Reading is extraordinarily important. It is the foundation of many skills that students utilise in English. Students who read regularly - and from texts that challenge them in term of ability - benefit from the following advantages:
- They are practised in the act of comprehension which is crucial to understanding new and increasingly complex texts and ideas;
- They are exposed to a greater range of information, ideas,opinions and data that help them reach conclusions and develop their personal insights;
- They are provided with models of the kinds of texts they need to write themselves (e.g. a newspaper article is much easier to organise and write when you are a newspaper reader);
- They see words spelt correctly all the time and this helps with their own spelling accuracy;
- They are introduced to new vocabulary in context that they adopt themselves in their speech and own writing;
- They see punctuation marks used correctly all the time and are introduced to new punctuation marks utilised in complex sentences(e.g. colons and semi-colons);
- They are conditioned to write with accurate grammar and sentence construction by repeatedly reading sentences demonstrating such accurate constructions.
Parents can help students benefit from all of these advantages by helping their children through guided reading. Guided reading happens regularly in English class rooms, with English teachers examining and analysing texts for different layers of meaning with their students. This helps to develop their ability to respond to texts in essay form and examination answers. Regular guided reading at home can further consolidate such skills. With the right structures, an interested parent can be part of this process and help students practice essential textual comprehension and the sophistication of their understanding and response.
Whereas personal reading or reading for pleasure involves a good deal of freedom for the student, guided reading is at its best when the student is steered towards texts that have already been recognised as worthy or helpful to the development of students of certain ages and abilities. For this reason a reading list has been supplied, so that students can choose, locate and read material that has already been deemed of good quality. The reading list has been compiled with several issues in mind. One of the first considerations is the availability of material. Some households have many books and some very few. The texts on the list are largely novels written over 100 hundred years ago. This means that they are widely available. They might be found at home but more likely can be accessed from either the school library, public libraries (there is a public library across the road from the school!), bookshops like Waterstones, online booksellers like Amazon and Ebay (plenty of bargains) and free on the internet. Texts and novels that have been written over one hundred years ago have expired in terms of copyright and can therefore legally be placed on the internet for free and for educational purposes. Websites like Project Gutenberg can be accessed for these purposes easily without even having to sign up for any kind of registration.
Texts that have been written over one hundred years ago have the advantage of extra challenge for students. A student that struggles with reading might select a Victorian short story rather than a thick novel but they are still challenged by the wider vocabulary, longer sentence structures and greater stamina required to follow ideas within these texts. They may enjoy it less but must realise that whereas they can choose their own texts, form and content when Reading for Pleasure (e.g. a computer or fashion magazine, popular fiction like Harry Potter, Twilight etc.) during guided reading with their parents the objective is to use texts of recognised quality to improve over time.
How Can I Help My Child With Guided Reading?
