"The major folklore of reading instruction relates to the "theory" that reading is considered an exact process. In other words, the reader is expected to read everything exactly as printed on the page in order to understand the message of the author. In general the consuming public, legislatures, courts, and too many educators hold this to theory. it is like the theory of the world being flat during the time of Columbus" -- Robert Harper and Gary Kilarr
I agree with Harper and Kilarr's statement above because reading is not consider an exact process. I disagreed that in order to comprehend the text we have to be able to read all the printed words correctly. Reading would be both ineffective and inefficient if we relied just on grapho/phonemic cues (Weaver, 2002. pg.52). I agree with above statement because I believe teaching reading should consist of learning letter, letter-sound relationship, integrating our schema with the cue systems: syntactic, semantic, and graphic. When reading the text we must construct meaning from the text rather than trying to identify all of the words correctly.
At my school, the teachers use Pearson's Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA2) as an assessment tool to help us for instructional purposes such as grouping our students by their reading level for our guided reading groups. Far too often that I seen students placed in the wrong reading groups because we view reading accuracy too important. If the students have too many miscues than they cannot move up to another reading level. In the text, it say that we should not withhold challenging texts from students until they can recognize nearly all of the words accurately. Such restraint will actually inhibit their acquisition of new vocabulary. In Contrast, extensive reading will enhance vocabulary and thus encourage the reading of more sophisticated texts (Weaver,2002. pg.45).
I highly agree with this statement from the text because we need to expose our students to books beyond their level rather than having them read only books on their level.
In chapter 4, I found it to be very interesting that miscues are not always considered bad. Miscues tell us a lot about our readers when we correctly analyze them. While I was reading the text, I thought back to a reading assessment that I did with one of my students at the end of the year. This kindergarten student still knew approximately 150 sight words at the end of Kindergarten. She satisfied her requirement of mastering 75 Kindergarten sight words at the end of the year. However, when I assessed her on a level D book (where they need to be at the end of Kindergarten) she was unable to pass the level because she made so many miscues according to the rubric provided (e.g. basic sight words, pronoun, and substitution). Weaver stated that good readers generally make fewer miscues than less proficient readers, they may actually make as many or more miscues involving pronouns and simple function words. This occurs because they are reading to construct meaning, rather than to identify words (Weaver,2002. pg.63). I baffled as to why this student made so many miscues when she knows so many sight words. After reading this, I have a better understanding of why good or proficient readers generally do make more miscues than less proficient readers.
References:
Weaver, C. (2002). Reading Process & Practice (3rd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann
Weaver, C. (2002). Reading Process & Practice (3rd ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann
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