I. Write a brief description of what you remember about learning to read.

A. How many before they went to school?
B. Describe school experiences?
C. Special classes?
D. How do those experiences COLOR your view of teaching reading?
 
 

II. Define LITERACY.
Share with someone near you.  Make an inclusive definition at each site.

Reading, writing, listening, speaking, viewing, and thinking and possible technology.

III. Changing methods of literacy instruction

A. Page 3

IV. The role of technology in literacy.

A. New ways of using computers, exciting software, and the use of the Internet make it possible for you to meet a greater range of students’ needs within a balanced literacy program.  Page 4

V. History of Reading Instruction (page 5)

A. Old Basal Readers

(1960-1970)  Decoding   - ignored comprehension

(1970)Asking Questions – just CHECKED comprehension, did not  improve it

(60-70-80’s)Comprehension SKILLS – research does not support a set of comprehension skills

(70- 80’s) Transactional Approach – ROSENBLATT – reading is a transaction between the reader and the text – should construct their own meanings (how does this correlate with your experience in answering questions on tests or interpreting poems???)

LEV VYGOTSKY – learning supported by adults – social – zone of proximal development – collaborative
 
 

HALLIDAY – language is learned holistically rather than in bits and pieces = give example of learning to talk to babies – what if we just used words or sounds they understood and then introduced other words and sounds later?  Country full of remedial talkers.   “At no time during children’s acquisition of oral language do they stop to learn an isolated part or piece of language.  From the outset, the process is whole, meaningful, supportive, and continuous.” – p. 10

Balanced Approach – combination of direct instruction (mini-lessons) and authentic reading and writing experiences

Show Trans:  Reading, writing, listening, speaking, viewing thinking do not develop as separate components and should not be taught as separate subjects.   (p. 7)

EMERGENT LITERACY
 The idea that children grow into reading and writing with no real beginning or ending point, that reading and writing develop concurrently, interrelatedly, and according to no one “right” sequence, or order.  MARIE CLAY (New Zealand).

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Language acquisition is first and foremost a social process. (9)

It is important that schools build literacy experiences around whatever language a child has developed. (9)

Theories of language acquisition: (p. 9)

 Nativists (Noam Chomsky)  – innately without practice or reinforcement

 Cognitive development  (Piaget) – acquire language through various activities

 Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky) – child can perform task only with the help of a more experienced individual.

Prior Knowledge, Schemata, Background, and Comprehension

Schemata – plural of schema – categories of knowledge (concepts, information, ideas) that form in readers’ minds through real or vicarious experiences – p. 11.    Schema comes through experience.  This directly relates to comprehension.

Phonemic Awareness
The knowledge that words are comprised of sounds.

COMPREHENSION – p. 11 –
Comprehension is a strategic process by which readers construct or assign meaning to a text by using the clues in the text and their own prior knowledge.

Constructive Model
The meaning the reader constructs or assigns does not come from the printed page; it comes from the reader’s own experiences that are triggered or activated by the ideas the author presents. (p. 12).

Strategic Model (13)
Purpose
Text structure  - narrative – tells a story

   Expository – information, facts

Metacognitive awareness – (metacognition) – awareness of process and skills needed to complete a task and monitors if the process is being done correctly.

Relationship of COMPREHENSION and DECODING

Effective comprehenders do not have to be able to identify every word or know the meaning of every word in a text to understand it.  Students can tolerate text in which as many as 15% of the words are not fully known.  – they can still read this text with a high level of comprehension.  P. 14

DECODING is the ability to get the intended meaning from a printed message by analyzing the graphic symbols.  Since identifying words is a means to this end, learning any system of identification (context, phonics, structural analysis) helps in constructing meaning.  IN OTHER WORDS, THE GOAL OF ANY LITERACY EXPERIENCE IS ALWAYS THE CONSTRUCTION OF MEANING.  (P. 14).
 

Use of QUALITY CHILDREN’s LITERATURE

 Motivates, captivates, engages

 Natural Language

 Easy to Understand

 BEST combination:  Balance of good quality children’s literature with decodable text for students to use in applying developing decoding skills.
 

Literature Used for this lesson:
Bradby, Marie.  (1995).  More than Anything Else.  New York:  Orchard.
Polacco, Patricia.  (1998).  Thank You, Mr. Falker.  New York:  Philomel.
Walton, Rick.  (1995).  Once There was a Bull . . . (frog).  New York:  Putnam.