Reading

Learning to read accurately and with discrimination becomes increasingly important as pupils move through their education. Pupils should be encouraged to read for enjoyment and, with guidance and support from the teacher, to maintain a personal reading programme. They should be helped to develop their own tastes in imaginative literature and non-fiction and at the same time to gain confidence in speaking and writing about them. To foster this, it is essential that class and school libraries are well-stocked with colourful and interesting reading materials, and that they are themselves attractive places. Teachers should give careful attention to the readability of all printed texts used, particularly non-fiction. They should consider whether the text:

matches the pupils' interests, knowledge and Level of maturity;

is accessible in structure and choice of language;

is of good quality and is likely to challenge and widen horizons;

is best suited to be read unaided in a personal reading programme, or to be read together and discussed in the class and /or group.

The importance of meaning should be stressed at all stages. The activity of reading should take place, wherever possible, in an appropriate context, and it should be concerned with the gaining of meaning from a suitable text. Reading should always have a purpose which is clear to both the teacher and the pupil.

At the earliest stages, learning to read is dependent upon the spoken language that children bring to school. It will also be influenced by the knowledge they have gained in the pre-school years about the conventions of print itself. Some pupils in P1 will be familiar with story-books, poems, nursery rhymes and print in their environment; some may have already started to recognize single words and even letters. However, for many pupils the experience of gaining meaning by hearing stories read aloud and talking about pictures will be encountered for the first time as part of the school's early reading programme. At this stage pupils will:

be developing an understanding of the purposes of print by reading labels, signs and captions and by helping to make their own class books;

be involved in pre-reading activities to develop skills of matching, discrimination, left-to-right eye movement, and sequencing;

learn the basic skills of reading through a systematic and progressive programme, which should incorporate an initial sight vocabulary and also develop phonic and blending skills, and skills of word attack,

learn to enjoy books by listening to stories and poems and talking about them;

create and read short texts, with teacher support;

learn the language terms used in their reading programme.

As pupils' reading becomes less supported by illustrations, they must learn to recognize the commoner genres in fiction and non-fiction. As texts become more complex and various in form, the teacher needs to deploy a widening range of techniques such as sequencing, prediction, cloze procedure, evaluating the text, making deductions, marking text, comparing and contrasting different texts. These are best used as a stimulating means of leading pupils to explore and discuss meaning, rather than as 'right/wrong' assignments.