Trying Something New: Meaning-Based Reading Instruction in a Finnish First-Grade Classroom

Abstract

This study investigated children's reading strategies and progress when a meaning-based approach to reading instruction was implemented in a Finnish 1st-grade classroom. A reading program was designed in which the teacher introduced predictable books, literacy-related centers, and minilessons in context on selected letter-sound correspondences. Field notes and videotapes of individual reading sessions were analyzed to describe the strategies the students used while reading both familiar and unfamiliar books. In the fall, in a familiar context, the students read mostly based on their memory. In an unfamiliar context, the students used graphemic information and sounded out and elongated the words and named some letters. Later, they used their phonological recoding skills in both familiar and unfamiliar contexts. All the students progressed toward conventional reading, demonstrating that they had reached at least the alphabetic phase of reading development.