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 throughout a lifetime.
But
just learning to read is not enough to ensure 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.
