Explaining Reading

Exemplary teacher research has established that explicit teaching plays a vital role in the classroom, with particular benefits for struggling readers. This book is a practical resource for explaining reading to students who do not learn to read easily. Identified are 22 major skills and strategies associated with vocabulary development, comprehension, word recognition and fluency. Ways to explain each skill and strategy are illustrated with abundant concrete examples, which teachers can use as starting points for developing lessons tailored to the needs, strengths and interests of their own students. The book also shows how to move from the teacher's explanations to the student's independent use of new concepts, and how to embed explicit teaching within a context of rich, engaging literacy experiences.

Table of Contents

Part 1. Background to Explaining. The Foundations: A Literate Environment. What is Explanation? What to Explain. How to Explain. Part 2. Examples of How to Explain. Building Word Meaning. Categories of Word Meaning. Using Context to Figure Out Word Meanings. Predicting. Monitoring, Questioning and Repredicting. Imaging. Inferring. Look-Backs as Fix-it Strategy. Main Idea. Summarising. Drawing Conclusions. Evaluating. Synthesizing. Attending to Print Detail. Remembering Sight Words. Phonemic Awareness. Letter-Sound Association . Decoding by Analogy. Context and Phonics in Combination. Structural Analysis. Quick Recognition of Look-Alike Words 11. Intonation and Phrasing Part 3. Conclusion. Decisions, Decisions, Decisions!