At Latrobe Reading Center, we provide individualized, intensive and comprehensive reading instruction to students of all grade levels. Four major principles guide our approach to teaching reading:
1. Each student is unique.
Each student comes to the classroom with different levels of background knowledge, degrees of literacy proficiency, amounts of motivation, interests and attitudes, cultural backgrounds and cognitive abilities.
We use our specialized knowledge to design lessons that meet students’ individual learning needs, build students’ confidence and foster a love for reading. We always strive to create an atmosphere of trust where learners are willing to take risks and to voice their personal stories, thoughts and feelings as a response to reading.
2. Teaching students how to read involves teaching them how to learn.
The most successful readers are aware of how they learn and are able to direct the learning process. To achieve this end, we use the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model, a sequence of instruction that builds students into capable thinkers and learners who are able to guide themselves when learning something new. This model encourages students to grow into confident, independent readers who read a variety of texts for a variety of purposes.
3. Successful readers can read and write a variety of "authentic" texts.
It is imperative that teachers use high-quality, whole-pieces of authentic literature in which to embed their instruction. While contrived texts, games, and isolated drills are useful and often necessary, they do not give students an opportunity to experience reading and writing as a meaningful, enjoyable activities. Moreover, many readers who have been taught in this this way have difficulty making connections and transferring their learned skills learned to new contexts.
We use “authentic” texts and literary activities that challenge and interest students. Examples include reading directions to complete an interesting task such as building a model airplane, reading and writing letters, and reading and responding to various types of literature such as books, newspaper articles, photographs, speeches, letters, interviews, official documents, and songs.
4. Teachers should adapt and balance a variety of teaching methods.
Most traditional reading instruction emphasizes the skills and strategies including phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. However, to ensure reading success, teachers must also address the emotional aspects of how students learn to read: their motivation, self-efficacy, metacognition, and epistemic beliefs.
We use a variety of research-based methods to increase students’ motivation so they can enjoy reading a variety of challenging texts and are able to persist while doing so.
Further, we strive to build my students’ self-efficacy, or their confidence in their reading ability (a “can-do” attitude).
A strong sense of self-efficacy and motivation is bolstered by strong metacognitive skills, or students’ abilities to set goals and to monitor their progress towards their goals.
Lastly students’ reading success is influenced by their epistemic beliefs, or their ability to judge or evaluate an author’s message or the contents of the text. These readers value the knowledge they have gained while reading.
Working with students individually allows us to address all of these components so that we can provide effective, comprehensive and balanced instructional programs.
