Once we have begun the task of turning the student on to reading, we must not stop. We must utilize new materials and approaches. We can never go back to business as usual, for that is surely geared for failure. Search and research for new ideas must continue. As time progresses we can gradually get into a more formalized developmental reading program.
This will begin by testing to find the instructional level of each student and providing materials at this level.
There will be an ongoing process. Teach, test, and reteach if needed.
In Arthur W. Heilman’s Discovering Phonics We Use, he states, “The process of reading is extremely complex. It is a total language process involving skills ranging from word recognition to critical thinking. Instruction and practice in all of these skills is essential to growth in the ability to read.”2
In our classroom we are confronted daily by the total complexity of teaching the slowlearner how to read. We are using all available ways and materials in our effort to teach the slow learner. Although we use a wide range of skills in our effort, we would like to that neither reading skills nor phonics are the totality of learning to read. We would like to quote Cooper and McGuire who says, “Wordattack skills are not the end for learning to read, but means to get to the end.”