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The document explains why comprehension difficulties may surface later as reading demands shift from fiction to complex informational texts, and it emphasizes K–2 strategies like back-and-forth conversation and interactive engagement in partnership with 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Cabell  \nAlthough the focus in the early grades is often on teach  \ning young children how to read, the ultimate goal of  \nreading is to understand the text—whether to learn new information or simply enjoy a story. Building the groundwork needed for this understanding starts right from the beginning of life—and it’s essential from the beginning of school.  \nWhat kind of instruction should you be looking for in your child’s classroom?  \nDuring the primary grades (kindergarten through second grade), teaching children to sound out words is a necessary focus of instruction.1 Teachers should intentionally and carefully help children understand the relationships between written letters and spoken sounds. As children practice sounding out words in the texts they are reading, their ability to read words grows. Their understanding grows too because being able to quickly recognize words makes it easier to focus on the meaning of the texts. (Seethe article by Nell K. Duke on page 14 for information on how to support foundational reading skills.)  \nBut teaching children how to sound out words isnot enough to help them become skilled readers. It is important that early instruction also focuses on language comprehension, especially understanding written language when it is read aloud.2  \nSonia Q. Cabell is an associate professor of reading education with the School of Teacher Education and the Florida Centerfor Reading Research at Florida State University.  \nWhat Does Language Comprehension Include?  \nVocabulary: the words that children can either understand or use. As children become readers, they will be expected to understand words that typically are not used in everyday household conversations—but are used in books.3 Therefore, exposing children to the language of books early on is important.  \nLanguage structures: the ways that words come together to form sentences and sentences come together to form paragraphs. Just asthe words used in everyday conversations are different from the words in written language, the structure of language is different when speaking than when writing. Written sentences tend to be much longer and more complex.  \nVerbal reasoning: the ability to make sense of what you are reading. An important part of this is making inferences, or “reading between the lines.” Consider the following sentences from the book Knuffle Bunny Too,4 when Trixie realized in the middle of the night that her toy was switched with a classmate’s toy: “Trixie marched into her mommy and daddy’s room and said: ‘That isnot my bunny.’ Trixie’s daddy…asked, ‘Can we deal with this in the morning?’ Trixie’s daddy went to the phone.” To make sense of these sentences, the reader or listener must infer that although Trixie’s daddy wanted to sleep, he felt pressure from his daughter to immediately take care of the situation by calling her classmate’s parents.  \nBackground knowledge: the information that the reader or listener needs to understand the text. In the Knuffle Bunny example, chil-  \nAMERICAN EDUCATOR | FALL 2023 21  \nPHOTOS BY THE AFT  \ndren would need some knowledge of what it feels like to be in Trixie’s situation to fully understand the urgency she felt to get her toy back. Because there is so much knowledge that children need and because it takes time to build, it is important that science and social studies instruction are emphasized in the earliest grades. In later grades, when children are expected to read science and social studies textbooks (and as adults, when they want to read newspapers), they will rely on this  \nknowledge to be able to understand and learn from these more challenging texts.  \nWhy Does Language Comprehension Matter?  \nSometimes parents are surprised to learn that their child has difficulty understanding what they read in the upper elementary grades because teachers hadn’t mentioned a reading problem in the primary","cbCaikz3dzi5Uv2E","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaikz3dzi5Uv2E","pdf",908957,"English","# What to Look for in the Early Grades\n## Instruction in K–2: From Decoding to Comprehension\n## What Language Comprehension Includes\n## Why Language Comprehension Matters\n## How K–2 Instruction Should Address Language Comprehension","[{\"question\":\"Why is reading in early grades not only about sounding out words?\",\"answer\":\"Because the ultimate goal of reading is understanding the text, so early instruction must also develop language comprehension, especially when language is read aloud.\"},{\"question\":\"What components make up language comprehension?\",\"answer\":\"Language comprehension includes vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning (including making inferences), and background knowledge needed to understand the text.\"},{\"question\":\"Why might children struggle with understanding texts in upper elementary grades?\",\"answer\":\"Reading demands change over time: children move from simpler fictional texts to more complex informational texts, such as biographies and science textbooks, requiring more prior knowledge and comprehension skills.\"}]","Helping Young Children Read for Understanding - What to Look for in the Early Grades | PDF",1792071424]