Module 6: Reading Reflection

 Does any of the information presented in Chapter 15 influence your personal philosophy of reading? In what ways? How has your perspective changed since you took the DeFord TORP a few weeks ago?

I think the textbook Reading Process & Practice by Constance Weaver is an excellent book to help me become a more effective reading teacher. It was very enjoyable to read as well as informative for teacher development. It has influenced my personal philosophy of reading. I absolutely agree with Weaver that we have to have background knowledge about a topic in order for us to understanding the reading for about that topic. Having the background knowledge and experiences teaching in the classroom really helped make the reading from Weaver’s book more meaningful. Chapter 15 certainly summed it up for me with so many research based studied that compared the achievement in the comprehensive literacy approach versus the traditional reading instruction. The comprehensive literacy instruction is proven to be effective for proficient readers and less proficient readers.

After reading about the study done by Kucer (1985) in Chapter 15 on decodable text and predictable text. The study shows that the child reading with the predictable text had fewer oral reading miscues and better retelling of the story (as cited in Weaver,2002). While I was reading about decodable text versus predictable text, I thought about to the beginning of last school year. I started the out the year teaching with phonics lesson using decodable books with my kindergarteners. I used all the lesson plans provided by Reading a-z, which was very thorough. I thought it was the best approach for my struggling students that did not have the letter-sounds knowledge mastered yet. After a few weeks of implementing the phonics lesson plan, I noticed how bored the students were reading the decodable texts and how little improvement it had on their phonics skills. Therefore, I stopped using the decodable books because I myself found it to be boring and difficult to teach with them.  This make so much sense now after reading that decodable texts belong to the traditional, parts-to-whole approach. It is hard for the children to construct meaning when reading something that doesn’t make sense to them. This book was very influential in my teaching approach for this upcoming school year. 

When I first took the TORP, I was uncertain about several of the responses. Now, I can say that I can fill out all the responses with certainty and confidence after reading the book by Weaver.  I have learned so much from her book and I'm planning to refer back to her book for teaching strategies for effective reading instruction often during the school year.