confident they become in their reading skills, the more likely they will enjoy reading.
4. Teach children the tools to figure out words they don’t know
Teaching students to read for the ultimate goal of producing independent readers begins by explicitly teaching the code we use to decode words. That starts with teaching phonemic awareness.
Here are some other strategies that support phonics instruction:
For beginning readers, target words that are decodable. These are regular spellings with regular sounds.
Sound out each phoneme and blend as you go by going back to the first sound everytime a sound is added. Hold the sound (sing) then add the next sound.
Note: Students may want to look at pictures for context, but this does not help them decode words. As we encourage students to read more difficult texts, they won’t have pictures to rely on, so encourage them not to use the pictures to decode difficult words.
As an elementary teacher, you can support the families of your young students by sharing phonics resources. By providing parents with practical resources, you are setting them up for a productive and positive reading experience with their child.
5. Provide time for studying spoken language, including vocabulary and spelling
A comprehensive approach to teaching reading also includes providing time to develop complementary skills, such as:
Spoken language, including through conversation or oral presentations
Vocabulary, such as building class lists while reading texts
Spelling
Grammar, such as through bite-sized video content like the Grammar Miniclips series.
6. Use prior knowledge to make connections
Each student brings unique prior knowledge to their reading education. This knowledge is the sum of all experiences they bring to the reading or viewing of a text. This could include personal experiences, cultural or religious experiences and concept knowledge. Prior knowledge helps young readers infer meaning from text, a skill recognized as a predictor of reading comprehension at various developmental stages and one of the drivers of sophisticated reading ability. An early reader can activate prior knowledge and make connections at each stage.
Before reading, they could ask ‘What do I already know about this topic?’
During reading, they could reflect ‘This part of the text is just like…’
After reading, they could offer ‘I know more about this topic now.’
7. Predict
Prediction is about anticipation and working out the actions and ideas coming next. An early reader can use prediction at each stage of reading.
Before reading, they could suggest ‘From the cover, I think this book will be about…’
During reading, they could predict which word comes next in a sentence.
After reading, they could comment on whether their predictions were correct.
8. Visualize
Visualizing combines using your senses and activating prior knowledge to create a mental picture. Ask students to create a “mind movie.” Young readers, especially with a teacher or parent prompting, can draw on their senses to imagine smells, sounds, tastes, and images that go with the story they are reading – like a show or movie in their mind.⁴
9. Summarize
Teaching students to recall the main points or ideas of a story is not easy. First, they need to be able to put the story in order, then put it in their own words before they can articulate a ‘summing up’ of the author’s main ideas. To start to learn to summarize, young students can practice:

1. 
   Selecting the key words from a paragraph
   
2. 
   Locating the topic sentence (often found at the start or end of a paragraph)
   
3. 
   Responding to general questions about a story
   
4. 
   Talking through the story in their own words