Children learning reading skills need to acquire more than just phonics skills. They need to understand what they read, be able to analyze and comprehend passages, and think critically about what they read. Fortunately, this all happens in baby steps, so every child can learn exactly what he or she needs to become successful and proficient readers.
Regarding this process of learning, teachers and scientists might refer to something called Bloom’s Taxonomy. It is a classification of learning objectives focused on cognitive skills. Bloom’s Taxonomy breaks down knowledge and critical thinking skills into six distinct categories of skills. These additional skills greatly help children learning to read. The more students practice these skills, the more fluent they become at reading.
When it comes to teaching children essential reading skills and incorporating principles from Bloom’s Taxonomy, it really boils down to asking the right questions with classroom lessons. According to an article by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), three-year-old children are primarily concrete thinkers. Abstract thoughts are more common in four-year-olds, which is generally when we start seeing them playing with their imagination. As a result, implementing Bloom’s Taxonomy with younger children has its own challenges. But, as with any classroom lesson, questions can be manipulated and modified to match their current skill level.
1. Remembering (Knowledge)
Children learning reading skills first must acquire knowledge. When you read a story to them, or they start reading for themselves, they should be able to recall basic information about characters and plot.
What should you ask your students?
- Who are the characters?
- What is the story about? What does the character want?
- Where does the story take place?
- When does the character do X?
- Why does character want X?
- How does the character reach his or her goal?
- Lists of things that happen
- Names of places or characters
To help your students keep track of all these details, write down character names on the board, the name of the setting and other notes that they can refer back to while answering other questions.
2. Understanding (Comprehension)
Once they can understand the content of the story, help them understand the progression of the story and how one point links to another. To encourage understanding, ask a variety of questions. Sometimes, children may need to hear the same question in a different way to recognize what is being asked.
- Describe the setting. Where does this story take place?
- Summarize what happened in the story
- Outline what happens in the story
- Explain the character’s goal. What does the character want? What does she do to achieve her goal?
Asking plenty of questions allows children learning reading skills to think back on the story and explain it in their own words. This type of practice also helps children develop writing skills by composing their own sentences.
If this seems too challenging for your class, try giving your students two different options. Then, have them choose between those two answers. If they choose the right answer, ask them to explain further what happened. If they choose the wrong answer, recall details from the story that might sway their course of thinking.
3. Applying (Application)
When it comes to the application, we want to see how children can use the information in the story in a new way. After they understand the content and progression of the story, how can they take the story and think of other possibilities? This kind of practice helps children learning reading skills to think a bit more critically about what they’re reading.
- What could the character have done differently for another outcome?
- What caused the story to end the way that it did?
- Why does character do X?
The goal here is to apply, calculate, organize and interview. For example, what caused the protagonist to choose option A? What would it take for the character to choose option B? What could option B be?
4. Analyzing (Analysis)
To push a bit further past application, the analysis stage focuses on questions that encourage students to examine the story more closely and find out how they might relate to it.
- What would you do differently from the character?
- How are you similar to the character?
- Which character do you identify with most?
- Is character A different from character B? How are they alike?
- What happens in the beginning of the story? In the middle? The end?
Here, the goal is to compare and contrast in as many different ways as possible. This might include comparing characters to each other, characters to students themselves, or characters from other books.
5. Evaluating (Synthesis)
After they have decided on the similarities and differences as detailed in the analysis stage, in the evaluation stage, we start asking students to explain their decision. In the advanced steps of Bloom’s Taxonomy, these questions help children learning reading skills to start building their own opinions and thoughts.
- How would you like the story to change?
- What could have happened differently?
- What choice would you have made? Why?
- Based on what you know, how would you explain X?
These questions inspire students to start piecing the story together and think about it on their own. It primes them to develop their own opinions in the final stage of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
6. Creating (Evaluation)
To further encourage individual thought and opinion, the creation stage asks students for their own points of view. These questions ask students to explain, judge, rate, rank, defend and justify their answers. By asking these questions, students slowly build their own opinion about the story.
- What facts are most important? What facts are least important?
- Did you like the story? Why or why not?
- What do you think about the character? Why?
- Did the character do the right thing? Why or why not?
- What could be better if the character did X differently?
Asking questions are a fantastic way to springboard them into an activity. You can ask them to illustrate alternate endings or compare and contrast themselves to a character they like. Hands-on activities are an excellent way to cap off this Q&A as students can regurgitate and apply what they learned on their own.
Help Children Learning Reading Skills with Pup’s Academy Tools
Bloom’s Taxonomy is designed to help early learners achieve reading comprehension proficiency. But, before students can build that type of fluency, they need to master fundamental reading skills. To become successful and proficient readers, students need basic reading skills.
Children learning reading skills need plenty of encouragement and resources. At Professor Pup’s Academy, we focus on developing reading programs for teachers and students to help early learners become successful students.
We recommend implementing Pup’s Quest for Phonics in your classroom and using our lessons to reinforce reading skills like comprehension, evaluation and analysis. In doing so, your students will be more prepared to read passages with confidence and success.
To learn more about Pup’s Quest for Phonics and for your free 30-day trial, please visit our website.