Reading Is Easy: Or Ought to Be

By Marguerite Eckertson Koons

A teacher for more than thirty-five years, author Marguerite Koons believes every child deserves the opportunity to learn how to read. In Reading Is Easy, she demonstrates that reading is not only easy, but also has the ability to changes a persons life.

Relying on her personal experiences, Koons presents successful methods and techniques she has developed to make reading both easy and fun in a classroom setting and individually. In this guide, she shares actual case reports of a wide range of reading success stories. She discusses the five stages of learning to read, the ways that play can factor into the learning and reading process, the progression from preschool to kindergarten, tips for teaching remedial reading, and hints for studying methods.

Reading Is Easy offers many of the resources Koons has developed over the years, including charts and games that turn reading into an interesting and fun experience. Her story guides teachers and parents to help their children learn to read and attain success in school and everyday life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Nov 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781480803220

Marguerite Eckertson Koons

Marguerite Koons earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology, an elementary education degree, and a master’s degree in education with a specialty in reading. Throughout her thirty-five-year career, she has helped more than a thousand children learn to read. She currently lives in Ohio.

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Copyright © 2013 Marguerite Eckertson Koons; aka Marguerite Bagby.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-0321-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-0322-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013918124

Archway Publishing rev. date: 10/29/2013

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In appreciation of Leslie Cope, artist extraordinary of Roseville, Ohio, for the wonderful pencil drawing that made an exceptional cover for this book. The book is possible only as a result of my associations with teacher and mentor, Margaret Gebauer, who urged me to teach when it was not my choice.

I must thank and credit the late Grace Brown whose confidence and praise for me, gave me courage before I had experience and confidence in myself.

CONTENTS

Mission Statement

Introduction

Chapter 1   The Journey

Chapter 2   Preschool

Chapter 3   The Classroom

Chapter 4   Progress to Kindergarten

Chapter 5   Remedial Reading

Chapter 6   Other Teaching and Remedial Aids

Appendix

MISSION STATEMENT

Every child who begins his education attending school in America deserves to learn to read. But this is not the case for all children today. Reading proficiency begins in the structured-play activities of young children in their earliest years. Educators know that the best way to build a foundation for good reading skills is to begin in preschool and kindergarten. Kindergarten children should be ready to read on entering first grade, if they are not reading already. Kindergarten children will start to read as a result of the activities they enjoy. When engaging children in these activities is our goal, remediation becomes unnecessary. However, when we make our goal to teach reading, we can actually stifle reading development.

INTRODUCTION

Too frequently, I am made aware of a failure in the American educational system: there is too much focus on students earning passing grades while learning to read is overlooked. Whenever and wherever I travel, I hear about year-end reading reports that reveal low reading scores. I was in Kansas City, Missouri, two years ago when I heard reports about the poor reading scores there. The year-end reports of reading results from districts in central Ohio are just as dismal. Negative reports from Atlanta and New York followed. Many students throughout the country have poor reading skills. These skills have shown little, if any, improvement over the past two decades. I will not quote statistics or numbers here, but believe me when I say they are, inevitably, accompanied by reports of high dropout rates. These reports are depressing to me, and they should concern all Americans. There are large numbers of students graduating from schools in America who do not read at the high-school grade level. Many of them are dropping out because they have trouble learning.

Just recently, I read a more encouraging article about Kansas City schools. It said that during the summer of 2013, teachers are planning to meet to look for ways to improve the reading stats in their schools. I read another encouraging article in an unusual place: an airline magazine had a story about a group of college students who travel to several states during the summertime in a mobile laboratory they designed to teach junior high school students who have difficulty learning and appear to have poor attitudes about learning. The student-teachers’ goal is to build enthusiasm for learning by using creative-imagination activities from their mobile lab. This mobile classroom is really an old van outfitted for learning. They live in it and teach from it from town to town, place to place. The students they taught learned to think more creatively, inventing ideas using both art tools and found objects. The involvement of these traveling student-teachers improved their students’ access to their imaginations and changed their attitudes toward learning. As a result, they may improve their grades during the next semester and it is hoped they will be able to improve during all of their future, high-school years.

Even with programs like that in some places, however, the overall year-end reports of reading grades and graduation rates have not improved for large numbers of students. This is why I began to think seriously about how I taught children and adults to read. I wanted to write about my experiences and successes as a reading teacher because I know that being able to read opens doors that would otherwise be closed. Successful readers have the advantage when they start out; reading offers an opportunity for a better life. Having taught remedial reading for over twenty years to a minimum of fifty students each year, I hope to show a few methods I use that make the difference in how well students learn. Each pupil whose reading skills improved also