THE IMPORTANCE OF INTEGRATING READING IN CLASS

RAMIL D. SABADO

When students hit grades three and beyond, the demand for reading is greater as reading becomes a means of learning content.

Evidence suggests that young learners who read everyday not only perform better in the classroom than those who don’t, but also develop a broader vocabulary, increased general knowledge and a better understanding of other cultures. In fact, reading also determines whether a child does well at school.

However, due to various forms of technological advances in this day and age, the younger generation’s attention to reading is now being diverted to different things, like social media and mobile games for example, which usually consumes most of their time. They miss the fun of learning by themselves because they don’t get a chance to know the fun of reading.

Yes, it is true that reading is now one of the most neglected form of communication skills. This sounds alarming for us, teachers. As people who help shape their future, we know how important it is to make them get fond of reading.

As an educator, I believe that reading out load to students is one way to help them get enticed with reading. Every teacher can read aloud to their students regardless of the grade level and it is very effective to senior high students, too.

Through reading aloud, students can widen their vocabulary. When they are being read to again and again, they get themselves familiarized with different sophisticated words. It also gives them a chance to ask for the meaning of the words they already encountered before but didn’t get a chance to know the meaning.

Furthermore, another way to entice students to read is to keep them interested in books. As teachers, we play an important role in helping them to find books, stories, or articles that will engage them to actually read. Language books are one of the best books to make them read as it will help students learn new words. Later, when they see words written down, they’ve already heard them and know what they mean.

Overall, reading at least once a day is important because it is necessary to improve reading comprehension and fluency. Fluent readers are more likely to choose to read. Also worth noting, an extensive amount of research shows that a student’s scores on reading fluency assessments help teachers predict student’s likelihood of success. To make it short, a fluent reader is a successful individual.

So, as part of the educational system, I believe that it is our responsibility to mold students into better readers. We should start to look at ourselves not just as teachers in school, but as advocates and agents of something worthy, like reading, which is one of the most significant way of improving student’s overall achievement. — oOo— The author is Teacher I at Pampanga High School