School of Thought

Cracking the Code

  

Tweet  

  

  

 delicious  

  

Cracking the Code
Danielle Mele, Clinical Director of Assessment

Decoding strange symbols and deciphering messages embedded within them sounds like a job for an anthropologist or an explorer that is on an expedition deep in the jungle amid ancient ruins.  However, in truth, millions of children embark upon this journey on a daily basis when they enter their classrooms and are asked to perform what many adults misperceive as a simple task: to read.  So in honor of our young explorers that bravely venture into arduous territory on a daily basis I present to you four outposts along the twisted trail to successful reading.  Everyone grab your secret decoder rings and press forward into the thick.

Staring the Voyage: Reading starts with hearing.  Phonemic awareness or the ability to hear and to manipulate the 44 phonemes (sounds) in the English language is an important part of learning to read.  Children begin to develop this skill before they even enter school.  Rhyming is an example of an activity that promotes phonemic awareness.  Now, this doesn’t mean that people who have difficulty with hearing in general or with phonemic awareness cannot learn to read, but it is usually much more difficult for them.

Tracking Down the Alphabetic Principle: The alphabetic principle involves understanding that words are made up of letters and that letters are associated with sounds.  Once a child has a basic understanding of this they can begin to decode words for the purposes of reading and spelling.  This typically emerges during the first grade.  Readers in this stage of development often read slowly and laboriously as they sound out each individual sound in every word.

Gliding Swiftly & Smoothly Down the River:  Reading fluency is the next marker on the trail.  After a great deal of practice, decoding those once foreign symbols becomes automatic so children can read easily with few errors.  Children who read fluently recognize many words, which allows them to read them without being bogged down by decoding. 

Reaching Our Destination: Reading for Meaning: People write to convey messages and meaning and people read in order to receive those messages, which makes reading comprehension the final outpost of our journey.  Children first understand what individual words mean and then they derive meaning from sequences of words, sentences, paragraphs, and whole passages.  Once students are able to read a text, understand what it says, and reflect on the content and meaning then they have emerged from the madness of their long and perilous safari as a successful reader.        

So, there you have it, four stops along the road to reading.  However, more often than not our young adventurers encounter pitfalls and take unintended detours along the way.  What are some of the challenges you or someone you know have faced during their journey?

Chesapeake Bay Academy: Reading issues: wavy.com