Reading is the key to school success and, like any skill, it takes practice. A child learns to walk by practising until he no longer has to think about how to put one foot in front of the other. A great athlete practises until he can play quickly, accurately, without thinking. Tennis players call that "being in the zone". Educators call it "automatically". A child learns to read by shouting out the letters and decoding the words. With practice, he stumbles less and less, reading by the phrase. With automaticity, he doesn’t have to think about decoding the words, so he can concentrate on the meaning of the text. It can begin as early as first grade. In a recent study of children in lllinois school, Alan Rossman of Northwestern University found automatic readers in the first grade who were reading almost three times as fast as the other children and scoring twice as high on comprehension tests. At fifth grade, the automatic readers were reading twice as fast as the others, and still outscoring them in accuracy, comprehension and vocabulary. "It’s not I.Q. but the amount of time a child spends reading that is |he key to automaticity," according to Rossman. Any child who spends at least 3.5 to 4 hours a week reading books or magazines will in all likelihood reach automaticity. At home, where the average child spends 25 hours a week watching television, it can happen by turning off the set just one night in favor of reading. You can test your child by giving him a paragraph or two to read aloud- something unfamiliar but appropriate to his age. If he reads aloud with expression, with a sense of the meaning of the sentences, he probably is an automatic reader. If he reads haltingly, one word at a time, without expression or meaning, he needs more practice. With automaticity, a child pays more attention to ______ rather than