ABSTRACT
Learning to read is arguably the most emphasized skill in schools today. Educators, researchers, political figures, parents, and many other individuals invest time and resources to ensure children learn to read. Such individuals may become very concerned when a child struggles to learn to read, as we know children who demonstrate poor reading skills at the end of third grade are likely to continue to struggle with reading throughout their education (Good, Simmons, & Smith, 1998). In fact, the gap between good readers’ and poor readers’ skills continues to widen as these students get older, making the challenge to help the poor readers catch up more difficult even as early as the end of first grade (Good et al., 1998; Juel, 1988; Stanovich, 1986). Sadly, the effects of early reading failure multiply and predict negative outcomes academically, socially, and emotionally for children (Reschly, 2010; Terras, Thompson, & Minnis, 2009). Researchers have examined an abundance of instructional strategies designed to develop early literacy skills, as these skills form a necessary foundation for reading success (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). Yet, the essence of learning to read and the reason children are taught to decode, to read fluently, and to understand words is to achieve the greater goal of taking away meaning from the written text (Durkin, 1993). In other words, the goal of reading is to understand what the author is conveying through words.
