Theory should
help us provide the conditions, the contexts that will foster growth toward
competent reading. Most important, theory should help us to avoid methods and
strategies that may satisfy short-term goals but obstruct growth.
Louise
Rosenblatt
As classroom teachers, we
need to be able to plan effective day to day experiences in the reading
workshop, however, we must also be able to make decisions about the learning
conditions and curricular components we provide over the course of the school
year. Each of these decisions should be directly related to the knowledge and
beliefs we hold about reading and learning, and the information we have
gathered about our students through the various assessments we utilize in our
classrooms. In this way, our
understandings of the learning and reading processes, and our understandings of
the students in our classrooms drives our instructional practices, the learning
environment we establish and the experiences we provide our students. In other
words, theory should drive practice.
5 Principles of Reading Instruction
- Reading
is the “construction” of meaning.
It is a two-way process, as readers bring meaning to a text in order to
construct meaning with a text. In other words, as Louise Rosenblatt has
written, readers are active participants in the reading process, building
their understandings as they “transact” with a text. Different readers may
construct different meanings from the same text or experiences, depending
upon the knowledge and experiences they bring to the reading event. The
goal of the reader is to understand what they have read, to make sense of
the text. In order to do this, each individual reader uses their
understandings of the world, their knowledge of language and the
relationship between the letters and the sounds of their language to
construct meaning, to make sense, as they transact with a text. Reading is
not simply the correct identification of individual words, nor is it the
ability to read words without mistakes out loud. Reading is understanding
what one reads. It is making sense of a text. Therefore, any transaction
with a text must result in the construction of meaning for it to be
considered reading.
- Reading
instruction should develop life-long, active readers. How we transact with texts, is
largely determined by the experiences and demonstrations we are provided,
how reading is taught in schools and the expectations we are presented as
readers. Some reading programs tend to create passive readers, readers
that sit back and wait for the teacher to determine what was important in
the text. Unfortunately, passive readers see no direct pleasure in reading
and generally do not become life-long readers because they find no purpose
in reading. In our classrooms, we want children to understand why they are
reading, to assume and active stance to the reading process and develop as
life-long readers, that choose to read throughout their lives for many
purposes.
- We
learn to read by reading.
We generally learn to do this in the company of other competent readers.
Frank Smith reminded educators of the old adage, “You learn from the
company you keep”, when he wrote about “joining the literacy club”. If we
want children to become readers, they need to “keep company” with other
readers, to see themselves as potential readers and to experience actual reading events. In
essence, children need to identify themselves as “readers” in order to
“Join the Literacy Club”.
- Large
amounts of time must be provided for students to interact with literature. As classroom teachers, we need to
provide numerous opportunities to read and be read to, access to a wide
range of reading materials, and a responsive, caring environment that
allows children to share their reactions to their readings without fear of
humiliation. Reading “instruction” must be a part of this environment, not
isolated from it. We don’t learn to read by doing skills worksheets, only
later to try these skills out on a real book. We learn to read by
transacting with authentic literature, for authentic purposes.
- People
teach people to read, not commercial programs. Authors, teachers and parents are
among the many the catalysts that bring children and texts together and
show them how to read and how various texts work. It is the skill of the
classroom teacher, based on their knowledge of the reading process and the
children in their classrooms, that makes the reading workshop successful.
Blindly following a teacher’s manual or the scope and sequence of a
commercial reading program, will not support all children becoming
competent readers. Some children will learn to read in spite of the
program, and some will fall through the proverbial cracks. It takes a
knowledgeable, sensitive, observant teacher to support the efforts of all
children, and to help them develop as successful, lifelong readers.
