M10: Teaching Meaning and Enjoyment in Reading

Now that you have read the first part of the Wright chapter on Reading on how to be an effective literacy teacher, let's revisit some key ideas.

What does literacy even mean? (This is from the Tompkins reading, pg. 11.)

Did you read the part on meaning?

"the essence of reading is creating meaning"

So if we are not helping students create meaning as we teach reading, we are not effective reading teachers.  

This sounds simpler than it is.  For multilingual students, this involves attending to vocabulary as well as sound-symbol relationships (phonological awareness) and other language features while reading a text.  It's complex stuff!  

But our focus needs to always come back to meaning and meaningful experiences around text.

It can be daunting to think that so much of our students' skills and feelings towards reading depends on what we do! How do we do all this? Keep reading for some valuable strategies you might find useful to add to your teaching repertoire.