Intensive Reading Program
Reading is an essential component that enables students to develop comprehensive skills in the learning process. A reading program is therefore necessary in achieving this objective. A reading program that I would develop is the intensive reading program (Alderson, 2000). The things I would include in this program are diverse and it would be a guide to the success of the program. This program would include the key ideas and the details of the text, inference, identification of the outline of information and the relationship with the message, phrases or text that connect ideas and lastly would be identification of words that suggest a change from one area of the text to another (Allington, 2010).
1. What types of strategies would you teach?
One of the strategies that I would teach the students in this reading program is how to determine the main points from the general information or otherwise details. This would help the student know what to look for in a text and choose in the reading process. This would also help in identification of key items of concerns that could easily be used to draw conclusions. Another strategy to be taught would be inference. This simply means making an intelligent guess concerning a story or a reading material. This helps in arriving at a logical conclusion during the reading process or even after. This is important for a quick understanding of the topic of discussion (Aebersold & Field, 2002). Also important to note is that this strategy would make it possible for students to be very sensitive to the emotional tones and figurative statements.
Similarly, I would teach the students about the need to look at the flow of information and how the flow affects the message in the story. Stories that have no proper flow make it difficult in getting the meaning behind the stories and thus, this strategy would be of help. In any given reading, there must be interconnectivity of ideas. These ideas are connected with words and as such teaching the students how to identify words that connect ideas would help in deducing meaning while enhancing the understanding in a wider perspective (Aebersold and Field, 2002). The last strategy to be taught would be how to find words that indicate changes from one area to another. This would help the students know the context of a given part of reading for the sake of drawing conclusions in those particular contexts.
2. How will you teach the reading and writing processes?
Providing the short stories in class and outlining guidelines and explanations will be necessary and be used to teach this reading program. Organizing discussions in class after reading to discuss the stories would also be helpful. By having discussions and allowing the students respond to the topic of discussions will be an informative teaching process. After the discussion in class about the stories read in class, the students will be given some reading materials to read on their own and then given their analysis on their understanding about the topic. From the reading experience an evaluation would then be carried out to check if the reading program is a success.
3. What role will literature play in your program?
Literature would provide a conversation in which a lot of learning can be invoked. In the field of literature, there are poems, short stories, novels, genres, narratives and many more. All these normally have themes and sound topics over which an understanding can be developed and conclusions drawn. For instance, a short story can be of help because students have a basis over which they can put the strategies taught to them in practice. Short stories or narratives can be used to test the ability of the students to read with understanding and draw conclusions with ease (Hancock and Hill, 1988).
Stories have particular trends and with meaning and ideas found within the context of the text and therefore, one can only understand the content of such by reading comprehensively while adhering to the strategies that make one to be an excellent reader. Consequently, literature would help in intensive reading by improving the reading skills and actualizing the strategies of comprehensive reading thus enabling the students to be well versed with the content of a particular text (Hancock and Hill, 1988). This will be taught by having the students read some short stories in class.
References:
Allington, R. L., & International Reading Association. (2010). Essential readings on struggling
learners. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
Aebersold, J. A., & Field, M. L. (2002). From reader to reading teacher: Issues and strategies
for second language classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Alderson, J. C. (2000). Assessing reading. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Hancock, J., & Hill, S. E. (1988). Literature-based reading programs at work. Portsmouth,
NH: Heinemann.
