Reading serves not merely as a skill but as a gateway to understanding and appreciating one’s cultural heritage

“I have read 104 words per minute and made 4 mistakes”.

“I could  read 100 words without any mistakes”.

This is Mrs Gabrielyan’s class at Lernapat Secondary School in the Lori region, Armenia, where fluent reading has become a classroom culture. All students have a template for making notes of their progress while doing repeated reading. After repeated but meaning-oriented readings of familiar texts, they write down the number of correctly and incorrectly read words in one minute on the sheet every day. This simple approach allows not only the teacher but also the students to make data-informed judgments about students’ progress in reading.

What is the daily path to achieving this culture? First, the students have already opened their books, and all necessary materials are distributed; the children are ready to learn. Mrs Gabrielyan has planned another reading lesson. Carefully arranged on the teacher’s desk are the day’s plan, supplementary materials, and on the screen is the lesson title: “The Song of My Country.”

Mrs Gabrielyan starts the lesson with an open question: “What does a country’s song mean? What songs do children consider to be their country’s songs? What songs do they like and why?” The discussion brings up various songs, summarizing the concept of a country’s song and introducing Komitas’ “Crane.” The students listen to Crane and discuss their thoughts and feelings about it.

Mrs Gabrielyan has planned the lesson using a top-down approach to teaching reading. As a teacher aware of the principles of neuroeducation, she has dedicated significant time and thought to taking deliberate steps at the beginning of the lesson to activate the fundamental knowledge and emotional experiences of all students regarding the topic. Successful reading in Mrs Gabrielyan’s class is a reading process in which the teacher enables conditions for emotional and cognitive engagement for each child. Successful reading here relies on the child’s social life experiences to ensure that the decoding of a new text connects to the child’s sociocultural experiences, without which it is hard to understand new texts.

In Mrs Gabrielyan’s class, equality is manifested as a deliberate and planned pedagogical process where the issue of systemic inequality has a planned solution: all children should understand and analyze the new text, but not all children have the same stock of fundamental knowledge and emotional experiences for equal engagement. Some children know dozens of songs about their homeland, some have been sung these songs since childhood, and some have not heard these songs, or their favorite songs possibly are not related to the country’s songs. Therefore, Mrs Gabrielyan not only activates background knowledge and experiences but also offers song options that are discussed and respond to the thematic knowledge and experience needs of children with diverse backgrounds.

When you ask any student how many words they read per minute, they can proudly and clearly state the number with sparkling eyes, because Mrs Gabrielyan guides students in the classroom toward a successful life, where proficient reading might become a key to new opportunities.