Effective Reading Essay

Abstract-Reading is a lifelong skill to be used both at school and throughout life. According to Anderson, Hiebert, Scott, & Wilkinson, reading is a basic life skill. It is a cornerstone for a child's success in school and, indeed, throughout life. Despite its importance, reading is one of the most challenging areas in the education system.Researchers have found that teaching reading strategies is a key element in developing student comprehension and ensuring academic success. However, schools and teachers sometimes lack a solid foundation for teaching these strategies. Schools should be better prepared on how to design effective reading strategies and how to teach these to their students. This project aims to study the most effective reading

In fact, phonemic awareness abilities in kindergarten (or in that age range) appear to be the best single predictor of successful reading acquisition” (International Reading Association, 1998, p. 3).

Correlational studies have identified phonemic awareness and letter knowledge as the two best school-entry predictors of how well children will learn to read during their first two years in school. Discriminating units of language (i.e., words, segments, phonemes) are linked to successful reading. Results of the meta-analysis showed that teaching children to manipulate the sounds in language helps them learn to read (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development NICHHD, 2000, pp. 1, 5).

“Children who quickly come to understand the relationships between letters and phonemes, and who learn to use this information as an aid to identifying words in print, almost invariably become better readers than children who have difficulty acquiring these skills” (Torgesen & Mathes,

1).

“For 1st graders, the ability to decode individual words accounts for most of the variance in 1st graders’ reading comprehension” (SEDL, 2013).

“Research has shown accurate isolated word reading is a significant indicator of 1st-grade reading competence . . . fluency with reading isolated words has been shown to be useful for monitoring 1st graders’ emerging reading . . . evidence suggests [word identification fluency] has stronger predictive validity than [nonsense word fluency]” (Zumeta et al., 2012, para. 4).

“For better predictions about which 1st graders might have reading difficulties, screening batteries should assess word identification skills” (National Center on Response to Intervention, 2013, p. 1).

“A wealth of research supports the value of oral reading fluency as an indicator of overall reading competence and its utility for helping teachers plan better instruction and effect superior student outcomes” (Fuchs et al., 2001, p. 252).

Vocabulary (word knowledge) is one of the most important factors contributing to literacy. Kamil et al.