Early Reading Skills - Essay Example

EARLY READING SKILLS Most often, people remember their first experiences in reading and what they listened from their parents. Obviously, one begins hearing stories, develops interest and start learning how to read, which nurtures their skills in classwork. Usually, storytelling during the earliest stages is one of the major ways of entertaining children and building cohesion between children and their parents. Parents also use stories to inspire and encourage their children to begin learning how to read.

When the child develops story listening interest, personal reading interest also creeps in. Currently, I still do recall the numerous stories told to me every night by my parents, as I grew up. For instance, I remember when my father, while sitting on his large recliner chair used to read a number of books to me. One book I can remember is ‘The Lord of Rings’ that I enjoyed and was ever ready to hear more and more every time he read to me. My earliest remembrance of learning how to read is that I only liked to hear stories read to me by other people such as my parents or teachers but I did not like the idea of reading loudly on my own.

Every time my mother told me to read to her, I used to cry feeling that it was not fair to for me to read. However, later on I changed my attitude on realising that it was important for me to know how to read to be able to read for myself. The first storybooks that I read when at school were those of Roger Red Hat, as the themes and storyline was properly presented and developed. After developing deep desire of reading, my favourite book was the ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ written by Ronald Dahl because of the manner it provides good description of the food, golden cider and the luscious chicken.

Until now, I like flicking though the story just because it is that which kept me very entertained during my early times. The most important benefit of mastering literacy in the early elementary grades, as pointed by Torgesen et al. (2007) is that it will enable student to gain knowledge and skills to read grade level manuscript confidently and with significant comprehension. Comprehension is a very complicated skill requiring skills in reading the text precisely and confidently. It requires enough backdrop knowledge as well as vocabulary to be able to understand the content well.

It also requires the ability of thinking and reasoning about the concepts and the overall information to make the appropriate judgments. Moreover, motivation for understanding as well as learning from the information contained in the text in very useful in personal and professional development. The incentive for understanding and learning from the text is a very important element of reading any particular comprehension. It requires high effort to comprehend the numerous texts and other types of complicated materials that students start encountering as they travel through elementary school, middle as well as high school.

Engaging the students appropriately is therefore important to enable them to apply the skills optimally and acquire the motivation, necessary for understanding and learning form the text. References Torgesen et al. (2007). Teaching All Students To Read In Elementary School: A Guide For Principals. Portsmouth, NH: RMC Research Corporation, Center on Instruction.