Children learn to read, so everyone can learn to read for themselves: easy stories to learn to read

Photo: Dr. Rudolf Härtel (saint Michaelsbund BA)

The importance of learning to read
Strengthening the reading skills of all children is important to me. Those who can read well and understand and use texts correctly, meaning that they can read meaningfully, will not only make good progress in German as a subject, but reading is imperative in almost all other subjects.
An important meaning for the promotion of literacy is not only that we let the children read what interests them, but that the level of the texts is adapted to the children’s ability so that we do not demotivate the children by overwhelming them, but motivate them by success.

Can recognize characters
Learning to read not only includes reading letters, but also understanding images and signals. The children learn signs in their environment that tell them something.
The reading learning process is divided into the following stages:
– Reading the situation (the mother sets the table -> there will be something to eat soon)
– Reading pictures (photos, drawings)
– Reading pictograms (traffic signs, single capital letters, toilet signs)
– Reading signal words (capital letters, name tags, company logos)
– Whole word reading (names, mom, dad, food)
– reading
The reading learning process must be seen as independent on each level, since mastering the individual levels is a prerequisite for learning to read.

Similarities in learning to read and write
At the beginning, the reading learning process differs little from the writing learning process. In both cases you have to learn the basics (letters). Here is a simplified model:
1. Logographic phase
Recognition of characters and lettering
2. Alphabetical phase
Writing learning process: mapping sounds to letters
Reading learning process: mapping letters to sounds
3. Learning to write: Orthographic phase
Reading process: understanding of text

What is reading?
Reading is a process of recording and understanding written information.
How does reading work??
We can only understand written information if we know the font (characters).
Knowing the characters alone is not enough; the reader must also adhere to the agreed direction of writing.
Reading is more than deciphering characters, more than stringing letters in the right order. The meaning of the words must also be clear. Only through understanding will we read.
Reading does not only mean perceiving written signs and assigning sounds, performing synthesis and making sense. When reading, hypotheses are formed, tested and corrected.

What does the curriculum require??
While the goal of reading lessons is clearly defined, there are different opinions on how to achieve the goal of reading skills.
This HOW is the respective reading learning method. All teaching methods aim to make learning to read easier. For beginners, some only start with capital letters. Learning to read is very often taught using the initial table. If you then provide the appropriate texts in "easy written language" to the children in the 1st grade elementary school, then you have you do that Learning to read made easy.

How to learn to read?
There are 5 levels to learning to read – starting with the reading base up to reading reflection. Every single level has to be mastered before the next level can be climbed. If a child moves up a level before this level is well secured, or even skips a level, then reading problems with the typical symptoms of reading weakness occur. Children who are affected can only be helped if they go back to the previous level and learn them properly.

The individual stages of the reading process
1. Reading basis: hearing + seeing + feeling
The necessary skills for reading are acquired here. On the one hand, there are visual perception and phonetic awareness, i.e. the child must be able to recognize and differentiate sounds.
You can Preschoolers learn (e.g. differentiate characters, clap syllables, find rhyming words, recognize capital letters and what all starts with the same letter?).
At this stage, children often also learn to understand writing (phonetic-letter relationship). If they have not learned this basis in preschool time, it is difficult for the children to follow them in school, because level 1 becomes at the same time with
2. Reading techniques: According to + letter = word
Developed. The grinding of the individual letters into a word and the subsequent word recognition can only take place if the base is mastered.
3. Reading security: from word to text / sentence
The students are now deepening their reading. Now they need texts that they understand and enjoy, because you can only learn to read by reading. But what use shorter texts if they are not written more easily? The ability to assign letters to sounds is not the same as recognizing letter combinations (ie, ei, ch, sch, …) and their pronunciation. Only those who understand what they read can read more!
4. Reading comprehension: Texts make sense
If children have worked their way up to this level without first understanding what they have read – my respect! However, many children fall by the wayside if they were offered texts that were too difficult in the 3rd stage.
5. Reading reflection: text and context
At this level, students can summarize content and extract information from the text. Reading skills are now developing. Students start talking to friends about books they have read.

Compare with the reading learning process
The acquisition of reading skills can be compared to the acquisition of the skill of cycling. First the child learns to crawl, then walk, run and keep balance. In other words, it takes a lot of skills before it can start cycling. And what good is a bike if you don’t know how to ride it??
Neither does a child start with a racing bike, but starts with a tricycle, balance bike, children’s bike, youth bike, then the racing bike may follow.
It works similarly with learning to read. First the child learns the language, then recognizes sounds, …

In music, too, you start with the individual basic tones before the # and b signs are introduced. No music teacher would think of offering his music student a special print of the score of the Magic Flute (only 5 bars per page) right from the start, as soon as the basic tones were introduced. Children who are just learning to read should immediately master the complexity of the written German language. In order to understand this better, I will go into the different reading methods here:

Reading learning methods
All reading learning methods are based on the following theoretical approaches:

1. Synthetic reading method
An important tool for this is the initial table (letter table). The synthetic reading process assumes that our writing is phonetic. Therefore, at the beginning of learning to read, the introduction of the letters and their assignment to the sounds must be given. Initially, only pure words should be used here, since the children initially read and grind together letter by letter.
Only when they have all mastered the normal loudness should positional / letter combinations such as (ie, ei, sch, ch, …) be introduced.
(Lautier method and read / write = "reading by writing")
When reading by writing you learn to read not by reading exercises but by writing yourself. To do this, students must be able to break down words in their phonetic order. Anyone who can write this sound and the associated letters will learn to read all by himself. Until the introduction of the spelling rules, the children still write everything phonetically / literally, i.e. the way you say it.

2. Analytical reading method
Better known as the whole word method. Reading starts with the >Recognize words, often without knowing the letters. This may make sense with the frequent and short function words (the, a, and, …). The 100 most common function words make up 25% of a language. If you extend it to the 100 most frequently used words, then this is already half of a normal text (according to Klett – basic vocabulary). The word image of these words is easy to remember due to their brevity and frequency.

3. Analytical-synthetic method
The analytical-synthetic method also starts with whole words. But these are also broken down into their individual elements. Here synthesis and analysis are introduced simultaneously.

Summary of reading learning methods
There are very different methods of teaching students to read. This shows that the experts do not agree which method is the right one.
1. Building method:
The children are first taught the individual parts in the form of sounds, letters, syllables etc. and then syllables and words are built up from them.
2. Methods with self-recognition (whole word method):
Learning through trial and error: Whole words are presented to the children and they have to find out for themselves how this works with the individual sounds. The students have to guess in part which new word / letter could be this.
3. Variable, child-friendly reading method:
With most reading methods, students are presented with sounds, sound synthesis and letter symbols at the same time.

Motivation with small steps and constant success. The new learning goal is always in sight (step method). Instead of frustration due to lack of success, since the learning goal seems intangible (all at once).
At this point, I have to point out that children with major perception deficits and learning problems belong in the hands of experts (speech therapists, occupational therapists, curative educators, etc.).

Reading speed (avoid jumps)
Information that is received in very short time intervals is summarized by the brain; every few seconds it opens a new "time window" for information processing: e.g. the images in a film seem to be moving. The individual images are put together to form a large whole.

It works similarly when reading, so a certain reading speed is necessary to understand the letters / words and their contents. However, setbacks slow down the reading process. They are caused by a lack of knowledge of letters and words (which leads to a lack of understanding of the text). Here is a classic as an example of how students read at the beginning: D D-r Dr-e Dre-i -> Dr-Ei Three k k-l kle-i -> small egg small small small S-c Sc-H -> Sch Sch-w Schw-e Schwe-i -> Sch-w-ei Schwei Schwei-n Schwein-c Schweinc-H -> Pork-pork Pork-pork. How did the sentence start? In the original, this story is for beginners: Three little pigs. There are no letter combinations here that lead to jumps back, whereby 3 of them appear in "Piggy". Why is the word not translated with piglet.

Simple written language for beginners
Learning to read includes difficulties in reading, but do you have to make it unnecessarily difficult for beginners? The German vocabulary is large enough to offer the children stories at the beginning with literal words that are pronounced literally. For this reason the following reading series was developed:

READ YOURSELF:
The series for beginners
Stories and texts by Birgit Sommer

All three books in DinA5 booklet format.
-> Tip for libraries

1. Graphic design
– primer
– Flutter set instead of justification
– line spacing
– Short words / sentences / paragraphs
– Sections correspond to lines / paragraphs / pages
2. Linguistic design
– Common words / initially also verbal words
– predominantly short words (word length of 5 letters +/- 2)
– mostly short sentences (sentence length of 7 words +/- 2)
– simple sentence structure, no subordinate clauses, no indirect speech
3. Content design
– logical text structure
– motivating topic
– Illustrations (which arouse interest) and for illustration, but not too much about the content (reading book is not a picture book!)
4. Dealing with the content
– Note headings
– Imagine what you have read
– Underline and summarize important things
– Check your understanding of the text

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