TIP Chs. 5, 6, 7: What I Understand from the Text about Reading

After reading about the detailed theories & models that attempt to explain literacy development, I realize how broad & detailed these findings really are; I never realized before how learning to read can be broken down into so many different but similar processes.

Ch. 5 focused on developmental theories & looking at behaviors over time to answer the question, "How do early reading abilities develop & how can we facilitate it?" Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development said that play equates to intellectual growth & kids learn thru their experiences. He also said that children's' thinking changes over time, based on physical growth & social experiences. I like how he broke the types of thinking into stages ranging from birth till adulthood. However, it surprises me that in the final stage (formal operational) he groups 11 yr olds with adults. Is he implying that an 11 yr old can generally think as abstractly as an adult? From a teaching perspective, these stages will help me understand how my students are thinking based on their age & stage of development. Next, I found the Maturation Theory extremely odd- while I understand that kids need to mature before they do certain things, it seems absurd to me to delay reading instruction until a child is 6 1/2 yrs old. I couldn't believe that parents were encouraged NOT to teach reading at home because they thought it would cause damage to the child. This theory goes against all literacy practices that I've been taught & that I believe in! The only part of the theory that I can relate to is it's connection to inventive spelling. Holdaway's Theory of Lit. Development in the late 70s I really liked & agree with. To me, it makes perfect sense that reading is a natural occurrence that should begin @ home, with parents serving as models. I also agree with his ideas of peer interaction thru "big" books & shared reading. Beginning in the 80s was the Stage Model, where developing word rec. goes thru 3 stages, going from memorizing letter shapes, to using letter-sound cues, to using automatic knowledge & word families. I liked this model except for the fact it didn't focus at all on comprehension, which I feel is so crucial. Also in the 80s was the Emergent Lit. Theory, meaning birth thru reading/writing conventionally. What I liked about this theory is how it included all the aspects of literacy that we discussed in class: reading, writing, speaking, listening- stressing they're all interrelated. I also liked that this theory stresses the importance of a good literacy based home environment. Last in this ch. was the Family Lit. Theory. Again, I liked that this theory believes that a good literacy based home helps a child with their reading abilities. I found it interesting that they claim a good home helps more so than a preschool/kindergarten program. I wish some parents of the students I teach read that!

Chapter 6 took a look at how social aspects affect reading. I can see why these theories are still popular in schools, since school is obviously a place where there's much social interaction, especially among peers. The Sociolinguistic Theory from the 70s, like some theories from the previous chapter, stress the social home interactions as a crucial role in literacy learning. It also focuses on oral language- claiming it to be the foundation for reading & writing. This theory provided very interesting statistics to me, explaining that kids from professional homes are exposed to about 11.2 mil. words within a yr, kids from working class homes, 6.5 mil, & kids from welfare homes, 3.2 mil words. This is proof that language is learned as a result of peoples' social interactions. The less interaction, the lower reading skills the child will probably have. Next was the Socio-Cultural Theory, which is broader than the previous theory. Basically, what I got from this theory is that children from minority cultures may suffer in school b/c culture environments affect reading in school. If stories rarely deal with their cultures, it's hard for them to relate & form connections. Vygotsky's Social Constructivism was somewhat fresh to me; I am very familiar with zone of proximal development & scaffolding. His theory contrasts to Piaget's beliefs b/c Piaget claims that development comes before learning & Vygotsky claims that learning happens as a function of interacting with others. Vygotsky said that adults must demonstrate to kids higher thinking before they can do it independently. I noticed how they made a connection between zone of prox. dev. with differentiated instruction. The Social Learning Theory claims that we learn from observing others; we model what we see, & teachers should reinforce when they see good behaviors modeled. This theory is very helpful with classroom management- to encourage good behaviors. Emerging in the 60s, the Critical Lit. Theory delved into the political aspects of teaching literacy. They claim that illiteracy isn't a personal problem, but more so the fault of a poor society--very interesting. I somewhat agree with this. However, I think people also need to take responsibility for their own education. In this chapter, I found the "Classroom Applications/Teaching Ideas" very useful. They discussed language experience charts, morning messages, literature circles, and cross-age/buddy reading. I really enjoyed reading detailed info on literature circles, because while I think they are excellent, I haven't tried to implement them yet in my teaching practices, partly b/c I didn't know much about it. This explanation helped.

Finally, ch. 7 discussed cognitive processes, from the 50s-70s. Overall, the chapter claims that we learn as a RESULT of our attempts to make sense of the world around us- that we're active learners- but learning is internal & therefore can't be observed directly. So, these few theories focus on thinking, remembering, prob. solving (unobservable mental activity). Dominant the past 20 yrs is the Info Processing Theory, dealing with how we process, store and retrieve what we learn. The info moves thru stages, where info is 1st perceived, we interpret it, it goes into short term memory, & eventually saved into long term memory. I couldn't believe they went into FURTHER detail about different kinds of long-term memory; I had no idea. However, it did make sense that only info that gets lots of attention in short term mem. will transfer to long term, where we file the info away into schemas. ( I like to think of schemas as a mental filing cabinet.) Also, while you can study for a test & then forget the info afterwards (aka- short term), learning to read is stored in long term. You don't forget those skills. I found that really interesting & true. I found the Substrata-Factor Theory odd & confusing. Bringing statistics into it made the theory a little hard for me to grasp. However, I really understood the Rauding Theory from the late 70s. This theory came up with terms we use everyday (skimming, scanning, typical reading, learning, memorizing). The theory focuses on accuracy level (vocab knowledge) & rate level (fluency), which are crucial to measuring comprehension. This theory hypothesizes that to improve reading, texts @ the reader's ability level must be used. While this seems like common sense, it's extremely important. Gough's Model & the Automatic Model are both "bottom-up", linear models, where it goes from low order to high order stages, info being passed in one direction. I found Grough's Model very interesting & I never before thought about how broken down the reading process can be, going from the eye seeing the visual icon, the brain trying to identify it, decoding it, attaching phonemes to the letter, recording it as a sound, searching for word meaning, & eventually putting together meaning for an entire sentence. Who knew ALL that went on?! Talk about unobservable mental processes....wow. The main point I took from the Automatic Info Model is attention, internal & external. This is interesting for teachers- are students mentally drifting while reading in class? Also, it makes sense that when a child has to spend so much "attention" on decoding, that it negatively affects their comprehension of the text. Finally, the Interactive Model is NOT linear one direction. This model allows for higher level thinking to influence lower level thinking. Basically, comprehension can assist with identifying words, not just the other way around. For example, using context clues to define a word in text is higher level thinking; decoding the word would be a linear, bottom-up way to approach the situation. Finally, I found it reassuring that this chapter suggested using guiding reading to monitor reading development & to assess by using running records. This is something I've learned to practice with students & seeing it as a good approach is reassuring.