Teaching Reading: How to

This pamphlet presents a view of the process of learning to read as a meaning-making activity in which the beginning reader uses a wide range of clues and strategies in order to develop competence and confidence. It also explains why written English is as it is, thereby defying the simplistic notion that the successful reading of written words is only to do with making sound-to-symbol correspondences; and it challenges the recent preoccupation with synthetic phonics as the only method which teachers should employ in order to teach children to read.
John Richmond’s breadth of experience as a classroom teacher, English advisor, as part of the National Writing Project and the Language in the National Curriculum Project and in schools television puts him in a unique position to provide a view of how best to develop committed and engaged readers.