Recently, I rediscovered the power of reading aloud in most surprising circumstances – while attending a secondary school band camp with my daughter.

At 9pm on the Saturday night, after a long day of rehearsing, the kids in the school band were very weary. Their teacher declared that they were entitled to some free time, adding, flippantly, that this would be followed by a story before bed!

I’m sure the teacher was joking about the bedtime story, but one kid seized on the offer and exclaimed, “Read us a story now!” Within seconds, the kids had gathered around their teacher and were gazing at him, anticipation written all over their faces.

After a moment’s consternation, because he had nothing to read, the teacher remembered that there was a free copy of A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh on his iPad. He appeared doubtful that reading this classic aloud was a good idea, and I shared his misgivings. I expect that neither of us could imagine that secondary school-aged kids would sit quietly and be read to in this manner.

The teacher located the story and began to read. And you could have heard a pin drop. Despite A.A. Milne’s fussy writing style and the meandering plot development and all of the things that tell you that this book is a bit old fashioned for modern teenagers, the kids were enthralled – and so was I.

It made me realise that in today’s crowded and outcome-driven curriculum, we should make time to enjoy the amazing power of reading a great book aloud. To see how the words flow off the page and out of the reader’s mouth – like music. To read stories not for some worthy and important learning goal, but for the pure joy of sharing a story together in a way that is only possible when it is read aloud. 

It made me wonder. Do teachers still read books aloud to kids for the sheer joy of it?

When was the last time you read aloud - revelling in the drama and flair of funny voices, hushed whispers and triumphant shouts as the words burst off the page - bringing the voice of the author into the classroom, and painting wonderful pictures in the listeners’ heads?

I remember a few of my all-time favourite read-alouds. Books I have read aloud many times and never get sick of – some I even know by heart now. Books that should never be crowded out of the curriculum or only used for some worthy learning purpose.

So, I’m off to read some of them aloud. But which will I choose? Will it be Dr Suess’s The Lorax or Green Eggs and Ham? Or what about Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are or Mem Fox’s Sleepy Bears or the wiz popping wonderfulness of Roald Dahl’s BFG?

Must go – I have books to read!

One of the first hurdles a beginning reader must overcome when learning to read is being able to instantly recognise high-frequency words. The 100 most common high-frequency words make up 65 per cent of all written language. If students are to become confident and fluent readers, they need to recognise these words automatically.

So how do students acquire this vocabulary? We know from our own experience in the classroom that beginning readers need to read these high-frequency words over and over again so that they are committed to memory and are instantly recognised. Research supports what our experience shows.

Recently, I was taking a Guided Reading lesson with a group of eager prep students - Jessica, Tom, Danni and Luke. The group was reading a Level 2 book called Look at me play about a girl exploring a park. The students had no problem holding onto the pattern of the text. And, inspired by the engaging photographs, they had lots to say about what the girl was doing and what they liked to do in a park. We were off to a good start.

We were re-reading the book when all of a sudden Danni’s eyes lit up.

She pointed to the word play in the first sentence. “That says play,” Danni said. Then, she pointed to the word play in the second sentence. “And that says play.”

“It’s always a joy to witness a young reader make a discovery like this - Danni had worked out that she could recognise a word, that she could actually read! ”

The pleasure I got from this small incident was twofold. I was pleased in my role as her teacher. But I was also pleased because I had had a consulting role in the development of the book she was reading. During the publishing process we paid great attention to the supportive features that would assist students as they learnt this foundational vocabulary.

• We wrote books in pairs; each pair of books sharing the same high-frequency words but in different sentence structures and text types.
• We repeated the high-frequency words many times both within each book, and across several books.
• We made sure that there was a low ratio of unfamiliar words, and those words were highly supported with pictures, and by the pattern and the context.
• We introduced the high-frequency words gradually and systematically.

It is always a great feeling to see a book do what it should – provide systematic support to beginning readers, as well as interest and excite students.

Someone sent me an email about reading – not just with individual letters out of order – but this time using numerals. I thought I would share it with you. Can you read this? 

7H15 M3554G3

53RV35 7O PR0V3

H0W 0UR M1ND5 C4N

D0 4M4Z1NG 7H1NG5!

1MPR3551V3 7H1NG5!

1N 7H3 B3G1NN1NG

17 WA5 H4RD BU7

N0W, 0N 7H15 LIN3

Y0UR M1ND 1S

R34D1NG 17

4U70M471C4LLY

W17H 0U7 3V3N

7H1NK1NG 4B0U7 17,

B3 PROUD! 0NLY

C3R741N P30PL3 C4N

R3AD 7H15.

PL3453 F0RW4RD 1F

U C4N R34D 7H15.

I cdnuolt blveiee that I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd what I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in what oerdr the ltteres in a word are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is that the frsit and last ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can still raed it whotuit a pboerlm. This is bcuseaethe huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the word as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

To me this highlights the importance of prior knowledge and what the reader brings to the text. The downside is that sometimes when reading the fine print, we read what we want to read.

Introducing a new book in guided reading or shared reading? Here are ways to optimise the performance of your students.

Say the title of the book

Always tell the students the title of the book. This gives them a starting point for exploring the messages in the text. It gets ideas sparking as they start to talk, think and read their way through the book.

Explore the book’s main ideas

Always explore the main ideas of the book with the students before reading – make sure they understand what the book is really about. Engage in rich conversations with them by making connections to what they already know about the ideas or concepts in the book.

Use the book’s language structures and vocabulary

As you talk, use some of the language structures and vocabulary in the book as this gives the students the chance to ‘hear’ how the message of this text is written. Point out one or two interesting or new words to the students - some students may even be able to locate new words.

When I read Geoff Dyer’s rule no. 5, my immediate reaction was that few students in primary school would share his regret. After all every Monday morning many dutifully write in their journals – carrying out an ‘authentic’ writing task - and teachers duly read and respond, offering encouragement and modelling correct grammar and spelling as they try to keep the writing process alive and flourishing for their young students.

In some classrooms writing a weekly journal is a joyful and productive activity where students express and record their thoughts and feelings in meaningful ways, but all too often it is a tedious chore where they churn out pieces with the standard opening On the weekend I … They don’t want to write in their journals and it shows. As I read Dyer’s rule, I began to think about my own journal writing experiences and how journals might best prosper in the classroom.

I often regret that I have not regularly kept a journal. When other writers advise me to keep a journal, I vow that I will change my ways. Journals are where writers collect the thoughts and observations that fuel their writing. Sadly, after the first few pages (if any words are written at all) I get caught up in the rush of life and all the other things I have to write and the journal gathers nothing but dust.

Once, on a family holiday in New Zealand, I bought postcards at every opportunity, stuck them in a journal, and recorded what we did, including observations from other family members as well as my thoughts and feelings. It didn’t take long to record in my journal every night and, in fact, it was fun. Today, I see much in the journal that I could use in my writing. Some entries make me smile.

On one page, where I had pasted an entrance sticker featuring a volcano from a museum in Rotorua, I had written:
     I got the volcano because I erupt.
My 12-year-old daughter had added her response: And how!
I could use this exchange in my own writing, perhaps to show the affectionate but feisty relationship between a mother and a daughter. Flicking through the journal, I see pictures of bubbling mud pools and remembering how bad they smelled, I think about how I could use them as a setting for a story.
At worst the journal is a nice record of a great family holiday, at best it is a goldmine to help me write better.

Another time I kept a journal was for a poetry writing class at university. Not fancying myself as a poet I needed all the help I could get; I carried a small book with me at all times and jotted down any line or a phrase that came to me. When I visited Yosemite National Park and saw endless expanses of fir trees, I jotted down
     I have seen Yosemite,
     where the Christmas trees run wild and free.
It wasn’t great poetry, but it was the start of a poem. Keeping a journal in this way was very useful as many of the poems I wrote for the class were born in this little book.

So what about students writing journals? Teachers need to let them in on the secret of journals – journals should be interesting to write and useful. And, above all else, a journal is for the writer, not the teacher. Teachers can help students realise this by challenging them to write in their journals in different ways. They can write about:

• Something funny or scary or amazing or boring that happened. I was sooo bored last night. Dad said we all had to go to the Grand Prix. I thought watching my toenails grow would be more fun.
• A conversation they heard that made them smile or cringe or yawn – why did they respond this way? My mum hit the curb when she drove around the corner last week. Dad said, ‘Mum’s driving by Braille.’ This made me laugh.
• Something that they wish would happen or not happen at school, at home, in ballet class. Why? Ballet used to be fun, but now I have to be a clock! How can I dance and be a clock? It’s ridiculous.
• An idea for a story, play or a poem. What if my feet started to grow really, really fast and got really really big? Where would I buy shoes? They’d call me ‘big foot’.
• The look, smell and sound of a place and how it made them feel.

Finally, when teachers respond to students’ journal writing, they suggest how students might use a journal entry in other writing. That smelly old fish you saw in the river is really interesting. Could you use it in your story/report?

The article ‘10 rules of writing’ can be read here

Have you ever been reading something and suddenly realised that you had no idea what you had just read? This happened to me recently when I was reading a novel. I realised that I had read a whole page and could not recall what I had just read!

I thought to myself, okay, I know I have lost the meaning and the gist of what I have read. We in education we call this “self monitoring”, which is monitoring our own reading to know how well we are accessing print messages and understanding what we are reading.

The experience made me think about what I do to gain meaning back – and what happens to our students when they lose meaning.

First, I realized that I couldn’t retell or put in my own words what I had just read. Instead, I drew on my knowledge of the characters in the text and the plot that was developing before I lost meaning. In doing this I was making connections to what I already knew – the text structure, the main ideas and the developing story line.

Next, I asked myself several questions – wondering what might have happened to the characters– before going back to re-read the section of text again. And, yes, I read it slowly – reducing the speed at which I was reading and making sure that I was paying attention to the main ideas and supporting details.

In essence, I drew on my knowledge of a range of comprehension strategies to assist me. I did not rely on just one strategy – rather a range of strategies that included questioning, re-reading, varying my speed, paraphrasing and identifying the main points. And it worked! I was back on track.

Unfortunately many of our students – of all ages – often lose meaning as they read. The problem for many of them is that they don’t always know when they have lost meaning or, further, what to do about it when they no longer understand what they are reading. This is where comprehension strategy instruction is so important – providing authentic and carefully planned opportunities for students to learn to access a range of comprehension strategies that will assist them when they need help.

What are the similarities and differences between reading traditional books and multimodal books and games on iPads? The iPad educational apps of levelled books and word games look very inviting. But in one research project a teacher, Carly Willamowski, found that five- and six-year-old struggling readers soon became tired of the apps and continually wanted interaction with the teacher. The children kept on asking Carly, ‘Is this right?’, ‘Will I go here next?’ and urging her to ‘Look what I’ve done.’ Although the iPad apps were designed for individual practice of reading books, phonic and high-frequency word games, the young readers wanted human interaction, not the tick-box feedback from the apps.

Learning to read does involve learning to use reading strategies like letter–sound knowledge, syntax and meaning but struggling readers also need a reason to persist. Listening to great stories read aloud – adventure, mystery, fantasy or fairy tales – can provide the reason for struggling beginning readers to persist when challenged. Books introduce young readers to the pleasure of imaginative worlds and the opportunity to compare life-to-literature and literature-to-life. Good books provide the rules and roles of everyday life that can be used in playful ways, negotiated and puzzled over.

What do you think about iPads and reading? I really enjoy reading traditional paper books and also books on a Kindle but find the backlight from a tablet screen hurts my old eyes.

This article looks at a toddler’s engagement with traditional books and electronic books on an iPad.

A recent survey into young children’s media use in the United States found that 20 years after the birth of the World Wide Web and a year or so after the first iPad sale, the media world that children are growing up in is changing at lightning speed.

A survey of 1384 parents of children aged birth to 8 years reported that nine-month-old babies spent nearly an hour a day watching television or DVDs, 42 per cent of children aged 8 and under have a TV in their bedroom and 5-year-olds are begging to use their parents’ iPhones. About half of all 2 to 4 years olds (53 per cent) and 90 per cent of 5 to 8 year olds have used a computer. Half of all children now have access to one of the new mobile devices at home: either a smartphone (41 per cent) a video iPod (21 per cent) or an iPad or other tablet device (8 per cent).

There is, however, a new digital divide with 38 per cent of lower income parents saying they don’t know what an app is. Many families on lower incomes do not have smartphones, iPads or iPods.

For literacy teachers this changing media world is of great interest and many people are exploring ideas in the area. I am working with a teacher education student who is investigating the similarities and differences between children’s comprehension of written texts and multimodal texts. She is inquiring whether the familiar metacognitive comprehension strategies of predicting, questioning, making images, seeking clarification and inferring are necessary for comprehending apps and websites with video and other multimodal ways of representing meaning. Previously authors used words and pictures to convey meanings but now web designers can choose to use audio, movies, written language, icons and various design features. Perhaps the comprehension strategies for written texts and multimodal texts are exactly the same?

As media is changing fast, the teaching of reading comprehension strategies has become more important than ever and so too is helping young children write, design and construct their own multimodal texts.

More information about the US survey:

http://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/zero-eight-childrens-media-use-america

Zero to Eight: Children’s media use in America (2011) is a nationally representative survey of parents of US children aged zero to eight, conducted to understand the patterns of media use among young American children. Covering TV, other video, reading, music, computers, video games, and mobile digital devices, the study examines time spent and frequency of use; differences in children’s media use by gender, race, or socio-economic status; the home media environment; educational media use; and access to the newest mobile media platforms like smart phones and tablets.

Now that Developing early literacy: Assessment and teaching is in its second edition, the area that really engages me is how to teach early reading and child-centred approaches to learning. When most five-year-olds begin school they expect to learn to read quickly. How can we build on the knowledge that children bring to school, their interests, oral language, vocabulary and understanding of how print works?

Evidence-based assessments are useful and won’t go away, but an evidence-based approach needs to be combined with a child-focused approach to learning. I think that unless we focus on children as individuals who bring a huge range of experiences to early reading, then the English curriculum may become too mechanistic.

Let’s focus on children and what they can do. Children are very different today – think about how they are engaged today compared to ten years ago. A friend sent me this link of a one-year-old who thinks that a magazine is a broken iPad! Read the article here.

Watch the one-year-old on video here.

What does this one-year-old know about reading? Imagine this child’s experiences in the years before school – iPads, books, magazines and lots of talk. We will need to find out about what young children already know so that our teaching can be more successful.

The Australian National Curriculum will be implemented in 2012. Read about what all states in Australian will be doing to implement the curriculum here.