READING TIPS: Emerging readers
Adapted from an email sent to a friend.
Her child knows all letter sounds, recognises numerous sight-words (high-frequency words), and can decode most unknown words independently aka is an Emerging Reader.
The Emerging Reader fits snuggly between Beginning and Fluent Readers. Occasionally they need support with decoding strategies. They can also be challenged with deeper discussions about the text.
They benefit with teaching approaches from both levels.
If you haven’t seen it, here are some tips for teaching for beginning readers.
Reading strategies to help your child at this level:
Activate prior knowledge and
Make connections
Ask questions
Draw inferences
Make predictions
Reread to clarify mistakes and enhance understanding
Visualise
Summarise
1. Activate prior knowledge and make connections
Good readers gain a deeper understanding of text by tapping into their existing knowledge about a subject or theme.
What are some things to be careful of when you’re in a playground?
(activate prior knowledge)
How?
Before reading, activate prior knowledge by asking what your child already knows about the subject. To identify the subject look at:
The title and cover image,
Browsing the pictures in the book, or
Reading the blurb.
2. Make connections
Good readers increase comprehension by connecting with a text. They recognise ways the subject, themes, characters, settings (etc) of a story mirror experiences they’ve had.
Have you learned to tie your shoelaces? What’s it like trying to learn?
(Making connections)
How?
Encourage your child to share their personal connections with a text. If your child needs prompting, ask what the story or main character (etc) reminds them of. Your child might connect this to a personal experience, another book (or movie) or something in the wider world.
Share your connections to the text at times too - this highlights the fact that everyone has different connections/experiences - and all are valid and valuable.
Giving children the space to share their connections, not only allows them to connect with the text, but also validates and empowers them and their unique view on the world.
3. Asks questions
Good readers can formulate questions to extend their knowledge and understanding. This can be done anytime i.e before, during and after reading.
What would you be curious to ask the girl in this photo?
(asking questions)
How?
There’s not such a thing as a stupid question. Celebrate and encourage all questions and if some weren’t answered during the course of reading, maybe do some research afterwards to answer them together.
4. Draws inferences
Good readers can make inferences about what the author is trying to say by reading between the lines.
How can we tell what time of day it is in this picture?
(INferRing knowledge)
How?
Simply asking ‘how do you know xyz?’ will help your child explain inferences in the text. I’d ask - what do you think the author is trying to say.
5. Makes predictions
Good readers make predictions, before and during reading, to reinforce the purpose of a text, and increase their engagement with it.
What do you think might happen next?
(making predictions)
How?
Look at the cover page (title and image) and ask your child what they think the story might be about. You can also pause close to the end of the story, to ask how they think they story might end.
What’s important is not that predictions are right, but that your child can justify their answer i.e. ‘Why do you think that?’
6. Rereads for clarity & fixing errors
Good readers make sure what they are reading makes sense. They will stop and reread if they are confused, and clarify the meaning of unknown words.
That didn’t sound right to me - let’s try to read that sentence again.
(Rereading to fix mistakes)
How?
There are two kinds of mistakes when reading.
Ones that effect the meaning of a sentence.
Ones that don’t.
i.e. Take the sentence: ‘The panic-sticken woman hurried to the shop’. If a child read this as: ‘The panic-stricken woman hurried to the store’, I wouldn’t stop to point out this mistake. The child read words with a higher degree of difficulty - and the word they substituted is semantically correct (i.e. makes sense).
However, when a child makes a mistake during reading, that alters the meaning of the text, or skip a sentence all together - I’d prompt them to reread. i.e. if they read the above example as, ‘The panic-stricken woman hopped to the shop’, I would then pause to ask, hmmm - I’m not sure that made sense, can you try that sentence again.
Balance out development of confidence and fluency, by focusing on the mistakes that matter.
Making mistakes is how students (and all of us!) learn, but sadly, somewhere in their learning journey, children start to feel bad for making a mistake. When reading, making a mistake, identifying this error, and fixing it themselves, is a high-level thinking and reading skill and should be celebrated as such.
“It’s great you went back over that text, because good readers can identify when text doesn’t make sense and reread!”
6. Visualise
As they read, good readers see pictures - i.e. a movie reel playing in their head (or use other senses). This helps them connect more deeply to what they are reading.
When you read about the boys walk home from school, what pictures did you have in your head?
(visualising)
How?
Encourage your child to share the pictures they see after reading a descriptive part of the text. A verbal description is sufficient - but if they enjoy art, and you’re looking for an extension activity - they could also draw this too. After reading you could even act out a scene if you wanted - for fun!
7. Summarise
Good readers can retell information in their own words. They can recall facts and details and identify the important parts of the story.
What happened when the family went to the playground
(Summarising)
How?
There are lots of ways to do this.
You could ask your child:
to retell the key parts of the story in a chronological order.
to come up with a headline or new title for the story.
to describe the main character in detail, and how they felt at certain points in the story
About the time together.
Working one-to-one with your child during a reading lesson means you can structure the time the way you think is best.
Here’s how that might look:
1. Listen to him read each page aloud. This lets you check in with his expression, fluency and decoding strategies and provide timely feedback and support.
2. Share the reading i.e. each read a page, or he reads two, and you one... This is good if your child is feeling tired, and it’s also a good chance for you to model effective reading strategies such as reading with expression.
3. Both read a few pages silently and then discuss.
4. A combination of the above! :-)
Balance out the times when you pause (to discuss the text) with letting the story flow (to develop reading fluency and enjoyment!). Don’t feel you have to stop after each page, but rather at times when you see the opportunity for meaningful discussion/feedback.
You can promote deeper level thinking skills and connection with text by weaving one or two strategies into your next reading lesson. I hope it won’t feel like a lesson - but rather an interesting discussion that you both really enjoy.
X
Disclaimer: There isn’t a ‘one way’, or ‘right way’, or even the ‘best way’ to teach reading. This is simply part of how I’ve approached teaching reading to emerging readers over the years. I tested kids regularly, so they always had books at their correct level, and by using this approach, the development across the cohort was faster than standard norms. If you have any questions, please email me at jess@myfamilyinphotos.com