Important News About a Common and Powerful Reading Myth

No doubt, you’ve heard about learning to read vs. reading to learn before. The commonly held belief says that students in the early grades (k-3) only learn how to read. That is, they are only reading for the purpose of developing the skill. It also holds that older students from 4th grade on only read to learn. As such, older students suddenly stop receiving reading instruction. Well, it’s simply not true…consider the myth busted!

Read on to learn more!

This long-standing notion has been around for a very long time. Yes, it’s true that younger children are learning to read. The emphasis in the early grades is on making sure students know how to read. When children get into around 4th grade, it’s true that the emphasis changes to moving from the simple (but actually not simple at all) skill of reading to that of synthesizing, analyzing, and generally doing more with text. Here’s the thing…the process of learning to read is continuous & the process of reading to learn is always happening.

Students are always learning to read and students are always reading to learn

That’s right, early in school, children are learning how to read, but that doesn’t stop in 4th grade. It just looks different. Primary and early elementary students receive focused instruction directly related to the basic skills of reading. The instruction in reading that these younger students receive will look different than a 6th grade classroom, which will look different from the reading instruction in an 11th grade course. Even so, reading instruction is present in all grades.

As students develop, so should reading instruction

As students grow, develop, and move through the grades, they begin to be responsible for reading more sophisticated and advanced text genres and styles. What they’re reading in 1st grade is more simplistic than what they’re reading in 10th grade. So, in 1st grade, students are able to focus on learning basic skills like phonics and decoding. As they grow, for instance, into middle and high school, the skills required to read complex texts are (or at least should be) taught.

As such, these older students aren’t learning about phonics and decoding anymore, they’re learning reading comprehension skills, comprehension strategies, text structure, text organization, etc. These skills are more refined and nuanced, but are still things that need to be taught so students can access advanced texts and use them to learn information.

So, students are always learning to read. As they grow, the instruction gets more complex and discipline specific. Students are also always reading to learn. Even in younger grades, students use texts to develop new understandings about themselves and the world.

So what?

As a teacher, make sure you always provide students with reading instruction in ways that make sense for them, for your grade level, and for your discipline. If you do this, you’ll be teaching students how to read in ways that are appropriate for the discipline, text, and age. You’ll support their learning from whatever texts you assign.