READING SKILLS AS THE ULTIMATE GOAL

JHONATHAN L. ULIT

Teachers find themselves wanting to impart every bit of knowledge about a well-loved text to their students. The problem is, the enemy here is that students often lack focus, which is the ultimate goal of reading skills.

Reading skills are a sure-fire way to help students retain content. There should be a number of reading strategies that must be applied to teach students how to read effectively, across all subjects.

Teachers must be sure that they are not simply suppliers of information, but also as instructors of techniques to build reading skills.

Students should be guided in annotation. Direct them to do more than highlight or underline, and encourage them to have a conversation with the text by jotting notes while reading. This will keep students engaged and often increases comprehension. Annotations may include defining new words, asking questions, coding recurring words and themes, highlighting heading and subheadings, summarizing paragraphs, numbering and ordering, among other s.

Reading is the work of the mind, but the senses should also be incorporated to provide extra reinforcement for students who are still growing their skills. Encourage them to read passages aloud and verbalize questions. However, some students have no idea how to ask questions or what type of questions to ask so teachers should model this skill.

Sadly, while writing goals are used regularly in the classroom, students don’t utilize personal reading skills on a regular basis. Why don’t you ask them to write some sort of biography to gain insight into their reading habits, struggles, and successes? This will serves as a foundation for discussions on setting reading goals.

Urge them to read a novel, nonfiction text, short story, or poetry unit as a project. This will help you evaluate their reading skills. You can ask them after if they felt confident reading the text? Why or why not? Also, ask them what parts of the text gave them trouble.

— oOo— The author is Teacher II at Camba High School, Arayat, Pampanga.