MODELLED  ORAL  READING

THE EASIEST AND THE BEST WAY TO LEARN AND TEACH READING

" Make  learning  to read  easy " .............Professor Frank Smith

WHEN A CHILD CANNOT READ AT ALL, A FLUENT READER MUST DO ALL THE READING FOR HIM

TEACH READING WITHOUT PHONICS

Donovan H. Powell   T.P.T.C., T.Sp.T.C. Literacy Consultant and Teacher Officer-in-Charge Doncaster and Ringwood Special Education Units (ex) co-Author, REAL READING: A Focus on Meaning. Contributor, Dimensions in Learning Disabilities. Thirty years in the field. Assessed approximately four thousand children individually. Interviewed several hundred teachers and parents. Researched scores of books and documents. Spent many hours in discussion with colleagues on cases. Watched at work many very skilled teachers. Used Modelled Oral Reading since 1976. This was based on the idea of ' lap ' reading, and a program seen at a suburban primary school using a bank of tape recorders. It was later confirmed by the writings of Frank Smith and many other authors in UK, USA, NZ and AUST. MELBOURNE,  AUSTRALIA.

For most of the twentieth century it was assumed that learning to read had to begin with Phonics. It has been argued that if children did not know Phonics and the rules about it, then they would not be able find out what the new words were.

This is no longer true. The person doing the teaching reads the story first and thus eliminates the need for a child to go through the horrors of the Phonic System with all its twists and turns.

PROFESSOR FRANK SMITH suggests that the best way for a teacher to start a child reading is to read the material for him.

We usually tell a child that if he does not know a word, to sound it, to read to the end of the sentence, go back, have a guess at the word. If that has not helped, go and ask someone. Well, it makes a lot more sense to tell the child what the word is in the first place. Why have him go through all the hassle of working through all the procedures if the end result is the same?

As it turns out, by following the procedure where a fluent reader reads the story first, reading failure is eliminated. All children become competent readers. The procedure has been refined and streamlined into what is called MODELLED ORAL READING.

To view an example of Modelled Oral Reading click HERE

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