Literature based thematic teaching in the first grade

Reading is an essential life skill taught early in a child\u27s education. Some children need to practice and work harder than their classmates in order to read. Children who do not learn to read early on often struggle throughout their education. The goal of turning children on to books has to start at an early age since readers are developed in childhood. (Funk, 1992) Teachers have to teach to many learning styles. Some children are global learners while others may be analytic learners. Some children are auditory learners and others are visual learners or tactile learners. Many areas of reading, such as phonics, comprehension, and grammar are taught in literature based reading classrooms. Teaching the many reading areas through a piece o f literature may touch more than one learning style. Today\u27s children\u27s literature is often more meaningful to children than the text. The text is often an adapted version of the authentic piece with a selected vocabulary. The children\u27s books are complete stories usually with many colorful and bright pictures. The illustrations are often what draws children to a particular book. Children can learn to read naturally when their parents read to them and allow them to have plenty o f access to books. It is continued in the classroom with the teacher reading to the students and the availability of books in the classroom. (Tunnell, 1989) To increase a child\u27s reading development there should be various copies of the same title for the child to choose from. (Egawa, 1990) James B. Reilly uses the HOT (Higher Order Thinking Skills) approach to teach kindergarten students to read. In this particular approach, children read or listen to many versions of a familiar book, such as The Three Little Pigs. Many activities follow the reading of the book in order for the children to use higher order thinking skills. Some suggested activities are acting out the story, responding to the story through questions and discussion, and comparing and contrasting the various versions of the story. By using the HOT approach with literature children may develop stronger comprehension skills. (Reilly, 198