Integrated Reading Program For Primary Teachers

Integrated Reading Program
For Primary Teachers

By Rozina Jumani

http://www.starteaching.com/RozinaJumani.htm

Reading is vital to all learning; it plays an important role in the child’s learning process, as it is one of the key ways of learning. It is an essential skill to be acquired by children and also a basic skill that influences other skills like writing, spelling, vocabulary, punctuation etc. unless they are able to read, they will not understand and comprehend the text. Although, reading and understanding go together as it makes the learning process more effective and meaningful but there comes the role of teachers along with those instructional strategies through which all children eventually comprehend the text, no matter how difficult the text would be. The selections of appropriate activities that can play a key role in facilitating students understand the meaning of the text.  

During schooling, I did not understand the purpose of reading, it was activity for me like other instructional activities when teachers asked us in the classroom to read and then follow questions/exercises at the end of the text, and I used to take reading activity as fun. Richards, J.C (1997) shared the reasons for reading, he mentioned, “there are three major reasons for preparing students to read: (1) to establish a purpose for reading a given text, (2) to activate existing knowledge about the topic and thus get more out of reading the text, and (3) to establish realistic expectations about what is in the text and thus read more effectively (pp.64) 

As a language teacher, the study helped me to revisit my teaching experience; I went through my previous experiences. I reflected on the phase I of my teaching career there I continued what I learned as students and then phase II of my professional when for the first time I enrolled for a language course, I reviewed my teaching practices and took appropriate actions to teach language in a better way. I also requested my Coordinator to provide reflection and feedback about my lesson plans and classroom practices, as I was novice in the teaching profession. 

As a Teacher Educator, I continued working with all teachers whether they were experienced or novice. In our regular monthly meetings we discussed issues related to  classroom teaching syllabus issues, challenges which students faced etc. there we discovered that teachers have to prepare their own reading activities, as they are not provided in the textbooks, I chose this study to review only reading activities in the text books. 

What is reading? 

The ability to read is the remarkable type of expertise most humans develop among themselves. In TESOL journal, reading is defined as follows:

“Reading is acquiring information from a written or printed text and relating it to what already know to construct a meaning for the text as a whole” (pp..6). 

According to Grabe and Stroller (2002), Reading is an ability to draw meaning from the printed page and interpret this information appropriately.

Even Gough, Hoover and Peterson (1996), view that skilled reading requires decoding and comprehension. That student who cannot read it means they cannot decode and comprehend either. For sufficient reading s/he must know both decoding and comprehension. 
 

Models of Reading 

As for as the models of reading are concerned Eskey (2002) is of the opinion, scholars have developed various models of reading process. Model based on the idea that reading is just taking meaning from the text are calledbottom-up model. Models based on the idea that reading is directed by the brain and that the brain makes predictions about the meaning of the text and confirm these predications are called top down model. Models based on the idea that reading is best thought of combining information from the text with knowledge supplied by brain are called interactive model.  

Pre, While and Post Reading Activities 

Bernhardt (1991) says, reading as an interactive process; recommend authentic texts of interest to Students therefore, reading materials in terms of a three-phase approach: pre-reading, while reading and post reading activities. 

Interactive models of reading suggest that readers reconstruct the text information, based on the text, and on the prior knowledge available to them most researchers including Carrell (1998) and Barnett (1989) have emphasized the need for schema activation before reading. Moreover, if students lack the appropriate schemata, they should be given them. Thee are fact, the two main functions of pre-reading activities, which ask for students’ involvement, interest, and motivation basically, they are a means of incorporating the student’s knowledge of the world, their ideas and opinions, before checking them against the text and at the same time, they generate vocabulary on the related topics, this further assist in their vocabulary development. 

Pre-reading activities provide opportunities for students to activate their background knowledge; it helps students to establish the purpose for reading. Little (1988) mentioned; an authentic text is one created to fulfill some social purpose in the language community in which it was produced’ (pp.27). Pre-reading activities also encourage the linking of prior knowledge with text. It also allows students to predict about the content and discuss reasons for individual predictions 

Whereas, the main goal of the while reading activities to help students to understand the writer’s purpose, and some time the text structure and content, several techniques help to achieve the goals. While reading activitiescomprises direct reference questions, which mainly practice language, rather then comprehension, since sometimes they can be answered without understanding the text; indirect reference questions, usually employed to recognize text cohesion where the reader has to identify the text the words or pronoun refers to; and inference questions which require an understanding of vocabulary, and make the reader think about eh text; comprehension can be checked and developed eventually. 

While-reading activities help students locate answers, it provides opportunities for students to anticipate ideas, it also encourages students to organize new information and integrate it with old information. Students can summarize the text in their own words.

The post reading activities helps students to merge what they have read and, at the same time, related the text to the students’ experience, knowledge, and opinions etc. Barnett (1989) have proposed different activities, which contribute to the integration of reading with the other language skills, and which are similar to ‘real’ activities performed by readers, such as listening facts, summarizing, describing or providing information, as well as discussion, and writing compositions, new versions, or endings etc.  

The aim of the post-reading activities are to provide a greater amount of activities that help reflect on the texts; as well as a greater variety of creative tasks that help students to relate their experience, views, and knowledge to the texts. The variety of activities can be integrated with other skills in integration of reading with writing so students relate their creativity and imagination to the texts. 

Post-reading activities provide opportunities for students to summarize text in their own words, it encourages them to seek additional information from outside sources. It also develops the link among pre reading and while reading activities and also encourage students to evaluate their predications, purposes and questions, etc. identify main gist of the text, and also provides extension to hands-on-activates that involves students actively in creative endeavors. 

To summarize, individual reading lessons consist of three stages pre, while and post reading activities, that should be connected. Individual reading lessons include activities that prepare students for passage, guide them during their reading and follow up after the reading.