Personal Model of Reading Theory

Loan Le

EDRD 7715

7/17/2013

Personal Model of Reading Theory

            I believe children learn to read occurs even before they enter school. Children learn through life experiences, playing with peers, multimedia technology, and from adults.  Children’s first stage of literacy development is through reading environmental print in their daily lives. These are the first prints in their own environment that they are able to read by using the contextual clues from the environmental print. Besides learning from the world around them, they are exposed to technology at an early age. Technology is rapidly coming to every homes such as computer, mobile devices like iPad, Kindle, Tablet, Nook, and cell phones, etc. All these digital devices offer educational games/apps to help children learn to read. Also, parents or adults play a huge role in children’s first stage of literacy by reading to them daily and exposing them to multiple genres of literature. When parents read to their children orally, children are able to gain new vocabulary. Most importantly guiding the children to the understanding of why we need to learn to read and write. For instance, we learn to read so that we can read the menu at McDonald’s and order what we want to eat. When children know the purpose for learning reading, they are more motivated and have the desire to learn when they come to school.

 When students come to school, I think that it is vital for teachers to find innovated and effective strategies for reading instruction to teach all levels of learners. Children come in with diverse learning styles and cultural background. As teachers, we need to differentiate our reading instruction to meet the students’ individual needs. Make learning relevant to the children so that they are able to make connections and bring in their prior knowledge to help them learn to read.

The reading for this course was very insightful and I have gained so much from the reading which will enable me to be a more effective reading teacher. Constance Weaver’s text Reading Process & Practice was extremely beneficial in providing information about the reading process, research-based strategies for implementing literacy instruction to enable me to teach my students to become proficient and lifelong readers. I believe that the comprehensive literacy approach to teaching reading will help accomplish these goals. According to Weaver, “comprehensive literacy program is more integrative, with skills and strategies taught and used in context, and with emphasis upon the guided and sustained reading and writing of whole, meaningful texts, and emphasis that is sorely needed to help children become both functionally and joyfully literate”(2002,p.279). The comprehensive literacy approach has all of the components to help improve students’ literacy success with a balanced approach to teaching reading. A major component of comprehensive literacy is reading workshop which includes read-aloud, shared reading, guided reading, sustained reading, literature circles, individual reading, and inquiry or reading to learn. It offers a variety of opportunities for students to learn in whole group, small group, and individual instruction.

I believe phonics instruction is essential to teach children to read in the primary grade. In the past I have focused heavily on phonics for emergent readers. However, from the reading for this course I have learned that I should not teach phonics in isolation. It should be incorporated into the comprehensive literacy program. Students need to be taught phonics in context so that they are able to construct meaning from the text. I learned the importance of gaining meaning from the text rather than focusing on identifying all the words correctly.

In conclusion, I believe that it is important to allow time for students to read throughout the day rather than just limiting reading time to just a block of the day. Students need to be able to select their own books of interest and books on their independent reading level. I found that when students are focusing on identifying unfamiliar words, they are not able to construct meaning from the text. As teachers we should provide students with texts that are just right and teaching them the strategies to find just right books by themselves will give them the power of choice. They will be more motivated and enthusiastic about reading therefore will be lifelong readers.

Reference:

Weaver, C. (2002). Reading process and practice. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books.