Pre Reading

Listening To Reading

By Phil Builder

Before reading
During reading

For more information about this topic
see Reading Assessment

Do you hate listening to your child read? Do you approach the daily reading session as a test to see whether their reading is still as bad or as good as it was yesterday? Do you help or 'rescue' your child every time he/she has a problem? Do you have a fight on your hands every time you try to get your son or daughter to read to you? Does every reading session end up in tears for one or both of you? Does the session end when your child decides? If you answer 'yes' to any of these then you need to know more about listening to reading. Your life is about to change!

Before Reading

This is the most important part of the whole process because this is your chance to make sure that your child will read well today. Follow the steps for Book Orientation below. The goal is to do just enough, but not too much to support their reading, so that your child will read well, with normal problems to solve, and finish the session feeling very satisfied with themselves. When finished they should feel confident that they can solve any reading problem at any time.

Book Orientation

You will need to choose slightly different strategies depending on the reader's level of experience. The success of the following strategies depends upon your choice of books to read.

For
Beginning readers

The goal here is for children to memorise the words, learn about the story, and understand the pictures.

read the book to the child/children while running your finger under the words
talk about the characters, the actions, etc. and what is happening in the pictures
demonstrate how the words are related to the pictures
check the text for terms which the child won't know and point these out by using the words yourself to show what they mean
eg. 'giant', 'grain', 'sidewalk'
read the book together a second time, again running your finger under the words, or encouraging the child to do so
Now it is the child's turn to read the book.

Support if necessary by helping them use all the cues available for recalling the story such as

looking at the pictures to say what is happening
restarting the page or story to recover their place or remember the words
rereading a bit for them - to prompt their memory
reading on - past their problems
using initial letters to identify or guess words

For Readers
with one to three years' experience

The goal here is for the children to understand the whole story and to read aloud on rehearsed text.

read the first part of the book to them
look through the whole book discussing the rest of the story, characters, actions, etc
ask questions to encourage them to make predictions about what is happening on each page (eg. 'What do you think the giant will do now?')
allow time for the child to read the book to him/herself (rehearsing).
They can then read to you.

For Readers
with more than three years' experience

The goal here is to help the person be alert to, and have an opinion of what the book is about so that this information helps with predicting meaning and solving problems. You can help with anticipating or predicting this from the title, pictures, or 'blurb'.

check out a new book by working together to try to anticipate what it is about
or check that the reader understands or remembers what has happened up to this point
the reader reads silently through the pages to be read to you
check if there were any problems and discuss how they were overcome.
begin listening to a sample of reading when the person is ready

That's right, you are always listening to reading that has been rehearsed.

If you doubt the validity of this consider how many times you read difficult and unseen material to a critical audience!

Would you get up and read in church to the full congregation without rehearsing beforehand?

If your child is still having difficulty reading - the problem is yours. You need to do the Book Orientation or Rehearsal better, or differently, so that the child has more information before they read.

You must be prepared to do enough before reading to ensure that the child reads successfully, or get someone else to do it!

Clarify your expectations so that the child knows what is acceptable to you

At the beginning you need to have a little talk about reading with all children.
Make sure that they understand these key ideas:

Everyone makes 'mistakes' when they read.
When people read faster they make more mistakes, but that's OK.
Mistakes should be corrected when you realise they have happened.
There are good mistakes and bad mistakes.
'Good' mistakes are those that sound right, while 'bad' mistakes are those that don't make sense.
You are allowed to 'guess', look at the pictures, and have another go if you can't get it.

Demonstrate how people normally read
Clarify your expectations by reading to them and showing them how you make changes when you read.

Demonstrate the difference between 'good' and 'bad' mistakes.

Demonstrate miscues which are acceptable and those that aren't. The test for this is simply whether you can hear whether a word/phrase does/doesn't make sense or maintain the meaning.

Example of Acceptable miscues	Examples of Unacceptable miscues
'a' in place of 'the' eg. The horse/a horse bolted down the street	'they' in place of 'the' eg. They horse/the horse bolted down the street
'house' for 'home' or 'shack' eg.That is my house/home/shack.	'horse' for 'house' eg. I rode my horse/house down the street.
'You can't go over/on my bridge'	'You can/can't go over my/me bridge.
'Mr Wolf was so frightened/scared , he got up and ran for his life'	'He was/saw so frightened, he got up and ran/rain for his life'

Show children how to predict or 'guess'

I prefer the word 'predict' to 'guess', but all children understand 'guess'. Guessing really means using the meaning to predict what is coming next.

To demonstrate how they can predict words without seeing the text read a familiar passage aloud, and stop at crucial words so that they can guess them.
This is good fun and teaches them to listen to the meaning!

Try it out for yourself.

eg. Once upon a ______ there were three _____ pigs.

Next read an unfamiliar passage and do the same thing.

eg. One day the school caught on fire and the red fire-____ came and ___ the ____ ___.

When doing it with your children show them the words later to prove how clever they are. They can read words that they can't even see!

This is the same strategy they need to use when reading a problem word, but it is sometimes a disadvantage for them to see the word because they may be led by the visual information they get from it. (eg. 'Come' 'what' 'one') If they try to decode these they will be in trouble with the sounds.

What to say

First, listen and respond to the reading performance. You are the audience!

The feedback you give, and how you give it plays an important role in building future attitudes to reading.

You should not be saying things like:

'Wrong!'
'That's not the word!'
'Its home, not house.'
'Spell that word.'
'Sound it out.'
'Another mistake!'
'You knew it yesterday!'

'That's stupid!'

'Stop crying!'

'Don't throw
the book!'

You should be saying things like:

'Good try. Keep going!'
'Did that sound sensible to you?'
'I couldn't understand that bit! Try it again.'
'That makes sense.'
'That was really good how you went back to fix that!'
'I like the way you corrected yourself!
'You solved heaps of problems today.'
'I enjoy listening to your reading.'
'That was fun.'

What to teach

Teach children to use
these strategies

Say these things

Secondly, teach your child to use these strategies.

Strategies are ways to solve problems.

It is not your task to actually solve the problems, but to direct the child to use a strategy that will work for them when you are not there.

Strategy 1: Correct a word if it doesn't sound right to you.

Strategy 2: Guess a word to keep the reading going.

Strategy 3: Substitute a word with another word of similar meaning to keep the reading going.

Strategy 4: Leave the word out and continue reading.

Strategy 5: Read on past an unknown word to find more clues.

Strategy 6: Re-read a section to work out its meaning.

'Did that sound sensible to you?'
or 'I didn't understand that!'

'Don't sound it! Have a guess!'
'Cover it, guess what it should be.'

'Can you say a different word?'
'What else would make sense?'

'Miss it and keep going.'

'Read on to the end of the sentence and then go back to that word.'

'You need to sort this out. Go back and read it from the beginning.' or
'I'll come back later when you've had a chance to read it to yourself and sort it out on your own.'

	Don't fall into these traps
	Sounding out words	Sounding out words is a great skill to have but not a great thing to do when reading. It doesn't work on all words, and it slows down the reading and causes the child to lose meaning.
	Continually providing the words	If you provide the answers for your children they will become dependent on you to keep on doing it, and won't learn how to do it for themselves. What will they do when you are not there? Find ways to do the pre-reading preparation better, and teach them to solve their own problems.
	Solving too many problems	If you find that you do have to solve a problem or two to keep the reading going, think about how you might improve the Book Orientation or Rehearsal next time so that your child has more information and can read it unaided.
	Holding the book and pointing for them	This is the child's responsibility. Give back control.
	Too much oral reading	Short sessions are better than longer ones. Two to five minutes is long enough. Remember that we are really teaching children to read silently, not aloud. As they get older we don't need to hear them read so often, and smaller samples are better. Talking about what they are reading silently is much more informative anyway because you can soon detect whether they are understanding the book. If they understand it then they must be reading it well!