Teaching+Reading+&+Comprehension

=Teaching Reading and Comprehension =

When learning to read, Marmaduke Monkey must take on four roles that the teacher helps him with and guides him through. These four roles are code breaker, meaning maker, text user and text critic (Freebody & Luke 1990, cited in, Hill 2006). **Code Breaker ** Marmaduke Monkey uses his knowledge of phonics to “crack the code” to understand the meaning, which mean he has to employ his knowledge of the alphabetic principle, phonemic awareness and letter knowledge (Hill, 2006, p.174). An activity that could help this skill to develop is substituting final consonants (Hill, 2006, p.186). Using beginning letter pairs, for instance ‘si’, Marmaduke Monkey has to construct as many different real words as he can by using the letters of the alphabet. So he will find that ending consonants such as p,r,t and x will create real words. **Meaning Maker ** Marmaduke Monkey reads to understand (Hill, 2006, p.175). Through illustrations and letters he tries to create the meaning of the text and the teacher can guide him by prompting him with questions relating to the text or the pictures or drawing on his own personal experiences. By asking literal, interpretive and inferential questions, the teacher can begin to assess his comprehension of the story. **Text User ** Marmaduke Monkey uses the purpose of the genre or form of the book to decide how he will read the book. If it is a recount, his purpose will be to tell the audience what happened and he will read it accordingly. For the teacher, this means teaching children the features of different text types, their purposes and allowing the children to experiment with the different genres themselves (Hill 2006, p175). **Text Critic ** Marmaduke Monkey employs his critical thinking skills to interpret the texts meaning and the author’s purpose for writing and their decisions. He thinks about how the story made him feel and the teacher must give him the tools, such as prompting questions, so that he can discover the ultimate message the text is trying to get across to him. In a typical reading lesson, it is important for the teacher to ask questions before, during and after reading (Hill, 2006, p.176). Before reading, this is done by talking about the vocabulary that might be encountered in the book, and asking for ideas about the meaning of the text using the front cover and title as a basis. During reading, questions relating to the meaning, syntax and visual cues of words can help Marmaduke Monkey to build on his problem solving skills. By using visual, structural, semantic and phonological cues together, he can begin to construct meaning from the text. After reading, activities that draw on words, sentences and meanings they encountered in the book, students can practice and consolidate their reading and comprehension skills. Through the experience of having books read to him often, Marmaduke Monkey will begin to investigate the concept of print, which can be developed in many ways. Teaching him to write his name, making his own books and introducing him to sentence stems and the way we make sentences, are all ways that he can develop his knowledge of print and aid him in his ability to read.