Radio Commentary
Getting meaning out of what we read
is one of the secrets for success at any age, but most particularly for young
people in school.
Experts
always cite reading as the skill students most need for classroom success.
Studies
show that having a lot of reading materials around while children are growing
up helps them in more ways than we may ever know.
Being
surrounded by words helps make children comfortable with language.
Submerging
children in a culture of words helps them learn that words have meaning.
Words are the building blocks for
thinking and learning all through a lifetime.
But just learning to read is not
enough to insure school success.
It’s important to be able to sound
out different letter combinations, but children must also learn to find the
meaning in different combinations of words.
Reading out loud helps focus on
pronunciation and word recognition. The next step is understanding what those
words signify, and learning how to put them together in combinations to get
meaning across.
Only then can students put what
they read to its best use. Reading for meaning is always the goal.
